Immigration Raid Jars A Small Town

Washington Post ^ | 05/18/08 | Spencer S. Hsu

[BunnySlippers]

POSTVILLE, Iowa -- Antonio Escobedo ran to get his wife Monday when he saw a helicopter circling overhead and immigration agents approaching the meatpacking plant where they both work. The couple hid for hours inside the plant before obtaining refuge in the pews and hall at St. Bridget's Catholic Church, where hundreds of other Guatemalan and Mexican families gathered, hoping to avoid arrest.

"I like my job. I like my work. I like it here in Iowa," said Escobedo, 38, an illegal immigrant from Yescas, Mexico, who has raised his three children for 11 years in Postville. "Are they mad because I'm working?"

Monday's raid on the Agriprocessors plant, in which 389 immigrants were arrested and many held at a cattle exhibit hall, was the Bush administration's largest crackdown on illegal workers at a single site. It has upended this tree-lined community, which calls itself "Hometown to the World." Half of the school system's 600 students were absent Tuesday, including 90 percent of Hispanic children, because their parents were arrested or in hiding.

According to an affidavit filed by an ICE agent in conjunction with this week's arrests, 76 percent of the 968 employees on the company's payroll over the last three months of 2007 used false or suspect Social Security numbers. The affidavit cited unnamed sources who alleged that some company supervisors employed 15-year-olds, helped cash checks for workers with fake documents, and pressured workers without documents to purchase vehicles and register them in other names.

[Clemenza]

I agree with you on all points, but still believe that unions deserve the Pinkerton treatment. Leave collective bargaining to the socialists and union members to the Democrats.

[nonliberal]

After the raid in Cedar Rapids, there were Americans lining up to fill those jobs.

[Tired of Taxes]

Funny, Mexicans, the new WOPs. Without papers.

With Out Papers?

I'd always heard "wop" was an acronym for "without papers," too. The story was that "WOP" was stamped on documents at Ellis Island. But, as it turns out, there never was such a stamp used at Ellis Island, and the term probably originated from either an Italian word or a Spanish slur for Italians.