Immigration raid pulls apart Iowa community

POSTVILLE, Iowa -- There is a small-town stillness here, neat houses and kids riding bicycles down quiet, leafy streets. But in the Guatemalan bakery, in church pews, at the meatpacking plant and the kosher deli, the strained voices almost always dwell on the raid that changed everything.

The stillness is not serenity. It's shock.

Scores of heavily armed federal agents last month stormed into Agriprocessors, which produces up to 70 percent of all kosher meat in America. The feds seized almost half of the plant's 900 workers in the largest single roundup of illegal immigrants to date, charging about 300 of them with identity theft and using stolen Social Security cards.

Some of those workers have since sued the company, alleging abuse, fraud and sexual coercion.

Postville, which once sold T-shirts boasting of the peaceful coexistence of its many cultures, has been left "absolutely shattered," said the Rev. Paul Ouderkirk of the town's St. Bridget's Catholic Church.

The impact of the raid is spreading from northern Iowa across the country, provoking debate among American Jews about whether it's time to reassess how kosher food is produced.

"Our reputation is at stake," said Rabbi Morris Allen of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, Minn. "It was embarrassing for us to hear what was being done in order to process kosher food."

The Rubashkin family, widely credited with inventing the modern kosher processing plant, opened Agriprocessors in 1987, cutting costs by "bringing the butcher to the livestock" in Iowa.

Abe Bistritzky, a Rubashkin family friend and spokesman, said the illegal workers used fake documents, and the company followed the law in verifying paperwork. Most of the workers were happy to have the jobs and were paid and treated fairly, he added.

He said the Rubashkins built a Jewish community and gave charity to the greater community.

"They're not prejudiced. They'll hire any kind of person, anyone who will walk through the door," Bistritzky said. "What happened was when (Jews) came to town, they looked at us like we're Martians. ... They didn't understand the black coats, the white shirts, the beards, the black hats, and they needed to learn about us."

The sight of Hasidic Jews wandering the streets of a small town in Iowa initially seemed quaint. But the insular nature of their Lubavitch sect created distrust in the community, exacerbated when the Rubashkins started importing workers of many nationalities, especially Hispanics, as their plant expanded.

In 2000, Stephen Bloom wrote a book, "Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America," detailing the community's conflicts and compromises since the arrival of Agriprocessors. He clearly indicated many of its workers were illegal. Ouderkirk now calls the book "prophetic."

In recent years, there were problems with Agriprocessors in Iowa and elsewhere: pollution violations, fights with labor unions trying to organize, OSHA violations and charges of animal abuse by PETA. This year, the Iowa Division of Labor Services fined the company $182,000 for 39 health violations.

The federal raid this spring resulted from an informant inside the plant who reported witnessing plant managers hire and help workers with fake identity papers. Up to 76 percent of workers did not have correct Social Security numbers, according to the search warrant. The informant also reported seeing managers abuse workers, including hitting one with a meat hook. One manager also ran a scam in which illegal workers were coerced into buying cars from him, the warrant said.

Some female employees also have alleged they were sexually coerced by managers, according to St. Bridget's Sister Mary McCauley.

Federal officials have declined to comment on the case beyond the details disclosed in their warrant.

"Workers openly say they were advised by the plant on how to get false documents," Ouderkirk said. "Now if the government does not take action on that and charge the owners, then this was strictly a raid to threaten and terrorize people."

The situation at Agriprocessors reveals "a lack of respect of human dignity of people other than you," Ouderkirk said.

Bistritzky dismisses most of the worst accusations as fabrications. But maybe, he said, the Rubashkins should have done a better job interacting with the greater community.

Allen led a delegation of Twin Cities rabbis to Postville in 2006. Workers told story after story of long hours, unsafe conditions and wages as low as $5 an hour. They told him many of the same things now in court documents.

"They appeared to me to do everything possible to maximize the bottom line at the expense of human dignity," Allen said of the plant owners.

Allen is now leading a national movement to create a certification program called Hekhsher Tzedek, much like fair trade agreements, which would ensure not only that kosher meat is prepared properly, but also that workers are treated fairly.

(E-mail Jon Tevlin at jtevlin(at)startribune.com)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)