A story about Iowa

We didn't know about the big government raid last May on Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants in Postville, Iowa, when we drove through there last month. (A useful followup story is here, highlighting the critical, honorable role played by the local Catholic Church. See also this story on an intervention by a heroic legal translator.) It didn't make the news in Canada. All we knew was that we stopped on our way from Minneapolis to Dubuque in this tiny town that had a Productos Latinos store on the theory that it would be selling tacos - which was true, and they were excellent - and nobody wanted to answer my eager, ignorant questions about why all those immigrants were there, along with a large number of black-hat Orthodox Jews out enjoying the warm Sabbath evening. The people eating in the taqueria had jobs in a meat-packing plant, someone eventually explained, and they were from Texas. But not originally from Texas, surely, I asked. Texas, the nice guy behind the counter said firmly. Texas.

You could see that families had rooted themselves there - the store windows were full of christening gowns, quincenera outfits, and toys with Spanish-language packaging - and that without them this would just be one more dying corn belt community. You could tell by the stink, even a block away, that those jobs in the meat-packing plant had to be pretty unpleasant, nothing you'd want to do yourself. You couldn't see, unless you already knew, that 400 people had just been taken away by la migra.

There's nothing more to say about this that you don't already know.

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