Local Police Involvement in the Postville Raids?

After my commentary on the Postville raids, I received some useful reactions (and some not so useful personal attacks) to its content. One issue specifically is the accuracy of the media’s reporting of local police involvement in the raids.  Local sources take issue with this characterization and are suggesting to me that the involvement was overstated, and that, in fact, police had little input and little prior knowledge of what was to take place that day. Moreover, though I have not been able to verify this, it has been suggested to me that Postville police was proud of its record of having established trust with the immigrant community.

Unfortunately, it appears that at least two councilmen are pushing a 287(g) agreement between local police and ICE. This would be unfortunate.  Not only does it detract resources from local police away from their responsibilities as community caretakers but it increases the vulnerability to criminal victimization by immigrant communities who are too afraid to rely on police to protect them. 

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