Toward a Better Life

by Peter Morton Coan

  Then the second building collapsed, and they sent us to the basement, and everything down there was dark; we were below street level. Up until then, we didn't have a chance to think about what happened outside, and then I realized what kind of tragedy it was. Then security said, “Go out! Everybody out! Everybody out!” and around one p.m., security had us leave the building, and we walked. Everybody walked home.

  Far removed from any border, the heartland of America is not necessarily thought of as a place filled with immigrants, but its face is changing. The push-pulls of immigration on a national level can be seen and felt in places like Marshalltown, Iowa. Originally from Illinois, Sister Christine is an immigrant of sorts, having spent fifteen years in Bolivia before returning to the United States. She came to Marshalltown in 1999 to become the director of the Hispanic Ministry Office. Since that time, she has watched the town transform from a sleepy Corn Belt community right out of the movie Field of Dreams to an immigrant hotbed where nearly a third of the population (and rising) are immigrants, primarily Hispanic. The American Dream may still be alive, but the voices being heard are increasingly Hispanic ones. Marshalltown's population of approximately twenty-six thousand has remained virtually unchanged since 1999; as the immigrants have come, many of them illegal, the locals have left. There is a huge black market for Social Security cards, driver's licenses, and the like.

  Sixty-two years old and fluent in Spanish, Sister Christine is a trusted figure and advisor to the Hispanic community here, who have relied on her for everything from immigration help and advice to language interpreting to friendship and moral support. While poor English, illegal status, and fear of deportation keep some in the shadows, people like Feagan provide hope, as most immigrants here live in fear of ICE. Stealth undercover raids in 1996 and 2006 at the Swift meatpacking plant, a major employer, still resonate with residents, both legal and not. “I think it would be great if everybody wore sunglasses and the colors looked the same,” Feagan said. “I think a lot of it is not just an immigration issue—it's a race issue. I really do. Because when people talk about immigration, they talk about Mexicans.”

  I've been in Marshalltown since September 1999. Since then I've seen a lot of changes: demographic changes, growth in the community and in our parish. When I first came, for example, there was one Spanish mass on Sunday in early afternoon. We now have a Saturday night mass and a Sunday morning mass, and the church is overflowing on Sunday. The parish has changed from being about 20 percent Hispanic when I came to about 65 percent Hispanic now. Most of the people come from Mexico. We have a few from Guatemala, some Salvadorans. Some people originally settled in California and then moved here. Some settled in Washington State and then came here. Some came from Nebraska. It's hard to tell among the Hispanics who's illegal or legal. They all look the same. [She laughs.]

  Originally, the Hispanics who came here were mostly single men, and now a lot of them have brought their families up and applied for legal permanent residency. A lot of those legal permanent residents recently became citizens to speed up the process of bringing up family members because otherwise the wait time is years to bring family members from Mexico.

  I'm the director of the Hispanic Ministry Office, and that's another thing that's changed. When I first came, a lot of people would ask us for help to get their telephone set up, or help them about paying a bill at a hospital, and so we would do a lot of interpreting and accompanying them on appointments. Now, if you go to the bank in town, there are Hispanic tellers, and if you go to the hospital, there are interpreters; just about any place you go now, you will find Spanish-speaking people. What I'm saying is there is an awareness that they [Hispanics] are here and so we need to serve them. Today the total population is about the same compared to ‘99, but it's changed demographically. As Hispanics have moved in, the Anglos have moved out.

  I am the Hispanic minister at the church. People come here, to me, if they don't understand their rent bill, and we have a counselor that comes two days a week, so it's like an outreach office, and a lot of people come and say, “I need work. Do you know of anybody looking to hire for housecleaning, taking care of kids?” or whatever. In the office here we do a lot of work with immigration papers for when people are applying to bring up a relative, or they need to renew their green card, or they're applying for citizenship, or they need a permission letter that says one parent is going to go with the kids down to Mexico and they need the other parent to have a notarized letter giving permission. People will come in and they'll need a recommendation letter for immigration purposes that says this person or family are registered members of the parish. There's a lot of that kind of thing. And then there's a lot of people who just come in because they need somebody to talk to—just personal issues, things that are going on in their life.

  I lived in Bolivia for fifteen years. I studied Spanish and French for ten years before I went down to Bolivia. I grew up in northwest Illinois. I came from a Catholic home, but I would say we weren't overly religious. When I came back, I was in Chicago on the South Side, working in a parish that was basically Mexican, and then a friend told me about an opening here for a Hispanic minister, and so I came. I did missionary work in Bolivia and was an immigrant there [laughs], so I have compassion.

  In Marshalltown, there are problems for the undocumented people in that they're afraid all the time that they're going to be arrested by ICE, which stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. There are two arms of immigration. There is USCIS, which is United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, which would be like when you apply for something or you become a naturalized citizen. Then you have ICE…. That's your Border Patrol and what used to be INS. ICE has no office in Marshalltown. They come from Des Moines, which is about fifty miles away, and then wherever else, because I'm sure the agents who came in December of 2006 were from a lot of different places.

