Weeds in the Wild: Postville

Explain It to Me

Vox Media Podcast Network

Education, Politics, News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 7.9K Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2017

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It was the biggest workplace immigration raid the U.S. had seen to date. 389 workers, almost all of them Hispanic, were detained at a kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa on May 12, 2008.On this episode of Weeds in the Wild, we look at the effects that this raid had across the state of Iowa, and then take a step back to understand how our immigration policies made this kind of raid possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey guys, it's Liz Shelton's and you are listening to another episode of Weeds in the Wild.
0:05.8	Our spin-off podcast where we talk about the policy decisions that get made at all different
0:10.7	level of government and what kind of impact they have on regular people's lives.
0:15.3	Today our producer, Birdfinkerton, has a story about a topic that's been in the news a ton
0:20.2	immigration and what our policies around immigration look like and what they've looked like
0:25.1	in the past.
0:26.1	Hope you enjoy.
0:31.0	I was 13 I believe at the time of the raid.
0:37.2	This is Pedro Lopez Vega.
0:39.8	And I mean like 13 year old Pedro is so naive at this age like there's a lot of things
0:45.8	that I don't understand.
0:47.9	Immigration laws or anything that 13 year old Pedro was just like in class and as we were
0:56.7	going into the class we've noticed that there was this like helicopter, a black helicopter
1:03.6	that was just roaming around the town.
1:06.6	Everybody's like what is it?
1:08.6	Who is it?
1:09.6	You know what's going on?
1:10.6	And I thought if it is immigration I have my mom working.
1:19.6	It was just I couldn't really start to comprehend not having my mom when I got home.
1:32.9	And then they they they definitely confirmed it.
1:36.8	It was it was immigration and yeah that moment I just remember sinking into my desk and
1:46.8	just just crying.
	...

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