Editorials: Changing orders

As rumors swirled last week that immigration agents would raid Storm Lake meatpacking plants, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins got on the horn to President Trump to call off the dogs. “She told the president that farm groups had been warning her that their employees would stop showing up to work out of fear, potentially crippling the agricultural industry,” The New York Times reported.

The next day, on Thursday, June 12, Trump posted on Truth Social that immigrants working in farming and hospitality are “very good, longtime workers. Change is coming.” Later that day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement put a hold on worksite enforcement in meatpacking plants and hotels.

Trump’s main campaign plank was to deport all undocumented immigrants — at least 10 million. To do that, ICE would have to raid dairy barns, kill floors and hoghouses. The consolidated food industry would starve for labor. It would wreak havoc on markets. When the Waterloo Tyson plant was shut down for several days, and then Storm Lake’s pork plant was idled briefly during the pandemic, meat prices shot up 50%. Trump ordered workers into the meatpacking plants at the request of Governors Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Kristi Noem of South Dakota and Pete Ricketts of Nebraska.

Following his second inauguration, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, during a visit to Storm Lake told us that immigrants here had nothing to fear. The administration was just deporting criminal aliens. That was confusing. Latinos here remained in high anxiety despite no raids on food processors.

The lie was exposed when ICE swept up 74 workers at Glenn Valley Foods in Omaha on June 10, about half the workers of the independent meat processor. The owner said he thought he had been following all the rules. Anxiety morphed to panic. The ag secretary was compelled to make the call. Trump complied.  Undocumented workers may cut meat — for now. The point has been made: Live in fear if you are undocumented. Even if you have papers, you may be deported to your country of birth — to Cuba or Venezuela, or Haiti. It has already happened.

They believe that fear makes workers compliant. It does. It also can make them resentful, or absent, which makes the system less efficient. The pallor spreads over communities when neighbors are afraid to be seen.

Trump can be persuaded either way. So it would appear. It’s his form of caginess. You just never know if you could be snatched and shipped out with nobody knowing where you went or how. That has happened, too. Legal residents understand that everything could change tomorrow. Which it did.

ICE reversed earlier instructions by Monday, The Washington Post reported. Agents were told to continue arresting and deporting immigrants in the ag and hospitality sectors. Next week the supposed orders might change again.

Tyson workers with legal papers are terrified. They know what happened in Omaha and Los Angeles. Administration officials indicated that they intend to first concentrate on so-called “sanctuary cities” like Chicago. Top officials are explicitly stating that they are targeting places controlled by Democratic mayors and governors. Iowa has no sanctuary cities. It does have meatpacking plants and dairies with tens of thousands of immigrant workers.

“You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

Trump easily won Buena Vista and Crawford counties, each with big immigrant populations. Voters here support stridently anti-immigrant positions. The MAGA base wants them gone from Storm Lake and Denison. We have lived amid that hypocrisy the past 30 years. Northwest Iowa would just as soon ship them all, innocents or not, to a prison in El Salvador or wherever, but in the meantime we need cheap labor for jobs the Anglos shun. Buena Vista County strongly supports this sort of chaos. Ernst gives us a knowing wink. Voters are comfortable swallowing lies big and small so long as they believe they are in the dominant position. This is not how to build a community or a nation. It will be our undoing.

Just say no to cancer

Democrats in Iowa need something they can grab onto for Iowa to have any hope of having a healthy two-party system. A simple message. Water scientist Chris Jones, who was run off from the University of Iowa for telling the truth about pollution, offered the message if any Democrat would latch on:

“Just say no to cancer.”

Iowa has the second-highest cancer incidence rate in the nation, just behind Kentucky. Ours is the only state with a rising rate.

Why? Nobody seems to know. Smoking? Too much beer? Gov. Kim Reynolds thinks so. Could be. Might be the radon in the basement. We grill too much meat. We sit too much and eat some more in February. We all know that.

Then there is the 2,000-pound raging bull in the room: We live in a cloud of herbicide, fungicide, methane, sulfur and ammonia induced by industrial food production.

The governor’s cancer moonshot was to throw $1 million at the question. It’s enough to look like you are curious, but not nosy.

The fact that Iowa has no clear idea why cancer eats away at us, especially in rural Northwest Iowa with terribly high prostate and breast cancer rates, is telling. We don’t really want to know. It could upset our economy.

We do not hear much about it from the minority party. They, too, are afraid of looking under the rock.

People are showing up at hearings around the state to tell their stories to the Iowa Cancer Registry and the Iowa Farmers Union. Good crowds showed up at Emmetsburg and Spencer to learn more.

There is a correlation between cancer, ag chemicals, and polluted air and water. The industrialization and consolidation of agriculture quickened from 1970 to 1990. Dr. James Merchant, retired dean of the University of Iowa College of Public Health, suggests that it makes sense because it takes decades for cancers to reveal themselves.

We are just coming to learn of the maladies springing from nitrate in the water, including cancers and neurological disorders. Our rivers are loaded.

Interesting that the only candidates we hear talking much about it are Ryan Melton of Webster City and JD Scholten of Sioux City, the former running for Fourth District Congress and the latter running for US Senate. Others mention it, they concentrate on it. Interesting that they are both from the Fourth, where the cancer rates are highest. They also are among the few who can see the linkages between the way we make our livings and our lives.

Iowans want clean water and air. They are not sure Democratic leaders are on board with that seemingly unachievable proposition. Just have another Busch Light and breathe deeply. The corporations that fund campaigns don’t necessarily care. Their object is to shape state policy that delivers maximum returns to shareholders. That is why we gag on the fumes and drink the poison: We are feeding the world. Secret: We can feed the world without killing ourselves. And we can make money at it. That scares people who feed off the corporate political donations.

So long as they cower, they lose. All Iowa loses without competing political parties. If we can’t discuss these issues at some depth with honesty, then Republican Sen. Ernst is right. We are going to die as some sort of mercantile ritual sacrifice. It’s in the water we drink and the air we breathe.

Gov. Reynolds is not running for re-election, and voters don’t have an idea what Democrats stand for. Just say no to cancer is a sharp place to start if the money will allow.