postville, iowa | When busloads of Jews from the Midwest started arriving outside St. Bridget’s Catholic Church on July 27, and more than 350 people, some sporting yarmulkes, poured out to take part in a big immigration rally planned for the afternoon, locals noticed.
“We weren’t expecting so many Jews to show up,” Alicia Lopez said.
A Mexican native and former employee of Agriprocessors, the nation’s largest kosher meat plant, Lopez was one of nearly 400 undocumented workers arrested in a May 12 immigration raid at the factory. Her right ankle is encased in a heavy tracking device that keeps her under virtual house arrest as she awaits her trial and likely deportation.
Lopez never met a Jew in Mexico, and the impressions she developed during her seven years in the United States were not flattering. They were her bosses, the guys who didn’t give her raises, the guys she blames for not warning her and the other workers that the immigration police was on its way.
“I thought badly of them,” she said bluntly, speaking through a Spanish interpreter.
But after marching with Jews last weekend, praying with them in her church and hearing their shouts of solidarity with her plight, Lopez changed her mind.
“I could see and feel they were different,” she said. “I really appreciated them. It was like an injection of adrenaline.”
The interfaith service, march and rally represented the largest and most public demonstration of Jewish support for those affected by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid. Police estimated the crowd at more than 900.
Agriprocessors first gained national attention in 2000 with the publication of the book “Postville,” which described the tensions between the local community and the company, owned by Lubavitcher Chassids from Brooklyn.
Since then, Agriprocessors has come under fire for its slaughter methods and labor practices, as well as health and safety violations.
The company has denied wrongdoing and vehemently rejects the claim that it does not look out for its workers.
Last weekend’s events — spearheaded by the Minnesota-based Jewish Community Action and the Chicago-based Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, and supported by a number of other groups including the Jewish Labor Committee and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society — focused on the affected workers and their families as a way of generating support for the larger goal of comprehensive, national immigration reform.
“The Agriprocessors raid is the legacy of a failed immigration system,” said Gideon Aronoff, the president and CEO of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
Aronoff told the crowd that immigration reform is something “that matters” to the Jewish community.
“Instead of a national solution to a national problem, we have a mishmash of local responses, a border fence that doesn’t work and millions of dollars spent chasing down immigrant workers,” he said.
Although virtually all the workers arrested in the Postville raid are from Mexico and Guatemala, the Jews who participated in the rally say this is a very Jewish issue. Text study and discussions of immigration policy were held on the buses coming in from Minneapolis and Chicago, emphasizing the Jewish values and teachings that informed the rally’s organization.
“We’re here because we care,” said Rabbi Harold Kravitz of Adath Jeshurun Congregation in Minneapolis.
Working conditions are no better in many other industrial plants, he noted, but the fact that Agriprocessors is Jewish owned and produces kosher meat gives the case particular urgency to Jewish activists.
“We’re here as Jews because we believe kosher means we must answer to a higher authority,” Kravitz said.
The issue of caring came up repeatedly throughout the day.
Agriprocessor owners take issue with the claims that they, by contrast, don’t care.
The company has helped workers hurt by the raid, said spokesman Chaim Abrahams, providing food and subsidizing rent by allowing them to stay in Rubashkin-owned properties even when they are not up to date on payments.
No workers interviewed were aware of rent subsidies, although some said that company trucks handed out boxes of meat, chicken and sausages in their neighborhoods last week.
Before the rally, Abrahams met with leaders of the Catholic and Jewish activist groups to address their major concerns, including help for the affected workers and back pay for those arrested. Talks will continue next week, participants reported.