With chants of "end the raids" and "si se puede," or "Yes, we can" hundreds of immigration protesters marched through the streets of Postville on Sunday, bringing a national debate to an isolated corner of northeastern Iowa.
Busloads of protesters from the Twin Cities and Chicago as well as hundreds of others from around the region rallied in this city of about 2,200 to protest a federal immigration raid of the Agriprocessors plant in May.
Many residents sat on their lawns and gaped as approximately 1,000 people walked, stomped and chanted a route about a mile long. The rally started at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church, winding its way through town and pausing near the driveway of Agriprocessors.
"This is an awesome moment, a historic moment," said Sister Mary McCauley of St. Bridget’s Catholic Church in Postville. "We’re calling for reform, not raids."
The May 12 raid at Agriprocessors _ the nation’s biggest kosher meatpacking plant _ was the largest in U.S. history and resulted in 389 arrests. Most of those arrested were Guatemalan and Mexican nationals who lived in Postville and the surrounding area.
Sunday’s protesters included hundreds of Hispanics but had a diverse collection of ages, races and genders. Eldery white women marched next to young Hispanic men and Jewish men from Minneapolis and Chicago. They clutched banners and signs like one that read, "United for immigrant and worker rights."
The protesters circled the streets of Postville before returning to the center of town. They passed a much smaller group of anti-immigration protesters along the way, outshouting them during their march.
One of them was Claire Jamison, who said she’d traveled from Minneapolis to protest the protesters. She wore a hat emblazoned with a U.S. Border Patrol logo and held up a sign reading "What would Jesus do? Obey the law" as she shouted across the street.
"I’m just so fed up as an American. We have laws. Why can’t they obey our laws?" Jamison said. "I empathize with those people, but they are not victims. They should not have even been here."
Apart from a few moments of cross-shouting, Sunday’s protests remained orderly. Local police formed a perimeter around the march, separating anti-immigration protesters from marchers.
The march ended with a rally outside St. Bridget’s Church, before a heavy rain storm forced the crowd to disband.
Rabbi Harold Kravitz of the Adath Jeshurun Congregation in Minnetonka, Minn. spoke when the rally paused near the driveway of Agriprocessors, on the outskirts of town.
Shouting into a portable microphone, he said the protesters wanted to stop the criminalization of people who come to the U.S. simply to make a living.
"People have come here from Minneapolis, Wisconsin, Chicago, New York and New Jersey...because we care," said Kravitz.
As Kravitz spoke, about a half-dozen Agriprocessors workers stood watching from just inside the company’s gates.
Getzel Rubashkin, an Agriprocessors employee and a member of the family that owns it, approached reporters outside of the plant as the rally moved on. He said it was unfair to blame his family and Agriprocessors for the raid and theorized that unspecified competitors and enemies of the plant were behind the enforcement action.
"Look around," he said, after cautioning reporters that he was not speaking on behalf of the company. "There are a lot of people around here who are not necessarily antagonistic to the plant but they can benefit from these stories ... Now, some artificial positions have been created. Agriprocessors doesn’t have a position on immigration reform ... it’s a business."
The reaction from Postville residents appeared largely supportive. Cindy Moser, 53, from nearby Elkader, said her daughter and son-in-law were marching while she watched her two grandchildren.
"If they want to come and work here I say fine," Moser said. "We all saw the effect of this. My grandson, he told me, ’Grandma, they took my friends away.’ I hope this stops."
Postville resident Dave Hartley said the protests were unfortunate because they could have been avoided. But the 50-year-old said he didn’t fault people for coming to his town to make their point.
"It’s not their fault," he said of the protesters. "It just didn’t need to get to this, to a boiling point. People knew what was going on in there, in Agriprocessors and this could have been dealt with another way.
"It should have been."
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