As a new work week began in Postville, Iowa, last November, Jeff Abbas, with his bushy gray beard and ample paunch, manned the mike at the town’s lone radio station, KPVL. After a song by Billy Bragg, Abbas delivered the latest update on Agriprocessors, the largest kosher slaughterhouse in the world and the largest employer in this town of two thousand tucked among the rolling hills just west of the Mississippi River. In May 2008, Agriprocessors had been the target of what at the time was the largest immigration raid in U.S. history, in which nearly four hundred workers were arrested. On this Monday six months later, Postville was abuzz with the news that the company had declared bankruptcy.

“Five before nine, currently fifty-five degrees on our way to an absolutely stellar day here in God’s country. I’m Jeff Abbas. We are exploring the Agriprocessors situation today all the way back as far as May, just seeking your comments and questions.”

Locals interested in learning about the fallout from the Agriprocessors raid initially had to rely on the legions of national media that parachuted into town. In Postville, there was little coverage. Sharon Drahn, the editor and only reporter at Postville’s weekly newspaper, the Postville Herald-Leader, told me that the demands of covering the town council, the schools, and the churches left her little time to report substantively on Agriprocessors, before or after the raid. The paper also has a limited base of advertisers in a town this small, which makes offending the business community risky.

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