Advocacy Update
June 2008

Disaster Hits Postville, Iowa
By Matt Wilch, Senior Counsel for Policy and Advocacy

In the aftermath of the largest U.S. immigration raid of its kind, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) designated Postville, Iowa, the site of the raid, as a domestic disaster. Reckoning that the size, nature and emotional impact of the trauma on children, families and the community is comparable to that of a natural disaster, this marks the first time that the ELCA has designated an immigration matter a domestic disaster. The ELCA is working closely with St. Bridget’s Catholic Church, the community crisis response center in Postville. Volunteers from local St. Paul Lutheran Church and nearby Luther and Wartburg Colleges are contributing to the communitywide response with legal, social and pastoral services.

Postville has been a model community, illustrating the positive role immigration can have in revitalizing a local economy and the capacity of very diverse groups to live together. After the town’s population had declined to 800 people, Orthodox Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn, N.Y., opened a kosher meat processing plant in Postville. With the subsequent influx of workers from Guatemala, Mexico, Israel and Ukraine, the economy thrived, and the town’s population tripled to nearly 2,300.

But on May 12 Postville became a different kind of poster child. It now exemplifies the human cost of our broken immigration system. As helicopters circled Agriprocessors, the meat packing plant, dozens of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents descended on the facility. ICE arrested at least 313 men and 76 women, criminally charging them for using false identification to gain employment, and bused them to the Cattle Congress in nearby Waterloo, Iowa, for processing.

The impact on those arrested, their families and the whole community is immediate and devastating. Adults were immediately separated from their children. Parents, teachers and Lutheran and other church volunteers report disturbing signs of the impact. Following the raid, an estimated 90 percent of Latino students were absent from class. Some elementary classes shrunk from 25 children to six. One teacher estimates that at least 150 students are without one or both parents. Children wonder whether or when they will ever again see their arrested mothers and fathers. Even children of U.S. citizen parents are traumatized—having nightmares about their own parents being taken away and creating drawings of the raid with captions such as “Don’t take my friends away.” So far, only about a quarter of those in detention have been released to their families.

“This government action is having a devastating impact on the entire community,” said Bishop Steven Ullestad of the Northeastern Synod of the ELCA, who attended high school in Postville when his father served as pastor there. “Those who were arrested were active members of the community: shopping in Postville businesses, renting property or buying houses, attending the school functions for their children, being good neighbors. People are asking if our government gave any consideration to the impact on this small town before they took this action. There simply must be a more humane way of addressing the concerns about undocumented workers. We do not condone people using false identification, but instead of arresting people, tearing families apart and putting children at risk, we need to create viable means for hard workers to get documented.”

“This once again underscores the need for comprehensive reform of immigration policy,” echoed LIRS President Ralston Deffenbaugh. “The immigration law needs to protect and unite families, safeguard human rights and worker rights, enable marginalized undocumented people to come out of the shadows and to live without fear, and provide a path to permanence for those who have put down roots. In Postville families are being divided, there are serious allegations of workplace abuse, families are being driven even further into the shadows, and people with deep roots here are being detained and deported instead of integrated into the community. We need to fix the broken system.”

For further reading: Statement to Congress by LIRS and ELCA Bishop Steven Ullestad on Impact of Raids on Children

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