Stories

Anyone driving on Lawler Street in downtown Postville Sunday might have found it difficult to find a common thread between the two groups shouting phrases about immigration from opposite sides of the street. Yet, members of the immigration debate who hold opposing viewpoints on many of the difficult nuances of the debate do hold common ground: Employers should not be given a free pass.

Answering media inquiries and consulting with an attorney wasn’t exactly how Rabbi Morris Allen wanted to spend his vacation. When he learned, however, that someone associated with a New York-based public relations firm hired by Agriprocessors was impersonating him online, he knew his vacation plans were subject to change.

A grassroots Jewish social justice organization that called for a consumer boycott of all products manufactured under the Rubashkin label in May announced this morning that it no longer supports such restrictions.
While citing approval for the success of the six-week boycott, Uri L’Tzedek founder and co-director Shmuly Yanklowitz stated that the group remains “deeply committed [...]

A Third Supervisor at Postville Plant Remains At Large
While two supervisors from Agriprocessors, a kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, were arrested this week in connection with a May 12 immigration raid at the plant and appeared in federal court, a third remains on the run.
As originally reported by Iowa Independent, Hosam Amara is believed to [...]

People in the northeastern Iowa town of Postville have spent the past two decades learning how to thrive despite a wealth of differences. Between the town’s longtime residents, the influx of Hasidic Jews who arrived in the late 1980s to operate a kosher slaughterhouse, and the recently arrived Central American and Mexican migrants, the town [...]

More than two weeks have passed since the federal government launched an immigration raid — the largest single-site raid in American history — against Agriprocessors in Postville, yet many Iowans and plant employees continue to point to documents filed in the lead-up to the raid, as well as to personal stories following it, and wonder [...]

Social Security Administration Compliance Letters Ceased After 2006
The politically connected meatpacking company where almost 400 undocumented workers were arrested earlier this month ignored repeated government warnings about the use of false identification papers amongst its employees, according to a federal immigration investigator.