Postville One Year Later: Reminder of Immigrant Women's Plight

On May 12, 2008, in the rural town of Postville, Iowa, dozens of armed immigration agents descended on Agriprocessors, the largest kosher slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant in the country. Nearly 400 immigrant workers, including women and children under 18, were arrested. Nearly 300 of them were charged with aggravated identity theft and Social Security fraud; many were sent to prisons throughout the United States.

Dozens of immigrant women workers were ordered to remain in Postville without status or a means of support, and forced to wear electronic monitoring devices to ensure that they neither work nor leave. The women were required to plug themselves in to charge the monitors—which often dug into their skin, causing painful cuts and bruises—for two hours a day or risk arrest. They are dependant of the local church for sustenance and are seen as pariah because of the tracking device.

According to Leslye Orloff, director of Legal Momentum's Immigrant Women Program, the raid and its lingering effects are clearly a result of years of increasing Department of Homeland Security enforcement strategies. As anti-immigrant sentiment has grown, appropriations for enforcement and detention grew from $9 million in 2003 to $110 million in 2006. Concurrently, worksite enforcement has grown, with 4,077 administrative and 863 criminal arrests in 2007, compared to 485 administrative and 25 criminal arrests in 2002.

The Postville raid, in particular, was marked by heavy-handed enforcement. In the overwhelming majority of cases, workers were rushed through the criminal justice system with unprecedented speed, coerced by threats of long prison sentences to waive all of their legal rights in criminal and immigration proceedings. Almost 300 workers plead guilty to falsely using identity documents for employment and were sentenced to five months in federal prison following which they were deported. These immigrants were cut off from legal relief they were legally entitled to receive. Many were victims of employer perpetrated sexual assault, child labor violations and other violent crimes. DHS did not screen workers for Violence Against Women Act immigration relief or U or T visa relief for crime victims.

On August 7, 2008 Orloff led a team of forensic psychologists and lawyers to Postville, Iowa to assist colleague Sonia Parras Konrad, who is representing over 40 immigrant women victims of rape and sexual assault and immigrant children victims of child labor violations who were identified as victims during the raid. Parras Konrad, co-director of Advanced Special Immigration for Survivors Technical Assistance (ASISTA), is representing these victims in Iowa entirely pro bono. An immigration judge gave Postville's immigrant women and children victims limited time within which to file U-visa applications, but mandatory DHS inadmissibility fees of $545 per person prevented victims from accessing legal status as U-visa victims.

Legal Momentum organized a successful national campaign to exempt crime victims from visa application fees. This campaign resulted in organizations from across the country joining with members of Congress to pressure DHS to make all mandatory fees waivable for all domestic violence, trafficking, and crime victim cases. Victory came in December 2008 with the publication of U- and T-visa lawful permanent residency rules containing the fee waiver, and the passage of the Trafficking Victims Reauthorization Act, for which Legal Momentum was the lead advocate. That bill amended the law to assure that any present or future DHS costs or fees will never be mandatory for crime victim immigration cases.

Orloff and her team are working to secure new policies guaranteeing that all persons subject to DHS enforcement actions are screened for crime victim visa eligibility.

More on Legal Momentum's work to advance the personal safety and security of immigrant women here.