Media Coverage of Postville: ICE and the response of Politicians

I have been archiving newspaper articles about the raid in Postville and it's aftermath for the church where I've been volunteering to use as a record of the media coverage and to explain what happened to people who want more information.  One thing that I learned more about from doing this archiving was the role of ICE in the raid.  I discovered that ICE used undercover agents to investigate the plant before the raid.  They sent someone to try to get a job at the plant to see what was going on inside.  The informant saw that there was a system for undocumented employees at the plant.  They even got paychecks that were a different color than everyone else's, which makes it obvious that Agriprocessors knew of their immigration status.  The informant also witnesses a supervisor duct-taping a worker's eyes shut and hitting him with a meat hook.  However this incident was never reported.  

ICE also used the National Cattle Congress to hold immigrants in detention.  The Cattle Congress is a fairgrounds that is used for many different kinds of events.  According to the president of the Cattle Congress no one on staff there knew that it would be used to detain immigrants and try them.  He said that they thought it would be used for Homeland Security training.  However, he admits that the government did not do anything against the terms of their lease agreement.  In addition, when a representative from the Guatemalan consulate toured the facility he did not find anything inhumane.  

Another article claimed that the release of people who had children to take care of was an improvement over previous raids.  Yet another said that the majority of people who the raid was targeted at were not prosecuted, which suggests that perhaps the raid was more of a scare tactic than an effort to actually enforce laws.  However, according to the La Crosse Tribune, more than 4,900 immigrants have been deported in the last year from Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota, so plenty of people are actually being prosecuted.  

The immediate reactions of various politicians to the raid were also interesting to read about.  Iowa Governor, Chet Culver responded by saying that it is "important to crack down of illegal immigration"... "I have also directed relevant state agencies to convene a working group under Lt. Governor's direction to ensure that state agencies are assisting the community in dealing with this event."  However, there has been almost no assistance from the state government in Postville.  Culver also said that he was troubled and was concerned about how the raid reflects on businesses in Iowa.  Bruce Braley, a representative for Iowa, expressed concern for the families but also said that there should be consequences for law-breakers.  He also said that it is important to enforce laws for employers as well and encouraged an investigation of Agriprocessors.  He also asked for a figure for how much the raid cost taxpayers from ICE.  Senator Tom Harkin also called for an investigation.  He said that immigration laws should be enforced, but should be enforced on both employers and employees.  It is interesting that not one of them questioned the legitimacy of laws that are so consistently broken and did not ask why people would be desperate enough to come here illegally.  

Lt. Governor Patty Judge finally visited Postville on December 4th after a citizen's group repeatedly sent her pleas to come and church leaders sent her a letter.  After hearing concerns from former Agriprocessors workers about their ability to feed their children and buy Christmas presents, Judge expressed her sympathy but didn't state any plan for assistance.  The only thing she said was that a couple AmericCorps volunteers would be moving to Postville and the $700,000 in aid was available for people who are not allowed to work.  However, the AmeriCorps workers came to Luther and said that they are only staying for 2 weeks.  Some government aid!