abUSed: The Postville Raid

The perversion of the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law, and due process, and the human face of immigration are revealed through the gripping personal stories of the individuals, the families and the town that survived the most brutal, most expensive and largest immigration raid in the history of the United States.

On May 12th, 2008, 389 undocumented workers were arrested, handcuffed and chained by 900 heavily armed ICE agents at Agriprocessors, Inc., the largest kosher slaughterhouse plant in the country. Agents herded the workers onto prison buses and took them to the National Cattle Congress - a fairground that the government outfitted as a human detention and processing center. There the workers went through a makeshift judicial assembly line designed to convict them of a felony and deport them. In just 4 days, nearly 300 of these workers were fast-tracked through the US legal system, convicted of criminal charges and sentenced to five months in prison followed by deportation. Individuals were left humiliated, families were torn apart and a community of great diversity was left in ruins.