Back in 2002, before all the trouble, the Rev. Paul Ouderkirk retired from St. Bridget\u2019s Roman Catholic Church here, his last station in 43 years of ministry. He built a home 35 miles away in a town along the Mississippi, and he indulged a passion for family history, tracing his lineage to an ancestor who arrived in New Amsterdam with the Dutch East India Company.<\/p>\n
Once a month or so, Father Ouderkirk drove back to St. Bridget\u2019s to officiate at a wedding or baptize a baby. He savored those rituals, proof that the Hispanic immigrants who had arrived over the past decade to work in Postville\u2019s kosher-meat plant were setting down roots. Some had bought their own homes. Their children had graduated from high school, even been selected for the National Honor Society.<\/p>\n
Then came the morning of May 12, when both satisfaction and retirement ended for the 75-year-old priest. Federal immigration agents raided the Agriprocessors factory, arresting nearly 400 workers, most of them men, for being in the United States illegally. Within minutes of the raid, with surveillance helicopters buzzing above the leafy streets, the wives and children of Mexican and Guatemalan families began trickling into St. Bridget\u2019s church, the safest place they knew.<\/p>\n