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[Editor’s note: This story was originally published in The Gazette’s Tuesday, May 13, 2008 edition.]

A Homeland Security bus leaves the Agriprocessors Inc. meatpacking plant in Postville after it was raided.Violeta Aleman of Postville stands outside the Agriprocessors, Inc. meatpacking plant in Postville with her husband Ernesto Romero during a raid on the plant. Aleman is a U.S. citizen and a quality assurance auditor at the plant . She was waiting to see if the women she works with would be released. (The Gazette)

POSTVILLE — “This is a very sad day in Postville,” Sister Mary McCauley said, as tearful families gathered at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church on Monday. “We don’t know if they’re ever going to return.”

McCauley had just called the parish priest, who was in a meeting in Dubuque, to summon him home.

“I think they need to see a priest with a collar,” she said. “They’re just hearing that their husbands have been taken. They’re engulfed in tears.”

As of 4 p.m., more than 100 people — children, moms, dads and others — had gathered at St. Bridget’s to take account of who was still around and who was gone. Hands were raised — or not — as names were called. Two American Red Cross members stood outside, ready to provide cots and blankets if needed.

Jesus Martinez, 30, of Postville, was keeping tabs on his two children, ages 3 and 6.

He said he worked at the Agriprocessors plant but had been fired, as had about 200 other people who’d worked with chickens.

His wife, Lesvia Escamilla, 26, was working at the plant on Monday, in the kitchen with sausage. She is not a documented worker, he said.

She apparently tried calling him around the time of the raid, but there was so much noise, he couldn’t hear what she was saying.

“I’m worried because I don’t know anything about my wife,” Martinez, who speaks Spanish, told The Gazette. “She’s six months pregnant, and she hasn’t called. If she is scared, she could lose the baby. The only hope I have is that she’s pregnant, and she has kids here. So I hope they’ll set her free.”

He said he and his family moved to Postville from Mexico in 2000. He does not want to return.

“I want my children to study here,” he said. “I don’t want to go back to a place where there’s no work.”

In downtown Postville, Candy Seibert, owner of an ice cream shop and laundromat, said businesses in Postville are already struggling.

“If they took all the people that they say they took, they literally killed this town,” she said. “It really sucks for the kids and the families. There’s got to be a better solution.”

“No one else will do that job,” she said.

At the Postville schools, Superintendent David Strudthoff school officials were still caring for students from immigrant families after the close of school, keeping them in the school auditorium until they knew they had someone at home.

He said he’d received a fax earlier in the day from Marshalltown school officials, who’d been through a similar large-scale raid at the Swift plant there in December 2006.

Students were kept inside for recess so teachers could keep tabs on them. Elementary students were told buses were not running and that their parents or other relatives would pick them up. High school students were allowed to go home and see who was there, then return for younger siblings.

“Everybody will have somewhere to go,” he said.

Julian Galicia of Postville emerged from the school with his arm around his son, who was crying.

Galicia works in Waterloo. Earlier in the day, he said, a relative called him, saying his wife, Lesvia Escamilla, 26, had been detained.

Galicia drove back to Postville. First, he went to the plant to see his wife but was turned away. Then he went to the school to pick up his son, saying he was worried immigration agents would take away the boy.

Galicia said both his wife and son are in the process of becoming U.S. residents.

“I am going to try to get her out,” Galicia said, walking away from the school.

A group of middle school girls stood outside after school, saying they’d obtained 82 signatures on a petition that said, “You can’t take our friends and family away.”

 

“Our whole town just got humiliated,” said Alyssa Meltzer, 14, an eighth grader.

 

Adam Belz of The Gazette contributed to this story.

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