Vanished

“Have you read this?” I asked my husband, holding the latest Pella Chronicle aloft with shock and pointing to the headline.

He nodded. Yes, he heard about it when I was in Michigan.

In three area restaurants—in Newton, Oskaloosa, and Pella—eighteen people had been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for violation of immigration law. Five occurred at the Tulip Garden—Pella’s first-ever immigration violation arrests.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been shocked. This was a small-potatoes arrest. Since January 2008, 400,000 undocumented immigrants have been deported. On April 2 of this year, immigration officials announced the nation-wide arrest of 3,168 immigrants in a six-day operation—31 of them from Iowa.  In 2008, Postville, Iowa, experienced 400 arrests of immigrant workers—at that time the largest single raid of a workplace in United States history.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been shocked. In 2010 Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated that Iowa’s undocumented immigrant population totaled 65,000. I knew local restaurants had Latino staff members. And I had thought that some of them might be undocumented.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been shocked. I shouldn’t expect my Iowa town to be different from the other towns across the state.

But I was.

Because I had met Jorge.

In early April, Jorge’s brown face had contrasted with his white shirt as he quietly refilled my coffee cup at a Tulip Garden table. “Habla Englais?” I asked him as he poured.

“Leetle bit,” he answered, shyly.

I asked this lean, aproned man in my rudimentary Spanish if he would like to learn more English. I wanted to teach English to adults who only knew a little, I said. He glanced nervously toward the cash register and kitchen. “Ahora estoy trabajando  (I’m working now,),” he said.

I gave him my business card and asked him to write his name and telephone number on a paper. He painstakingly shaped the letters and numbers. I said I’d call him with the help of Karem, my friend from El Salvador, who spoke better Spanish.

Karem and I called, and set a meeting time for the next day. Then I daydreamed. We could hold class at a neutral space—perhaps a library conference room.  He might know one or two co-workers who would also like to learn English. I could now use the ESL books I had used for only one teaching session before those fledgling students had decided that Florida was a more hospitable environment and headed south.

But the next day, Jorge failed to show. We dialed. He did not answer—not that call or the half dozen after that. “He may be afraid,” Karem said.

Afraid with good reason, I now thought. I imagined the scene, ICE officials entering—“calm, stern, and professional” the newspaper said. I pictured them blocking all entrances, asking restaurant staff members for their identification, and then escorting five frightened people from the building.

 Was Jorge one of them? Where was he taken? What would happen to him?

Wanting to know, I stopped at Tulip Garden and queried its owner. Yes, Jorge was among the five. He thought they were in Des Moines, but wasn’t sure.

I scoured the Internet, but information was scanty. One report said no one was charged criminally. Strange. The recent federal focus has been on undocumented workers guilty of crimes. About 90 percent of the 3,168 arrested on April 2 had criminal records.

Still unsatisfied, I read the online comments after the brief articles and was shocked again.  One responder thought they should self-deport themselves and “take their anchor babies with them.” A second one thought they should be treated as he would expect of  Mexico—“lock them up and throw away the key.” Another suggested in exchange we send 20 million U.S.  drug addicts and gang bangers to Mexico.

Tonight, as I continue to wonder about what I have read and heard, I’m not thinking of millions of people, but of one.

I’m wondering, and I have no answers. Yet.

I’m thinking of Jorge, who has a face and name.

And that makes all the difference.