July 5, 2024 The Midwest Center For Investigative Reporting
New immigration law worries many immigrants,
mixed-status families
In April, Iowa enacted a law criminalizing entering the state if someone has been deported, denied entry to the U.S. or ordered to depart. A judge temporarily blocked it going into effect, but many mixed-status families remain worried about their future.
Investigate Midwest interviewed 10 families with undocumented members, and all said they were weighing whether to leave Iowa — or the U.S. — over the new law.
Advocates said the new law could have profound effects on the state’s agriculture industry, which relies heavily on immigrant and undocumented labor.
— Mónica Cordero, Iowa reporter/Report for America corps member
'We are here with that insecurity': Mixed-status families weigh leaving Iowa
By Mónica Cordero, Investigate Midwest/Report for America
After a day’s work at an area meatpacking plant, a 55-year-old Mexican-born woman took to Waterloo, Iowa's streets Monday. Waving a banner written in Spanish that read, “We are the strength of this country,” she was protesting a new state law that could severely impact her family, she said.
The law, which a federal judge temporarily blocked recently as it is contested in court, would allow Iowa law enforcement to arrest individuals even if they have legal permission to remain in the country. While the woman herself would not be directly affected by the law, her husband could be. He’s an undocumented immigrant who was previously deported and re-entered the country.
She and hundreds of other immigrants took to the streets July 1 in Waterloo, Des Moines and Iowa City to protest the new law. Without the judge’s intervention, it would have gone into effect that day.
"We are here with that insecurity. We have considered returning to Mexico, even though it would mean truncating all our dreams for our daughter. It's a hard decision to even think about and even harder to make," the woman said in Spanish. She has spent more than half of her life in Waterloo; it is where she met her husband and where her only daughter was born. She asked Investigate Midwest not to reveal her name or employer over concerns for her family's safety.
And if immigrants leave in large numbers, the economy of this agricultural state, already in need of more labor, could be jeopardized, advocates said.
"Here in Iowa, the immigrant community plays a very important role in agriculture, construction and service sector health care," said Joe Henry, state political director of the League of United Latin American Citizens. "This would really cause chaos in a lot of different industries economically, if this law were to go into effect. It's not just the families but also the economy.”
Read more.
ICYMI: The ultimate price — how the H-2A visa program fails those it is meant to protect.
By Esther Honig and Johnathan Hettinger, for Investigate Midwest
The nation's most important agricultural visa program, the H-2A visa, is supposed to be a safe alternative to crossing the U.S. border illegally — a win for both farmworkers and farmers. In 2021, with their H-2A visas two Mexican farmworkers expected to earn $13.15 an hour picking sweet potatoes and blueberries — a fruit they’d never tasted before coming to the United States.
Instead, the men were exploited from the start. When they finally began working, they were in debt, living in a squalid trailer, and were never paid the full wages they’d come all that way for. In the end they died in a fire, the exact cause of which remains unclear.
Read more here.
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Investigate Midwest is an independent, nonprofit newsroom. Our mission is to serve the public as a watchdog over influential corporations and institutions through in-depth and data-driven investigative journalism.
