Iowa's new immigration law will do more harm than good. Just look at Postville.

I witnessed the devastation that our broken immigration system can inflict on communities following the workplace raid that took place in Postville, Iowa, in 2008.

Part of a coalition of different faith, immigrant, and ally rights groups from Minnesota and Wisconsin, we took clothing, food, and money to the migrant families that had their lives upended after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained 389 undocumented workers, ultimately deporting 287.  We were responding to the largest workplace immigration enforcement action in US history, that is, until 680 people were arrested in chicken processing plants in Mississippi in 2019.

Now, Iowa is again receiving national attention in our country’s ongoing immigration crisis.  This time, the state has joined Florida and Texas by allowing its own law enforcement officials to arrest undocumented migrants and help federal agents deport them.

Far from celebrating this legislation, we should recognize how such heavy-handed approaches are not only cruel, but ultimately ineffective. Moreover, as the Postville raid and years since make clear, our lawmakers instead should make immigration policy more flexible to account for the unpredictable nature of world politics.

Fifteen years ago, ICE agents raided the Agriprocessors processing plant in Postville, finding that the company had not only been hiring people without legal authorization to work in the United States, but also children. The raid was part of President George W. Bush's Operation Endgame, which was a 10-year plan created to coordinate a nationwide effort to detain and deport every person who was within the US without legal authorization.

In Postville, adults were arrested, leaving children at school or with care providers, waiting for their parents.  Families were traumatized, as businesses that catered to the migrant community closed, sending ripple effects through the area economy.  Postville still reels from what happened, with Agriprocessors (now known as Agri Star) changing hands and struggling to stay afloat, taking years to reconstitute its workforce.

Iowa's new law could have the same results. Even though it is not targeting employers, the law sanctions police to arrest undocumented migrants and collaborate with federal agents to deport them. This is particularly an issue because undocumented people do not have driver's licenses, unless states pass special legislation. As such, police could stop and detain undocumented workers when going to work or buying groceries.

But we should note how, in the 15 years since Postville was caught up in Operation Endgame, immigration remains a serious problem and the causes that drive people to the US have multiplied.

Since 2008, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans have swelled the ranks of those crossing into the US, fleeing political persecution and poverty. Cubans have joined them, as President Barack Obama ended the "wet foot, dry foot policy" that for decades had assured legal status for anyone who could reach US shores. Most recently, it appears that Haitians will also try coming to the US to escape gang violence. Meanwhile, there are nearly 11 million undocumented people who came in the 1990s and 2000s, principally from Mexico. Reasons for this latter group’s exodus include the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, which drove Mexican farmers out of business because they failed to compete with cheap US exports.

Recognizing the diverse causes that drive people abroad reveals why a heavy handed, “arrest and deport” approach to immigration policy should be rejected in favor of something more flexible.

Instead, federal immigration policy should look something like the farm bill, which is debated and passed every five years.

Rather than forcing lawmakers into an “all or nothing scenario” where they have to “solve” our country’s immigration crisis with one law, which our hyper-polarized political climate makes virtually impossible, the topic should come up for debate every five years or so. And, like the farm bill, which has various titles, or sections, that deal with items such as nutrition, commodity prices, and conservation, a parallel bill for immigration would feature sections on worker visas, border security, refugees, and interior enforcement priorities, for example.

Let Postville serve as an example of what not to do. Instead of prioritizing arresting and deporting people, flexible immigration policy would allow our lawmakers to account for unpredictable changes in world politics. While the US cannot fix the world's problems, we can make our policies more realistic and less cruel.

Anthony Pahnke is the vice president of the Family Farm Defenders and an associate professor of international relations at San Francisco State University. He can be reached at anthonypahnke@sfsu.edu.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Immigration law will do more harm than good; look at Postville