Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted a raid at Midwest Precast Concrete on the west side of Mt. Pleasant Wednesday resulted in the arrest of 32 men.
Twenty-two of those men were from Guatemala, seven from Mexico, two from El Salvador and one is from Honduras.
The co-president of the Mt. Pleasant League of United Latin American Citizens or LULAC, Dina Saunders, told KCRG TV it’s not just a local issue. “I know a lot of people have different opinions on what immigration should and shouldn’t be but what I can tell you from the personal experience from these families is, no matter you think about undocumented whatever, the system is broken,” Saunders said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re Latino or Asian.”
The state legal advisor for Lulac told KCRG TV Wednesday’s raid will affect Mount Pleasant for quite a while. “The federal administration which is overseen by the president has basically initiated an attack on small town Iowa and Latinos. That’s our position on this. This raid is going to have lasting effects, not just today, tomorrow, but for months and years on this community,” according to Andrew Bribrisco.
A statement from Homeland Security and ICE public affairs officer Shawn Neudauer says that “there is no threat to the public. As this involves an ongoing criminal investigation no further comment is publicly available.”