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POSTVILLE, Iowa: Led by 43 women with electronic
tracking bracelets on their ankles, hundreds of people from around
the country marched down main street here Sunday to protest the
biggest immigration raid in US history at a kosher meat plant that
has split this tiny Iowa town asunder.
Released from jail so they can
take care of their families, the 43 women out front were among 390
mainly Guatemalan and Mexican workers arrested by federal agents May
12 at the Agriprocessors meat factory and charged with identity
theft.
It was the biggest raid on a
workplace in US history, as part of the government’s crackdown on
illegal immigration, a hot-button issue nationally three months
ahead of the US presidential election.
The demonstrators marched through
Postville’s tree-lined streets past Jewish stores and Mexican
restaurants, drowning out the shouts of about 100 anti-immigration
protesters with chants of “No more raids!”
The arrests have torn families
apart, devastated local businesses, especially those serving
Hispanics, and left what was before the raid the country’s largest
kosher meat-processing plant operating at only 50-percent capacity.
Maria Laura Gomez, a former plant
worker, has looked after her nephew for months while his mother sits
in prison.
“I see the pain in my
nephew’s eyes when he visits his mother in jail,” she said.
The protest is not only directed
against the anti-immigration movement, but also the meat plant
itself, which over the years has left a long trail of workplace
safety and environmental violations, including amputations and
spilling 40,000 gallons of turkey blood into a nearby stream.
Hundreds from the Jewish
communities of Chicago and Minneapolis drove for hours to Postville
to publicly decry the plant’s owners, who are accused of abusing
the workers.
Before the march, which snaked
its way to the main entrance of the plant, religious leaders held a
prayer vigil in English, Spanish and Hebrew.
Listening to the service on
loudspeakers with an overflow crowd on the lawn of Postville’s
Catholic church, Abbey Romanek, from Chicago, said the plant is a
black eye on her Jewish faith.
“I’m embarrassed and ashamed
at the way Agriprocessors has treated its workers,” she said. “I
don’t think its kosher meat. I think they’re pulling a farce on
the Jews of this country.”
Two supervisors at the meat plant
have been arrested, and the plant’s owners remain under
investigation.
--AFP
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