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A month after dozens of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents surrounded a meatpacking plant in Morristown, Tennessee, and detained 97 men and women who worked there, the tight-knit rural community is still reeling, but the initial shock has seeped into a quiet pain, as families adjust to lives without work and their loved ones.
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After the raid, Postville’s economy tanked. The nearly 400 people removed overnight were followed by many who fled in fear of more ICE raids or because they had nothing left there — and with them vanished the money they had spent on rent, groceries, and laundromats. Local stores and restaurants shut down. The school came close to it. Immigrant families, but also Jewish ones who had relied on the plant for work, turned to the local church for help. The ripple effects stretched to nearby towns — like Decorah, where Postville residents would shop at the local Walmart. There were no more quinceañeras, bautismos, bodas, said Lopez, referring to the birthdays, baptisms, and wedding parties that made the town so vibrant. “We had two Mexican stores, a Guatemalan store, a Guatemalan restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, a pizzeria. … It was beautiful.”
Last month, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed an “anti-sanctuary” bill that cuts state funding to cities and counties in the state that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The bill, which followed decisions by Iowa City and Johnson County officials to limit cooperation with ICE, has reignited fears in diverse communities, like Postville, that remain deeply traumatized by the 2008 raid.
“If you actually look at where the communities that have the most immigrants are … these are really communities that have figured this stuff out,” said Matt Hildreth, political director of the immigrant rights group America’s Voice. “They don’t struggle with the national debate. There’s some tension, and I don’t want to downplay it, but largely, they go about their day, they get their job done. It’s not this hot-button issue.”
Hildreth, himself from a small, conservative town in Iowa, credits the Postville raid — which he covered at the time for Sojourners magazine — for his own political awakening. He recalls interviewing a white American woman, a veterinarian at the plant, who told him that her son had been terrified that his parents would be taken away, as he struggled to understand the raid. “All he knew was that his friend at school had his parents taken away, and this white kid thought his mom was going to be taken away,” said Hildreth, pointing to the disconnect between communities living with immigrants and “some bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., completely removed from your reality, who decides one day that ‘Oh, we’re going to pick these people up.’”
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“This raid not only destroyed families and had an incredible impact on everyone around it,” he said, “but I also feel like it’s another victory for the Trumpians, and for anyone that thinks that was the right move and that we should up the ante for the next one, which is insane.”
“How lame is it to think that another human being is below you?”
In response to the last quote, how lame is it to expect the United States to be the only country in the world that doesn't enforce immigration laws? How lame is it to expect to be able to come here illegally and never suffer any sort of repercussions for your transgressions? Furthermore, how lame is it to allow enough criminals to permeate your community that their removal adversely affects your local economy? These raids are not about thinking we are better than anyone else. These raids are about enforcing the laws which govern our nation. Laws, by the way, which every country on this planet enforces, most much more strenuously than America does. So I must say, how lame is this article?
Families have been broken up because members break the law since the dawn of time. How many criminals are you willing to give a pass just because they would be taken from their kids?
As usual for the liberal media the article neglects to make the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. Legal immigrants don't need to worry about their families being broken up.
And if those employers had hired legal residents and or US citizens then they would have to pay according to minimum wage laws thus they’d have a higher income and contribute even more to the local economy instead of sending much of it back to their home country.
Good. If you're community is full of illegals, we will find you and solve the problem for you.
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