Time Magazine has an article on the aftermath of the immigration raid that occurred last month in Postville, Iowa.
There are accounts of families being separated and children who won’t be returning to school. Workers have been left without jobs and many are fearful that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will return to their town again.
The raid, which took in 389 plant workers, is considered the largest in history. According to the Iowa Independent, 18 percent of the town’s total population is gone and recovering will be a slow process.
A group of ten immigrants have already been deported, while others have been sentenced or await deportation. But in all this talk about the raid, not enough is being said about holding the meat-packing plant accountable for all their wrongdoings (like the violations mentioned in this Seattle Times article). Another point to think about is the fact that all of these court proceedings for the workers that were taken in by ICE took only days, so issues of due process certainly come into play.
What I would like to know is how effective these raids actually are, if at all. ICE says that immigration raids send a message to employers and makes them think twice about hiring undocumented workers, but in the end, this might be do more harm than good.
Contributed by Raquel Namuche, Community Mobilization Intern
I think the immigration raids are a disgrace; not a single representative of the company faced questioning let alone prosecution.
Elsewhere on the web there is speculation of the company profiting from illegal immigration in other ways.
America has shown clearly that it’s only interested in using it’s laws against the poor.
Which is a great shame.