(X-Post from Good Reads) Postville, Iowa, Is Up for Grabs
The early shift at Agri, as Postville residents call it, had been under way for several hours when dozens of agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, dressed in black flak vests, stormed the plants buildings. Workers shouted, La migra, la migra (immigration police), dropped their butcher and boning knives and fled from their jobs at the cutting and grinding machines. A group of women ran to a bathroom and locked themselves in the stalls before I.C.E. agents forced them out. A couple of men scaled Agris fence and hid in the cornfield across the street, where they remained until the next morning. Others climbed onto the roof near the smokestack of the chicken-processing building. From there, one man called a friend from his cellphone: Take care of my children, he pleaded.
Fermin Loyes Lopez, a 27-year-old father from Guatemala who had been living in Postville for five years, found his wife, Rosa Zamora Santos, who worked the same shift, cutting chicken meat off breast bones. One of their daughters, a toddler, was with a baby sitter; the other, a 5-year-old, was in kindergarten. After a quick call to the baby sitter, Lopez counseled his wife: Tell them the truth, he said, referring to the I.C.E. agents, just before he was arrested. Tell them your real name. Tell them we have children.
More at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/magazine/postville-iowa-is-up-for-grabs.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
Se also:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101635515