  They're afraid of what's happening in other places in the country and that it's going to happen here. They're afraid that if they lose their job, how will they survive? Where will they go if the [social] climate is the same in other places? They're concerned for their kids' well-being. People here are happy to be here. They like Iowa. They like Marshalltown. We have a good school system. There's plenty of work. There's plenty of space, and I think that's what's attracted them. And it's peaceful. It's not crowded.

  The major employer is the Swift meatpacking plant—hogs, pork. And then there's Lennox Industries, which makes heating and air conditioning units. But not too long ago Lennox laid off three hundred people because they sent part of their air conditioning production to Mexico. And then we have Fisher Controls, which is now part of Emerson, although very few Hispanics work there because it's a lot more specialized, so they don't have the training or educational background to be able to fit in. Fisher makes parts for boilers and heaters. Then we have the Iowa Veterans Home, and a lot of people work there in light housekeeping. We have the Meskwaki [Bingo] Casino [Hôtel] twenty miles away.…If they don't have good papers they can't work there. The same with the Iowa Veterans Home. And the Swift plant uses E-Verify® [an online system for checking employees' eligibility], so that's why during the 2006 raid Swift was not legally at fault for employing [those] who turned out to be illegal immigrants: because they had done “everything” they were “supposed” to do to make sure that people were documented.

  By “good papers” I mean they [Hispanics] have their own Social Security number and are using their own name—that they are here legally. People [illegals, mainly] will see a roofing job going on, and they'll say, “Do you need work for the day?” and they work. Last year, there was a really bad hailstorm that happened in Eldora, which is about thirty-five miles from here, and so there was a lot of repair work, houses that needed to be re-sided and roofs that needed to be redone, so that gave work to a lot of people, plus cutting grass or landscaping or whatever they can do. In my experience, people are willing to do whatever.

  Typically,
an illegal immigrant will try to get a Social Security number that's not being used by anybody else. It might be a three-year-old child, a retired person, or maybe it's somebody who is not working who sold their Social Security number for a year. That can be done, too. So Social Security numbers are used to get a job. Have you ever seen an I-9 form? Because now everybody has to fill one out when they seek employment. You have to show proof of being in this country legally. And you can either show from List A your passport or from List B your Social Security card and driver's license or something else that has your picture on it.

  If you're an illegal, it would be really hard to get a job at Swift, but many do, of course. First of all, it would be really hard if you're Hispanic because now we have another group who've moved into Marshalltown: the Burmese. They are here as refugees. And so a lot of those people are now working at the plant. They came within this past year. I don't know how many of them there are, but their English skills are very low, and it's hard to find interpreters. Obviously, it's not anywhere near the number of Hispanics, but because they're here as refugees, that means they're under “protected status,” so Swift prefers them.

  A lot of people have come to Marshalltown because they knew somebody here. So now it's like the husband has brought up the wife and the kids [and] the brother has told his brother, “Hey, come on up. This is a really good place to be.” The interstate highways have made it easier. They have become a pipeline. We have Interstate 35, a pipeline from Texas. We have Interstate 80, which takes you over to Arizona; there's a lot of people that enter from Texas and Arizona. So the interstates have connected the dots and made places like Marshalltown more accessible. A lot of the Hispanics who were in California came here because work was getting scarce, the cost of living was too high, there's a lot of violence—so they're coming in many cases from California to Iowa. We've got a little group of people who were working in Washington State in the apple orchards and some from Nebraska and many directly up from Mexico, and a lot of them have come up legally. People hear the number twelve million and they think, “Oh my gosh, America is just crawling with these undocumented people,” but there are three hundred million who live in the country. So twelve million is a drop in the bucket, you know?

  I see immigrants in Marshalltown from Bosnia, Croatia, both legal and illegal. A lot of them come in through Canada. Some of the Bosnians have refugee status, which makes them legal. Other immigrants here are Sudanese and Somalis who have refugee status. Then there are those from El Salvador who have TPS or Temporary Protected Status, which means they can get a work permit. There was a man who had a kidney transplant twelve years ago. He's a legal permanent resident from El Salvador. He was working at the Swift plant for a long time and then he had serious breathing problems and a heart problem, so the doctor sent a letter to the plant that said he can go back to work but he can't work in the “cold” area, the meatpacking part where they freeze the meat. Well, they kept him there in the cold areas, and he ended up in the hospital two more times, and the doctors finally said he can't go back to work. Period. His health was too fragile. So I went with him to Social Security to apply for disability, and they never give it to you the first time, but they gave it to him—that's how bad he was!

  The pecking order in terms of demographics in Marshalltown is the Anglo or white US citizens, which is still the majority; next is the Hispanic population. We don't have many Bosnians around here. We used to have more Sudanese than we have now, but a lot of them have gone to Des Moines…. Before I came here in 1999, there was an influx of Laotians, and they were here for a while and then they left. After the 2006 raid, we had a huge influx of African Americans from Chicago and Minnesota. Some of them, I'm told, just came here to apply for government benefits because being a small state, it goes through a lot faster. They were here for a while and then left.

