Postville

[CornField]

For those interested in the Postville/Agriprocessors happenings, there is a timeline posted on DailyKos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/25/193320/32

If you have an account there and find the info useful, you might want to recommend the diary.

[AlphaCentauri]

1. Don't miss The Children of Iowa ICE Raids

POSTVILLE, Iowa – Jairo Chuy Melendrez, 13, played the drums. His brother Aldo, 11, played the bass. Their 14-year-old friends Jonter Gómez and Mainor Ordoñez played the 12-string guitar and accordion, respectively.

They might have been typical American youth starting their first garage band. Except in this case they played Christian music in Spanish as Grupo Sin Fronteras. They performed once a week at evangelical services, which were attended primarily by Guatemalan immigrants and held at a borrowed venue in this small Iowa town.
The boys were talented enough so that with the help of 28-year-old bandleader and vocalist Gabriel de León they put out a self-produced CD last year called "Derribando Fronteras," or "Tearing Down Borders."

On May 12, all of this changed. An immigration raid led to the arrest of not only De León, the bandleader, but also the church's pastor, Eddy Santos, and the boys' mothers. Two months after the raid, De León has been deported to Mexico, Santos is in prison, and the boys' mothers still wear ankle bracelets so they can be monitored by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while they await court dates for immigration charges.

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=b3562e0069bc618cd178f8fb06c8473c

[CornField]

2. The PR person quoted in that article...

... was the one found to be impersonating a grassroots Jewish organization (Uri L'Tzedek) on my blog and the rabbi head of another Jewish social justice network on other blogs.

http://iowaindependent.com/2595/misconduct-by-agriprocessors-pr-firm-has-rabbi-considering-legal-options

Trade magazine PR week also picked up on what had happened:
http://www.prweekus.com/5W-Orthodox-Jewish-group-at-odds-over-statement/article/112777/

Weeks later the blogs where the impersonations happened received a statement that we were supposed to take as an apology:
http://www.essentialestrogen.com/2008/08/5wpr_busted_for_impersonating.html