America First: The Legacy of an immigration raid
It’s been more than a decade since Postville, a small town in Iowa, suffered one of the largest immigration raids at a workplace in U.S. history: 389 immigrants were arrested in the biggest kosher meat packing plant in the country. America First explores the aftermath of the raid on the Postville community through the eyes of several young people who call Postville home: Jeidy, a 10-year-old Guatemalan girl whose parents were deported after the raid; Ludvin, a 22-year-old originally from Guatemala who, as a boy, remained in Postville after all of his friends were forced to leave; Bridgette, a 22-year old local Iowan; and Kani, an 18-year-old Somali man who arrived to Postville a few years ago with his father, who was offered a job at the kosher meat packing plant. As Donald Trump revives some aspects of George W. Bush’s immigration enforcement policies, the Postville experience sheds light on the impact, efficiency and repercussions of massive workplace raids.