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Arrested Iowa Meat Packers Live in Legal Limbo

By Susan Elan, WeNews correspondent
Thursday, December 17, 2009

POSTVILLE, Iowa (WOMENSENEWS)--At the age of 14, Quendi Garcia left her village in Mexico and crossed into the United States to begin her working life at Agriprocessors, a Kosher meat processing plant in northeast Iowa.

For the next nine years, Garcia worked 10-hour days, six days a week, cutting up thousands of chickens at the plant, one of the largest Kosher processing facilities in the United States, until a massive, military-style immigration raid on May 12, 2008.

Since her arrest for illegally entering the country, Garcia and her two U.S.- born daughters have depended on St. Bridget’s Roman Catholic Church and its Hispanic Ministry Fund to pay for their rent, food, heating and medical bills. Garcia must wear the monitoring device 24 hours a day. She is not allowed to work or leave the state. But she is free to move about in Postville.

St. Bridget’s has helped the families and underage workers who had no place else to turn after the raid, said Father Paul Ouderkirk, pastor at the church.

Garcia and many others remain in legal limbo as the Department of Homeland Security decides whether they qualify for legal residence or will be deported.

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