Aftermath of US slaughterhouse raid: fear and repression grip Iowa town

With helicopters flying overhead, the agents stormed the Agriprocessors meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa, detaining all of its employees and demanding that they prove their American citizenship or legal residence in the US. In the end, 389 workers were hauled away, the bulk of them to a makeshift detention camp at the nearby Waterloo, Iowas Cattle Congress groundsan arena used for livestock shows. Women detainees were packed into county jails.

While the glare of the national media moved away from Postville shortly after the record raid, the suffering for the hundreds of workers and their families caught up in this massive act of government repression had only begun.

In what followed in this Iowa town of barely 2,300 peoplemass detentions, assembly-line trials in makeshift courts, federal agents harassing people in the streets and many hundreds of people hiding in fear of a knock on the doorthere was more than a whiff of fascism.

In the immediate aftermath of the raid, immigrant workers, including the families of those rounded up by the Department of Homeland Securitys Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, poured into St. Bridgets Catholic Church, just a few blocks away from the meatpacking plant, seeking refuge.

Some 400 men, women and childrenmany of them US citizensspent days sleeping in the pews and on the floor, afraid to return to their homes for fear that ICE snatch squads would also come for them or their family members. Local public school attendance fell to 65 percent, as immigrant families kept their children off the streets, and a number of local businesses shut their doors.

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