Destroying America with Lethal Force against Immigrant and Indigenous people

INTERCEPT reports doc. ICE raid Postville, Iowa, USA, May 12, 2008

It was “the same as the Jewish people must have felt under Nazi Germany” [and a] decade later … the Donald J. Trump administration “accelerates similar immigration operations at the border and around the country….” 

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ack then, in 2008, Postville fell victim to what was, at the time, the largest ICE raid ever:

a “full-scale paramilitary operation” with helicopters circling overhead for hours, hundreds of armed agents swarming the streets, driving their vehicles after people who tried to escape, chasing people into fields, barging into their homes; storming the meatpacking plant, threatening to shoot anyone who moved, beating those who tried to hide.

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ack in the day, Postville’s “first wave of immigrants” had come from Germany. Hasidic Jews arriving from New York in 1987 “bought the town’s meatpacking business and turned it into the largest kosher plant in the country….

“Then came Russians, Mexicans, and Eastern Europeans, followed by Central Americans, mostly from Guatemala, all to work at the plant — a tiring, thankless job few others were willing to do.”

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ut the raid of 2008 destroyed nearly the whole town. Millions in lost revenue: the town’s economy destroyed, people disappeared and others driven to beg for “charity,” businesses closed, revenue lost from rent, groceries, and laundries.

Federal force turned “a vibrant community into a traumatized ghost town [not unlike traumatized Iraq and Iraqis and Afghanistan and Afghans under US invasion and occupation], and “a symbol of hard-line immigration policies.”

Proponents of draconian immigration restrictions” claiming to desire “America first” — “should come to terms with the fact that Postville is America. And to oppose America’s diversity is to fight “a war that’s already lost.”

The economy of Postville today “has mostly recovered …thanks to the influx of new immigrants and refugees.”

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merica, or rather leaders and public officials of the United States of America, should rethink the nation’s character of force: the first instrument used in addressing issues and solving problems. 

Force never properly addresses issues nor solves problems. Force always makes matters worse; characteristically force in the first instance justifies more force in an endless cycle of chronic violence.  

Sources

Intercept “Film: ‘How a Brutal Immigration Raid Devastated an American Small Town — and How It Bounced Back’” Alice Speri, July  14, 2018,  in partnership with Univision Noticias https://theintercept.com/2018/07/14/immigration-raid-ice-postville-iowa/?utm_source=The+Intercept+Newsletter&utm_campaign=1bafb7c611-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_07_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e00a5122d3-1bafb7c611-132123141

Documentary “America First” https://www.univision.com/especiales/noticias/2018/documental-redada-postville-arrestos-en-agriprocessors/

 

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