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No Holiday Leftovers for Postville, Iowa

4:20 pm By Maegan La Mala · Immigration| Iowa · Comments Off

26 Dec 2008

Not only are there not leftovers in the town of Postville, Iowa, devastated by the ICE raid that happened there earlier this year, there is a food crisis.

According to Paul Ouderkirk, the local priest in charge of the area food shelves, Postville has literally run out of food. This is where we all come in. As a Coalition in the struggle for immigrant rights, MIRAc (Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Coalition) will be taking a Caravan of Solidarity filled with food and other necessities down to Postville on December 28th. We are sending out this call to the Minnesota/Wisconsincommunity to help us with the food collection. We have spoken with the local food shelves and have a list of the requested items. We will be dropping everything off at the food shelf center to let the current food donation system run its course.

The holiday isn’t over and if you can help donate
directly to Postville.

Below is the Address for St. Bridget’s Church
St. Bridget’s Hispanic Fund
P.O. Box 369
Postville, IA 52162

**Checks can be made out to St. Bridget’s Hispanic Ministry

St. Bridget’s has been spearheading the humanitarian relief for the
Agriprocessors workers and their families. More information on St.
Bridgets can be found here.

Via / National Immigrant Solidarity Network

Affidavits from Postville ICE Raid Tell of Abuse

1:15 pm By Maegan La Mala · Immigration| Iowa · Comments Off

22 Dec 2008

No one should be surprised that affidavits from two workers deported after the Postville ICE raid, tell of abuse at the hands of the agents. Two Guatemalans, Marvin Danilo Perez-Gomez and Mardoqueo Valle-Callejas, describe being kept awake for more than 48 hours, shackled, people being humiliated when taken to the bathroom, threats and violence.

From the affidavit of Marvin Danilo Perez-Gomez:

That day they had us suffering hunger. I had started my shift at 4:00am, and they didn’t give me anything to eat until 10:00pm. I felt my head was going to explode. In Waterloo [National Cattle Congress] they kept me sitting down without my sweatshirt and barefoot in the cold from 8:00pm to 2:00am, while they arranged the paperwork. Then they put me in one of the cages where they had the cots for sleeping. But they did not let us sleep at all for 48 hours. They kept coming every so often to run the scanner over the barcode of a bracelet they had put on us. They would come in shouting: “Wake up!” There were also cages with women. Those who asked to go to the bathroom were told not to be such a nuisance, and whenever they were finally taken, it was with four guards or chained, amid mockeries and humiliations. They made us eat and drink in shackles, and you had to lean way over sideways on the chair in order to sip a bit of water from the bottle. Then they would mock us for the way we walked with the chains, and since our clothes were too long on account of our short height, they would tell us “You look like clowns.” I, when they would tell me all of those insults and humiliations, all I could see were the faces of my daughters, and I would cry.

Those Left Behind : Postville , Iowa

7:30 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Family| Immigration| Iowa| Justice| children · Comments Off

19 May 2008

This is the face of what is left behind after the huge ICE raid in Postville, Iowa exactly one week ago today.

Half of the school system’s 600 students were absent Tuesday, including 90 percent of Hispanic children, because their parents were arrested or in hiding.
Spencer S. Hsu – Washington Post (18 May 2008)

What will happen to these children? Will they get put into foster care? Many of them are likely U.S. Citizens and pledge to the U.S. every morning in school. Oh the irony.
It makes the helicopter flying overhead in my immigrant neighborhood ominous.

Via / Citizen Orange

Local Coverage of Postville, Iowa ICE Raid Surprisingly Fair

2:24 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Immigration| Iowa| Media| TV · Comments Off

16 May 2008

They didn’t call them illegals. They mention the separation of families right from the get. Color me surprised by the local television coverage of the ICE raid in Iowa. Of course the woman who said that ICE raids was something “they” didn’t think about, probably wasn’t the thinking of the undocumented, immigrant community, because, trust me, raids are something that all immigrants community have been thinking and worrying about.

Via / Standing FIRM

Largest ICE Raid in Iowa Rounds Immigrants Up Like Cattle

1:26 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Immigration| Iowa| Justice · Comments Off

14 May 2008

It began on Monday, although many saw it coming before.

Workers and immigration advocates in Iowa began girding for an immigration raid last week after learning that federal authorities had leased Waterloo’s Cattle Congress fairgrounds. Federal officials declined to explain their plans last week, but advocates worried the fairgrounds would be used as a detention center. That’s what happened in December 2006, when federal agents took people apprehended in a raid at the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Marshalltown to the Camp Dodge military base in Johnston.

ICE raided the largest kosher slaughterhouse in the U.S., in their largest raid so far this year.

Federal agents swept into a kosher meat plant on Monday in Postville, Iowa, and arrested more than 300 workers.
The authorities said the workers were suspected of being in the United States illegally or of having participated in identity theft and the fraudulent use of Social Security numbers.
A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement would not say how many people had been rounded up beyond the initial 300 or whether the management and owners of the plant, AgriProcessors, would face criminal charges.
The plant has 800 to 900 people and is the country’s largest producer of meat that is glatt kosher, widely regarded as the highest standard of cleanliness.

ICE came in via a tip of a former employee inside the plant.

The affidavit said a former plant supervisor had told investigators that a methamphetamine laboratory had operated at the plant and that some employees had carried weapons to the plant. The former supervisor, the affidavit said, estimated that 80 percent of the employees were in the United States illegally.

So far no meth lab has been found or weapons and despite this being perjury, the ex-employee will likely face no charges.

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