Enough is not enough when reporting immigration arrests in Iowa

United Methodist state bishop to attend next Cedar Rapids check-in Oct. 28

Supporters of Jorge Gonzalez Ochoa gather outside U.S. District Court in Davenport before a detention hearing for Gonzalez Ochoa on Monday. Oct. 20. (Photo by Lyle Muller)

I was thinking this past week that I am writing too much about the U.S. government’s ethically challenged and inhumanly cold crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

I am not an expert on the topic by any means. I took a trip to the Arizona-Mexican border with three other reporters in January 2024 who had invested long periods of time understanding the border region but did not come close in one day to matching their knowledge of the desert area where immigrants, ICE, people smugglers and drug smugglers converge.

In the late 1990s, I did a major news investigation over several months into undocumented immigration when I worked at The Gazette out of Iowa City and Cedar Rapids but no Homeland Security department existed in that pre-9/11 era. Moreover, local and district Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials I encountered usually felt sorry for hard-working immigrants and their stories, which ranged from trying to earn money to send to families back home to fleeing death threats from home country bad guys.

More on that story later.

There was Postville, Iowa, of course. One of my cousins was an elementary school teacher there at the time and instantly became a de facto parent for crying kids when ICE agents raided the Agriprocessors plant in 2008 and arrested 389 undocumented immigrants before eventually charging the plant’s owners and operators with more than 3,000 counts of hiring underaged workers.

Charges were dropped against one defendant, Aaron Rubashkin, and former plant manager Sholom Rubashkin was acquitted in trial on the underaged hiring thing. Sholom Rubashkin later served eight years of a 27-year sentence for an 86-count bank fraud conviction until Donald Trump commuted his sentence in 2017.

I have been going to immigration check-ins in Cedar Rapids, where some 250 people show up to encourage and support transplanted Iowans who have to meet with ICE agents. I went to a federal court hearing this week in Davenport, settled into my seat and then had to miss the hearing when a court case before it ran too long and into another meeting I had to attend.

So there I was in the courtroom, thinking that maybe another story on the current Trump reign of terror and ICE tactics being used on immigrant Iowans might be getting old. And then I thought, getting old to me? How convenient.

Living in fear every day, whether you are undocumented or a documented immigrant? Now, that gets old.

“I was raised by my parents to know right from wrong, or at least try and live my life knowing right or wrong,” Victoria Navarro, a Davenport woman who went to the Monday, Oct. 20, court hearing said. “And, in my opinion, this is just wrong.”

Much remains to be reported on the immigration crackdown. Bishop Kennetha Bigham-Tsai and other top leaders of the Iowa United Methodist Church conference she leads plan to be in Cedar Rapids Tuesday, Oct. 28, for the next rally to take place during ICE check-ins. These rallies, appropriately called protective accompaniments, draw people who support immigrant rights.

After the Tuesday check-ins start at 8 a.m., Bigham-Tsai is to go to St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Cedar Rapids and have a brief session with immigrants who have gone to ICE check-ins.

She will join a large group of local pastors of multiple denominations, notably Catholic, and members of their churches to attend local advocacy events, which have been peaceful in Cedar Rapids. The rallies have been organized by Iowa Catholic Worker House and Escucha Mi Voz Iowa.

ICE check-ins for immigrants in Cedar Rapids blend religious leaders and church goers with secular activists who advocate for immigrant rights. This photo was taken Sept. 2, 2025, at a Cedar Rapids check-in. (Photo by Lyle Muller)

FEAR OF VIOLENCE

A Oct. 18 ProPublica story reported ICE officers often use aggressive force to detain and jail immigrants and get by with it because watchdogs who helped guard against that kind of behavior have been fired. A result is that some immigrant families in the United States do not know where their loved ones are, multiple former and current U.S. national security officials ProPublica interviewed said.

Mask-wearing, anonymous ICE officers are acting on Trump’s orders. “ICE, in their view, has become an unfettered and unaccountable national police force,” the ProPublica story stated.

Navarro was among around 100 people to show up at Davenport’s U.S. District Court building Monday, Oct. 20, to show support for Jorge Gonzalez Ochoa of Iowa City when I talked with her and another woman outside the courthouse. Federal agents arrested Gonzalez Ochoa at downtown Iowa City’s Bread Garden grocery store and deli Thursday, Sept. 25. They slammed Ochoa to the ground and refused to identify themselves until he and bystanders, including someone shooting video of the arrest, hounded the agents into giving the answer, “federal agents.”

