tagged w/ immigraz
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Parents and youth cope with uncertain futures after the Midwest's largest immigration crackdown.
POSTVILLE, Iowa– Jairo Chuy Melendrez, 13, played the drums. His brother Aldo, 11, played the bass. Their 14-year-old friends Jonter Gómez and Mainor Ordoñez played the 12-string guitar and accordion, respectively.
They might have been typical American youth starting their first garage band. Except in this case they played Christian music in Spanish as Grupo Sin Fronteras. They performed once a week at evangelical services, which were attended primarily by Guatemalan immigrants and held at a borrowed venue in this small Iowa town.
The boys were talented enough so that with the help of 28-year-old bandleader and vocalist Gabriel de León they put out a self-produced CD last year called Derribando Fronteras, or Tearing Down Borders.
On May 12, all of this changed. An immigration raid led to the arrest of not only De León, the bandleader, but also the church's pastor, Eddy Santos, and the boys' mothers. Two months after the raid, De León has been deported to Mexico, Santos is in prison, and the boys' mothers still wear ankle bracelets so they can be monitored by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while they await court dates for immigration charges.
Sonia Melendrez, 28, the mother of Jairo and Aldo, expects to be deported to Guatemala once she goes to court, and is trying to figure out how to send her kids back home ahead of her.
"My boys will have to leave behind their dream," she says. "That's what fills me with the most regret."
The story of Grupo Sin Fronteras is one example among many of young lives that unraveled in the aftermath of the Postville raid, in which scores of armed agents, with helicopter backup, arrested nearly 400 undocumented workers at the local Agriprocessors meatpacking plant.
"I'm really sad about it. I think about Gabriel (the bandleader) and feel really strange" that he's gone, says Jairo, a skinny teenager who was sprawled out on a couch at home, watching TV with his three siblings. "I know I'll probably never play music with him again."
In tiny Postville, the world has turned upside down for hundreds of children and teenagers who once led relatively normal lives — attending church and school, speaking two languages, playing sports.
The change came suddenly, in the course of a single day.
Many in Postville remember how teachers went from classroom to classroom at the local school the day of the raid, separating out the children of those who had been arrested so they could be taken to St. Bridget's Catholic Church. The church became the gathering place for scores of fearful immigrant families once the news spread. It was where they hid in fear of being arrested, and where they anxiously awaited news of relatives' fates. It was also where some of the roughly 40 women released on humanitarian grounds — with ankle bracelet monitoring devices — had tearful reunions with their children.
More than 300 other workers, including many mothers and fathers, would not be seen again in Postville.
"I don't know if we can really comprehend how this has affected the children," says Sister Mary McCauley of St. Bridget's Church. "I'm wondering what the long term effect of this is going to be. It has really shattered family life."
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