Postville Update

For those of you who attended the Postville immigration conference last month or who are just keeping track of ICE's shenanigans, here is an update on the town of Postville. From CNN, the Postville mayor reports that "Feds Turned My Town 'Topsy Turvey'":

"It makes a person feel kind of angry," Penrod says. "It's been nothing but a freaky nightmare since May."

Five months later, tensions are high. Crime is up. Businesses are hurting. The nation's kosher supply has taken a big hit because the plant is only functioning at partial capacity. The plant is owned by Abraham Aaron Rubashkin, a powerful member of the Hasidic Jewish community. There's a seething anger toward Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"To me, they took a problem that needed a 22-caliber bullet and they dropped a nuclear bomb on us," says Aaron Goldsmith, a Hasidic Jew and former Postville city councilman.

Down a picturesque tree-lined street off Lawler Street sits St. Bridget's Catholic Church whose pastor, Father Lloyd Paul Ouderkirk, is both soft-spoken and outspoken. It is his church that became a refuge for the town's immigrants the day of the raid and the weeks afterward. "They had attacked this town with a military-style raid -- brought in 900 immigration police to arrest 389 people. I mean, what is that other than a military raid on this town?" he says. Ouderkirk scans his church now, the sun beaming through stained-glass windows. "Can you just imagine all these pews here full of people, sleeping 300-400 people a night?"

ICE remains, not surprisingly, remains unrepentant, and that means that we should be attentive to the possibility of more raids in the mid-west.

Stay tuned . . . .
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