Warfare Supposedly to Bring Democracy Abroad,
Brutalizes Government at Home

by
William Krehm

There is no need to cross a “t” or insert a comma in the summary of a touching article in The New York Times (12/07, “Immigrants Find Solace After Storm of Arrests” by Samuel G. Freedman): “Postville, Iowa - Back in 2002, before all the trouble, the Rev. Paul Ouderkirk retired from St. Bridgets Roman Catholic Church here, his last station in 43 years of ministry. He built a home 35 miles away along the Mississippi, and he indulged a passion for family history, tracing an ancestor who had arrived in New Amsterdam with the Dutch East India Company.

“Once a month or so, Father Ouderkirk drove back to St. Bridgets to officiate at a wedding or baptize a baby. He savored these rituals. proof that the Hispanic immigrants who had arrived over the past decade to work in Postvilles kosher-meat plant were setting down roots.

“Then came the morning of May 12, when both satisfaction and retirement ended for the 75-year-old priest. Federal immigration agents raided the Agriprocssor factory, arresting nearly 400 workers men, for being in the United States illegally. Within minutes of the raid, with surveillance helicopters buzzing about the leafy streets, the wives and children of Mexican and Guatemalan families began trickling into St. Bridgets Church, the safest place they knew.

“It was about that time, with several dozen cowering people inside the church, when Sister Mary McCauley, the pastor administrator at St. Bridgets, found out that Father Ouderkirk was attending a ceremony for diocesan priests nearly two hours away in Dubuque. Unable to reach him directly, she left a simple, urgent message: We need to see a collar here.

“By the time Father Ouderkirk extricated himself and reached Postville in the evening, nearly 400 families, some of them not even Catholic, filled the rotunda and social hall of St. Bridgets. They occupied every pew, every aisle, every folding chair, every inch of floor. Children clutched mothers. One girl shook uncontrollably.

“A few volunteers from the old Postville descendants of the Irish and Norwegian immigrants who settled here more than a century ago, set out food. Others took turns standing watch at the church door, as if the sight of an Anglo might somehow dissuade the feared Migra, as the immigrants call Immigration and Customs Enforcement, from invading their sanctuary.

“Already members of the church staff and a Spanish teacher from as nearby college were compiling the names of the detained workers. Father Ouderkirk conducted his own version of a census in this predominantly Hispanic parish. Gone were all but two members of the choir he had assembled over the years. Gone were all but one of the altar-servers. Gone were the husbands from the weddings he had performed, and gone were the fathers of the children he had baptized.

“As for the mothers, many of them also worked at Agriprocessors and had been arrested. In a putative show of compassion, federal authorities released them after putting an electronic homing device on each womans ankle to monitor her whereabouts. These mothers were, in the new lexicon of Postville, las personas con brazalete, the people with a bracelet.

“During his earlier tenure at parishes in North Texas and Marshalltown, Iowa, Father Ourderkirk had experience immigration raids twice, but never on this scale. By the second day, he had moved back into his bedroom in the rectory.

“Its like God saying, “I gave you a little practice, because this is the worst,” Father Ouderkirk said in an interview late last month at St. Bridgets. This has happened after 10 years of stable living. These people were in school. They were achieving. It has ripped the heart out of the community. Probably every child I baptized has been affected.

“The only redemptive thing that can be said, perhaps, is that in the crisis of Postville - with nearly 400 immigrants imprisoned and facing deportation, with 40 mothers under house arrest, awaiting their own court dates, with families that had two workers now forced to survive on handouts from a food pantry - the beacon of the Roman Catholic Church to immigrants has rarely shone more brilliantly.

“I came to the church because I feel safe here, said Irma Lopez, mother of a 2-year-old daughter, who was arrested along with her husband, Marcelo, after they had worked at Agriprocessors for six years.

“At a practical level, Father Ouderkirk has hired four temporary staff members to help track the court cases and distribute food and financial aid to the affected families. Along with other religious leaders around Iowa, he had been preparing for a march of immigrants rights. St. Bridgets parish, which has about 350 members, is spending $500,000 in the relief effort, he said.

“One month after the raid, St. Bridgets held a Mass in remembrance of the detainees. The name of every one was recited from the altar, and after every 20 names, a candle was lighted, usually by a persona con brazalete. The candles, half-burned, remain in the nave, beneath a wood carving of the Virgin Mother, each one an offering for a miracle.

“I pray to God for the opportunity to stay in this country so my daughter can be educated here, Mrs. Lopez said. That was my dream. Judgment of a different sort, though has been visited on Father Ouderkirk and his aides. One anonymous phone message warned him. What youre doing is against the law. Harboring criminals. Sister Mary received an unsigned letter stating. May you rot in hell.

“It is infuriating for Father Ouderkirk and his staff to hear from such nativists. St. Bridgets Spanish-speaking lay pastor, Paul Real, has forebears who settled what is now New Mexico in the 1500s. Like Sister Mary says, Once youve cried for two straight weeks, you dont have any more tears. But it doesnt mean you stopped feeling.”