Postville, IA – A group of Jewish boys in yarmulkes and winter coats walked past the “Taste of Mexico” restaurant on Lawler Street last week on their way home from school. Minutes later, a Somali man wearing a keffiyeh scarf around his neck passed by, perhaps on his way to the town’s makeshift mosque on Main Street.
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This improbably diverse rural town of about 2,000 people in northeastern Iowa suffered a near-fatal shock more than three years ago when a federal immigration raid scooped up 20 percent of its population in a single day. An ultra-Orthodox Lubavitcher Jewish family from Brooklyn bought the town’s defunct meatpacking plant in 1987 and attracted workers from Israel, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. The plant became the largest producer of kosher beef in the world. When the plant was raided one spring morning in May 2008, most of the workers on shift were Guatemalan and Mexican, and undocumented.
Six months later, the plant shut down abruptly. Sholom Rubashkin, the chief executive, was convicted of fraud and sent to prison. The national and local news media documented the near-demise of the town that followed, as businesses were shuttered overnight and hundreds of homes abandoned. The town shrank to nearly half its former size, as many of the illegal immigrants who were not netted in the raid left out of fear or because they couldn’t find a job.
Today, the meatpacking plant, under new ownership, uses the federal e-verify system to check workers’ immigration status. The hourly wage on the poultry line is higher than it was before the raid, but few Iowan-born locals work there. Ridding this small community of its illegal workforce, far from freeing up jobs for American-born citizens, has resulted in closed businesses and fewer opportunities. Even nearly four years later, many homes still remain empty, and taxable retail sales are about 40 percent lower than they were in 2008.
Like all federal experiments this one was on a grand scale and it messed things up on a grand scale.
Wow its starting to get in the news what the goverment did to sholam mordcha lets hope he will get helped from that
“The Forward” and PETA must be so proud of themselves!
It will take time till the town recovers
if the line has the same amount of workers it should not make a difrence to the local community business.
they might have to change who they cater too to cater to the mew work force
its coming back to haunt them they deserve what ever they get
let the whole town close down perhaps the local powers that be will pass on further up the line to state and feds what the closing of the plant actually caused tax dollar wise for the town,state and ultimatly to the federal govt
Why does the writer blame the government? All blame should be assigned to Rubashkin for paying illegals to come into the country in the first place.
Whoever created the mess, let them eat it.
Good for them! Let them swallow this big pride they had on getting rid of this “fraud” which he wasn’t convicted for at all!
This is only half the story. Its worse. There are whole towns in Guatemala that were supported by the fathers working in this plant who sent money home. Now with those fathers deported or detained, those towns were wiped out. Reduced from poverty to super poverty.
I’m no great fan of Mr. Rubaskin, but not much good came of this raid.
Thank you The “Honorable” Linda Reade for reducing millions of dollars of tax revenue, reducing jobs, and destroying a family in the process with one of the harshest sentences for lying to a bank in the history of the U.S.
I agree with #5 . Some of the townspeople in Postville were not very nice to the Yidden, and mistreated some of them. Therefore, I don’t care if Postsville’s economy suffers.
Good for the ignorant anti-Semites ho live there. I hope a natural disaster wipes the whole place off the map
If you followed the case closely, you saw CORUPTION!