Postville decimated by immigration raid one year ago

For flat-broke landlord Gabay Menahem, the dog and cat feces littering one of his many vacant rental units symbolizes post-immigration-raid life in Postville. The word he uses to describe the litter sounds incongruous coming from a learned member of the town's Orthodox Jewish community, but Menahem can hardly be blamed for letting slip the occasional epithet. He's lost a fortune in the year since federal agents raided kosher meatpacker Agriprocessors Inc. His 3-1/2-year-old business, GAL Investments Ltd., generated monthly revenue of $192,000 before the May 12, 2008, raid that plunged Postville into an economic recession months ahead of the rest of the nation. Now, with just 19 of his 129 rental units occupied, Menahem took in $16,000 last month–a fraction of his expenses. Like many other Postville residents, Menahem suffers the ill effects of what local clergy describe as a government-inflicted disaster comparable to the floods and tornadoes that ravaged other parts of Iowa last year. The arrests of 389 Agriprocessors workers and the tearing apart of their families, followed by criminal charges against plant supervisors, including former top executive Sholom Rubashkin, plunged the town's leading employer into bankruptcy and a shutdown that put hundreds more employees out of work. "Drive down main street, and you'll see the condition of Postville. Five businesses have closed, and more are in the process," said the Rev. Paul Ouderkirk, a leader in the Catholic Church's ministry to Postville's Latino community. Hispanic attendance at Postville's St. Bridget Catholic Church, he said, declined sharply after the raid, which led to the deportation of hundreds of mostly Guatemalan and Mexican workers. A year later, St. Bridget's Hispanic Ministry is still caring for 30 families, most of which include members awaiting court hearings, and Ouderkirk said the ministry has hired a psychiatric counselor to help church wards cope with stress caused by the raid and its aftermath. Departing laid-off workers, some embittered by their Postville experience, left many of the town's rental units in shambles. Menahem's property was trashed, he said, by transients recruited after the raid, not by the longer term Agriprocessors employees who had put down roots in the community. The loss of those productive, stable and family-oriented workers may prove to be one of the greatest downsides of the raid, Menahem and Ouderkirk say. As for GAL Investments, "The company is long gone, man. There's nothing to save," Menahem said. "A year ago it was impossible to buy a house in Postville. Now there are 228 houses for sale out of 700 total," said Menahem, who describes the town as "a sinking ship." Mayor Leigh Rekow, who was appointed in April after Robert Penrod resigned, said the city has struggled financially since the raid and the subsequent virtual shutdown of Agriprocessors, which employed more than 900 full-time workers a year ago and now has about 350 part-time workers. On June 1, the city likely will be unable to make its twice-annual $167,000 payment to the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the mechanical wastewater treatment plant built specifically to process wastes from the kosher plant. City Clerk/Administrator Darcy Radloff said the USDA has denied the city's request to defer payments for at least a year while the future of the bankrupt plant is resolved. Bankruptcy trustee Joseph Sarachek said he is confident the plant will be purchased by a responsible new owner but acknowledged that delay is one of the strategies employed by potential buyers to drive down the price. Rekow said the town's most pressing problems include the hundreds of vacant and deteriorating housing units; an anticipated decline in the value of housing stock, with a corresponding reduction in property tax receipts; and a sharp decline in receipts for the municipal water utility. Radloff said the city has assessed unpaid utility bills totaling $60,000 to Menahem's GAL Investments and another $24,000 to Nevel Properties Corp., a Rubashkin-owned company in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The town's economic plight is further illustrated in the decline of sales tax revenues since the raid. In the quarter ending Dec. 31–the last period for which data is available–the state collected $3,806,482 in sales tax from Postville businesses, down 27.3 percent from the comparable year-earlier figure of $5,238,204. Unpaid property taxes also could crimp city, county and school district budgets, Allamakee County Treasurer Lori Hesse said. Among the leading delinquents, she said, are Agriprocessors, owing $259,000, and Nevel, owing $95,000. While Postville's total population has fallen from an estimated 2,300 to fewer than 2,000, the city's Jewish community also has shrunk, said Rabbi Aron Schimmel, a 12-year Agriprocessors employee whose kosher slaughter work has been curtailed since the raid. Schimmel, who also directs the Judaic Resource Center in Postville, said of the 80 Jewish families in Postville before the raid, about 55 remain. Schimmel said most Postville Jews bear no hard feelings toward the Rubashkin family, whose practice of hiring illegal immigrants precipitated the raid. "It's illegal. Maybe you shouldn't do it, but it is how it's done in the meatpacking business. You have illegal workers all over America. If you want good workers cheap, you have to take them," he said. Schimmel said the Jewish boys' and girls' schools in Postville still have enough students to justify continued operation. The future is less certain for the yeshiva, which educates about 40 13- to 16-year-old boys, most of whom are boarders, he said. One community bright spot is that enrollment in Postville schools has declined only 3.1 percent after the raid, from 542 to 525, Superintendent Galen Reinsmoen said. "We could gain 40 to 50 students by next fall if the plant goes back to full production," he said. A level of quiet anxiety born of suffering and uncertainty grips many Postville residents, said Maryn Olson, a coordinator with the Postville Response Coalition, a group established after the raid to help its victims. Though some have said the raid was necessary to depose exploitative owners of the Agriprocessors plant, Olson said Postville would not wish a similar raid on any other community. "I don't think anyone will ever look back and say it was a good thing. This is a community that is deeply hurt and grieving," she said.