Gonzalez Ochoa’s court hearing was the one on which I had to bail on, giving my seat to one of some 60 people in the courtroom and another 35 or so watching a closed circuit feed downstairs. The Gazette’s Emily Anderson reported that federal officials had charged Gonzalez Ochoa on Oct. 9 with fraud and misuse of documents, using an immigration identification document that was not lawfully issued, and having a false Social Security number. Anderson has an advantage covering immigrants that other eastern Iowa reporters might not have — she speaks Spanish.

U.S. District Judge Stephen B. Jackson gave lawyers until Oct. 31 if needed to file written briefs and responses on whether or not Gonzalez Ochoa should be detained. Meantime, Gonzalez Ochoa, who shares an American citizen child with his fiancée, is in the Muscatine County Jail. At least he is in the United States, unlike others shipped out of Iowa without a hearing this year.

The fear of ICE and its tactics is growing as reports of violence by agents grow. The video of Gonzalez Ochoa’s arrest shows agents wrestling with Gonzalez Ochoa on the ground while he yells in Spanish “help me.” In suburban Chicago, a video shows an ICE agents shooting a minister in the head with a pepper ball. Meanwhile, a judge wants to know why federal agents fire tear gas into Chicago crowds when evidence of a need is scant.

A September Psychology Today article by humorist Robert Evans Wilson Jr. suggests that repetition is useful for learning and ease of mind but that it also can be used to reinforce lies. Constantly repeating lies can give the illusion that the lies are true, he wrote.

Liars and racists know this, and spread with their broad brushes misinformation about all immigrants — documented or not — in this country and about those who advocate for the immigrants’ humane treatment. The truth is the antidote to these lies so, to get back to how this column started, look for more stories about the real effects ICE tactics are taking is having on Iowans.

The better question ought to be: when are Americans going to get tired of what is happening and do something to stop it? Not whether or not I am writing about this too much.

“We learned about this word of mouth, so I think it does need to be brought out more to the general public that this is happening,” Navarro said about Monday’s federal court hearing for Gonzalez Ochoa. “You think it’s happening in the bigger cities, and you don’t realize, ‘oh no, it’s happening right here.’

“It happened in Iowa City, which was, I think, more shocking because you think of Iowa City as being kind of a safe city, more progressive city.”

Demonstrators at the U.S. federal building in Cedar Rapids on July 29, 2025, trying to gain the attention of U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), a staunch Donald Trump supporter. They did not get an audience with Hinson. (Photo by Lyle Muller)

ABOUT THAT 1990s INVESTIGATION

In the late 1990s, KCRG reporter Mike Wagner, who since has left the station, and I collaborated on a joint reporting project about undocumented immigrants in eastern Iowa. Mike was a good reporter and the two of us worked hard to gain sources’ trust, interview people where they were and vet information. We even went on a series of ICE restaurant raids to observe how ICE went about its work.

Imagine that. The days when ICE was transparent and let journalists observe them making arrests. They existed.

We were wrapping up our work and newsroom leaders for The Gazette and KCRG met to discuss when to publish and air stories and what to call the series.

We already have the title, the KCRG marketing wizards said. Aliens Among Us.

I hated it, I said. Gazette editors stated likewise. Too late, the marketing wizards said. (That second reference ought to tell you how I thought if you could not pick up the hint on the first reference.) We already are ready air promos.

The promos were awful, showing the feet of someone running through an alley and carrying a suitcase. I talked with a former KCRG news producer recently who told me how the KCRG newsroom did not like the promos either. Such is how it worked in a lot of TV promotion then. I don’t know how it works now.

Members of the public expressed their dissatisfaction over the promo’s sensationalized depiction and I agreed with them 100%, although the stories Mike and I did were straight-forward and did not come close to what the promos depicted. My reports are not on the web so I cannot link to them.

The people involved with the project no longer work at KCRG or The Gazette but I needed to bring up the project because people with long memories might remember it in a negative way.

That was almost 30 years ago and we still are trying to figure out how to work with undocumented immigration. Another reason to keep reporting on it.

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