  Then there's Juan and Elizabeth. They were badly affected by the raid. Juan worked at the Swift plant for several years. Then in December 2006, there was the big raid, and he was arrested and eventually deported. It happened December 12, which is the Feast of Guadalupe, which is extremely important to the Mexican people. And so at eight o'clock in the morning, I got a phone call at home from one of the people here at the office, who said that immigration had landed at Swift. People had gone into work for their normal shift at 6:30 a.m., and everything was in operation, and then at 8 a.m. everything shut down, and people were all herded into the cafeteria. Now, Swift employs about 2,200 people, so for the first shift, figure 1,100. So they herded everybody into the cafeteria, but people ran and they hid. And some people got chemical burns because they hid where they shouldn't have hidden; some people hid in freezers; some hid up on the roof.

  I went over there. It was a cold, damp, nasty day, and there were people all lined up from the outside of the fences looking in, and, of course, there were ICE agents everywhere. Not even the city police, because supposedly the city police had not been informed this was going to happen. The day of the raid, ninety-five people were arrested from Marshalltown. They were illegal, and it was several days before anybody knew where they were because they were just taken and put in different places.

  So Juan was arrested and deported. But he couldn't stay away from his family that was up here. He had a three-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son, so he came back and got a job working in Pella, Iowa, which is forty minutes from here. One morning, ICE came to their house, and he had already gone to work, and so they asked the wife, “Where is your husband?” and she said, “I don't know,” and they said, “You do know, and we want to talk to him.” But she insisted she didn't know, and they said, “Where are your papers?” and she doesn't have any papers, but she said, “I don't have to show you my papers because you didn't come looking for me,” which is correct. And they said, “We'll be back!”

  So she was very afraid and hid for a few days with relatives, and then she got word that if her husband would turn himself in, ICE would not bring any charges against her because she, at one point in time, had used another Social Security number to work. And she had only worked for like three months, and that had been a long time ago.

  Her husband eventually did turn himself in. He was brought to trial. He was sentenced to six months in prison in California, but he ended up being there almost two years! Then he was deported to Mexico, and he was given a “permanent bar,” which means he cannot come back to the United States legally, ever! And then, with his wife, ICE did not keep its promise, and they brought charges against her for using a fraudulent Social Security number. There were actually four charges brought against her, and they brought it down to two, but she was sentenced to six months in prison, and her first concern was her children: “If I run from ICE, if I hide, and they don't find me, I'll be safe, but I'll never be able to be free with my kids.”

  So Elizabeth bit the bullet and did the six months in Danbury, Connecticut, and this is after paying a lot of money to a lawyer. I think the lawyer really let her down. Just let her down. It's a really sad story. So she was sentenced to six months in prison in Danbury, Connecticut. This is a woman who had never been on a plane before, and I helped set it up so that somebody would meet her in Chicago. She took the plane from here to Chicago, and we had to pay her airfare. ICE did not even pay for her to go to prison!

  Supposedly Danbury was a good women's prison. I mean, we have immigrant prisoners in federal prisons in Iowa, Illinois, and Nebraska, but she was sent there, and she doesn't speak English. She had never been away from her kids. So I had somebody meet her in Chicago who got her on a plane to New York. Then I had some people meet her in New York who drove her to Danbury.

  She did her six months' time, and everybody was hoping that afterward they would let her return to Iowa and work on a process to be able to stay because she had been here for many years. In the last month of her being there [Danbury] they told her that she would have to make a declaration in court, but she didn't have legal counsel, so she agreed to take “
voluntary departure.” She thought she would have time to come back to Iowa to say goodbye and then get on a plane to Mexico, but she never came back to Iowa. Elizabeth was taken from Danbury to someplace out east and from there, sent to Mexico.

  Now this is the thing. Her parents, who are elderly and they are legal residents, stayed in Marshalltown and took care of the little kids, who are now five and seven. And the parents had sold all of their property. I had gone several years ago to Mexico, and I visited these people, and they had a beautiful home because all the kids had helped to send money back, and they were very happy there, but they wanted to be here with their kids. So they moved everything up here. So when Elizabeth went back to Mexico, there's the house, but there's nothing in it! Not a thing.

  So she goes back, and there's her husband and herself. There's no work. There's nobody up here to send money back to them, and their kids are here in Marshalltown. And then the concern was how to get the kids back to Mexico so they could be with them. Well, the little boy was in second grade. He didn't want to go back to Mexico. And the little girl said she really didn't remember her dad. I mean, these are little kids! Two years is a lifetime to them. So they were living with the grandparents.

  A couple of months ago, when school got out, Elizabeth's sister and brother-in-law drove the two kids—and put as much as they could fit that belonged to Elizabeth and the kids into their vehicle—down to Mexico and left the kids there with the parents. Elizabeth's parents are still living in Marshalltown, but those kids have never lived in Mexico, so it's really weird and sad, and it shows how the system does not work. In this case, we're deporting de facto American kids! These children were born in this country; they are American citizens. They were not legally deported, but given the situation, they were.