My First Trip to Postville

My first trip to Postville was a little overwhelming, but also extremely interesting.  When I got to the church, there were about 8 women there to meet with me.  The coordinator did not have anything specific for me to do with them, and she told me to do whatever I wanted to.  This was a little overwhelming, especially since I had not used much Spanish since I came back to Luther, but I think it turned out ok.  I started out by having the women tell me their names.  This went fine, but I could tell that the women were sizing me up, maybe to see if I was trustworthy or worth their time.  This is very understandable, because, from what I have been told, there have been a lot of reporters and other "white" people who are not there to help them.   They are not sure who they can tell what, because of the potential legal implications of what they say.  

After that I just asked the broad question, what happened?  I said that I knew some about what had happened but I really did not know that much.  This got the conversation rolling and the women started talking about what had happened to them.  The thing that they talked about the most was their children.  They worried about their ability to provide for them and make them happy.  They explained to me that they have a debit card from the government because they are not allowed to work.  However, they said that it is still hard because they can only buy certain kinds of food and specific clothing, and this is really hard for their kids who want toys to play with and probably want sugar cereal like any other kid.  They also said that it is hard because they do not have enough money to fix things in their house when they break.  

I was told before this meeting that the women had to plug their tracking devices into the wall for 2 hours every day.  This would mean that they would have to stand in one spot for two hours, essentially without moving.  I was told that the tracking devices often makes the women's legs sore and that the skin underneath them is very red and raw.  This does not seem like humane treatment.  Yet, since these people did not have the correct papers, they are called criminals and therefore supposedly deserve this treatment.  In fact, it is seen as a humane measure in order to make sure that the children have at least one parent.  

Another issue is that the women often are not sure where their husbands are.  Their husbands are scattered throughout the country and, for some reason,  ICE or the law enforcement agencies involved have not told their families where the men who were detained are being held.  During the summer, volunteers had to spend hours calling prisons and asking for their locations.  It was only after a large scale march in Postville this summer that most of the locations were released.  However, one of the women in the group I met with shared that she knew her husband was in Louisiana, and the other women reacted as if this was a recent development.  This means that even now, the location of some people is unknown.  

This lack of information seems like a scare tactic.  If people do no know what happens to the people who are detained in immigration raids, it makes being in the U.S. even more frightening to other illegal immigrants.  The Postville raid as a whole seemed to be a scare tactic as well.  I attended a meeting of NEIHIR (North Eastern Iowans for Humane Immigration Reform), and I was told there that their was something like 900 ICE operatives in Postville where they only detained about 400 people.  That is not to say that 400 people is a small number, because it surely is not.  However, it is obvious that 900 people were not needed to detain the people in Postville.  That kind of law enforcement also perpetuates the stereotype that illegal immigrants have committed severe criminal offenses which necessitate an extreme reaction.  In reality, the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants are here to work and provide for their families rather than to commit crimes and hurt other people.  

After the women shared their stories with me, I asked them what kinds of things they would like to do in the future.  I mentioned that I could help them with English and they all were very excited about that idea.  Two of the women were already taking English classes and the rest had not had any English education.  It is interesting that people often assume that immigrants have no desire or refuse to learn English because they do not want to be "true Americans".  However this assumption is very wrong.  Every immigrant that I have ever met (which includes the women in Postville and some women in a hispanic neighborhood in Minneapolis) has wanted to learn English and the only thing stopping them was the difficulty of learning a second language as an adult, lack of time and resources cause by little money and children to take care of, or lack of information about how or where to learn English.  

One of the women also asked me why I was in Postville. I told her that I was a volunteer and that I was there because I wanted to help because I have decent Spanish skills, I thought that the way that the raid in Postville was carried out was inexcusable, and I have a lot of respect and admiration for the Hispanic way of life.  She told me that she appreciated that I was there and that a lot of white people do not care about them.  She described white girls that walk past here on the street and say "Hola" in a patronizing way that does not express any care for or understanding of her life.  This is indicative of the separation between people of different races and cultures, even within a small town.  

I think that this separation between peoples perpetuates the oppression of "kyriarchy" in our society.  If people do not take the time to interact and listen to each other, it is easy to believe that it is the fault of the immigrant that things do not go well for them.  It is only when their is honest conversation between the oppressed and the oppressors that change can happen, because realistically, the people with the power need to change things.  I hope that people will begin to look for opportunities for this much needed conversation to happen.  However, in order to do so, we must be willing to question the privileges that we have.