World notes Postville suffering, Nobel winner tells immigrants
By TONY LEYS
Des Moines Register
November 9, 2008
Postville, Ia. — People around the world are watching what happens to Guatemalans and Mexicans caught up in last May's immigration raid here, a Nobel Peace Prize winner said Saturday.
"They are sensitive to your pain and your suffering," Rigoberta Menchu told immigrants gathered at St. Bridget's Catholic Church.
Menchu, a human-rights activist from Guatemala, won the Nobel in 1992. She is internationally known for standing up against repression of poor people in her homeland.
She said the extensive press coverage of the Postville situation has turned a spotlight on the way immigrants can be exploited by employers and unjustly treated by the government. "How many people are suffering like this in the same situations that we don't know about?" she asked.
News coverage of a raid and its aftermath could help drive changes in U.S. policy, she says.
She added that she hoped the attention would help convince Americans that their country needs to change its policies.
Hundreds of immigrants, mainly Guatemalans, took refuge in the church in the days after the raid at the nearby Agriprocessors meatpacking plant. The number of Guatemalans in Postville has dwindled to a few dozen since then. Many of those who avoided arrest have left, either to return home or to find work elsewhere in the United States.
Menchu, 49, spoke in English and Spanish, and she listened as a series of immigrants told their stories.
Pedro Arturo Lopez, 13, told her how his mother was arrested at Agriprocessors, jailed, then deported to Mexico. Pedro was at school when the raid happened.
He recalled that when he got home, his father rushed him inside, saying, "We don't want the helicopters to see you." Pedro said he and his two siblings spent the next week hiding in their basement.
Menchu listened to others recount how children used dangerous power tools in the plant; how workers spent long hours in filthy conditions; and how women were sexually harassed by supervisors.
She heard a woman in the audience decry the fact that hundreds of workers were imprisoned for five months on charges of identity theft. The woman said the immigrants did not know the false papers they bought contained Social Security numbers that actually belonged to other people.
A Guatemalan woman, Irma Lopez, asked Menchu to use her prominent voice on the Postville immigrants' behalf. Lopez asked Menchu to speak to President-elect Obama about them. "We want to work," Lopez said. "We don't like to live off of charity."
Lopez and several other women at Saturday's event were released after the raid because they had to care for children. But they are banned from working, and they must wear electronic bracelets on their ankles. The women told Menchu the devices become painfully hot when they are plugged in for up to two hours of recharging.
The bracelets allow government officials to track the women's whereabouts. The government says the devices are a humane way to deal with defendants who otherwise would be jailed.
Menchu said the bracelets are dehumanizing. "I've never seen anything like this," she told reporters later. "I've never seen people in chains this way."
She said she plans to talk to human rights activists about the practice. She also hopes to speak to Obama early next year, and she expressed optimism that he would bring changes in immigration policies.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20081109/NEWS/811090333&theme=POSTVILLE_ICE_RAID
