Well maybe it would be if there was a debate going on! Immigration is undoubtedly on many people’s minds as we head into next month’s Presidential election, but as we said before, the ‘I’ word never crosses any politicians’ lips; except maybe small town politicians like the mayor of Postville.
POSTVILLE, Iowa (CNN) — About a dozen Somali Muslims stand outside their makeshift mosque on Lawler Street, its sheet-draped windows emblazoned with the words “Sunday Mattress.” Women are covered head to toe in traditional Muslim robes.
Across the street, a couple of Latino immigrants stroll the sidewalk in front of the town’s long-standing Mexican restaurant. Just down the road, scores of ultra-Orthodox Jews walk down the street to the local synagogue. It’s not uncommon to see people from Russia, Ukraine and the tropical island nation of Palau here as well.
Welcome to ground zero of the nation’s immigration debate — the tiny town of Postville, Iowa, a rural community of 2,400 tucked into the northeast corner of a state that’s 94 percent white.
It’s a town that’s been turned “topsy turvy,” Mayor Bob Penrod says, since hundreds of heavily armed federal immigration agents swooped in a few months ago and raided its main employer, Agriprocessors, the nation’s largest kosher meatpacking plant.
“It makes a person feel kind of angry,” Penrod says. “It’s been nothing but a freaky nightmare since May.”
This is a story from CNN so it dances around what concerns the mayor, tensions building, but never really explains what the tension is (crime is up though). Can’t say it CNN, a little too much multiculturalism?
The story does take a whack at ICE for the massive raid last spring that netted hundreds of illegal aliens working at the plant. CNN then blames ICE for problems in the town, and ICE defends itself with this statement:
“It appears, based on 2007 fourth-quarter payroll reports, that approximately 76 percent of the 968 employees of Agriprocessors were using false or fraudulent Social Security numbers in connection with their employment,” ICE alleges in its affidavit.
I think those 735 people whose identities had been stolen might actually side with ICE instead of CNN!
We have written about Postville on a number of occasions, here.