Immigration helped turn around Ottumwa; now it’s threatened by federal crackdown, layoffs

OTTUMWA — The Ottumwa that Himar Hernandez knew when he first came to the town over 30 years ago is unrecognizable compared to the city today.

He came to the city in southeast Iowa in 1992 from his home country of Spain as a 15-year-old exchange student at Ottumwa High School. Hernandez remembers experiencing culture shock as the only Latino student in his school.

“I was like, the only Latino kid in the high school. There was no ELL (English language learners) program whatsoever, so I was just totally thrown in there, but I think that's kind of what I needed,” Hernandez said. “I needed a place to start, where it was fresh, where I had to survive on my own in terms of language and navigating things.”

After finishing high school in Spain, he made the move permanently to be with his then-girlfriend and now wife, whom he met in school in Ottumwa. From then on, Hernandez began building a life in the town of roughly 25,000 people. He earned degrees from Indian Hills Community College and William Penn University in Oskaloosa. He and his wife now have two daughters.

Hernandez began a career in economic development, working with communities and entrepreneurs in southeast Iowa and Ottumwa. Sitting in his office on the city’s main street, he said he reflected on how the town endured unemployment, population decline and abandoned storefronts.

“Ottumwa was always thought of as a rough place or a place you wouldn't go, it was because it was associated with decline,” Hernandez said. “We had higher poverty, we had higher unemployment.”

But over the past few years, while working as a community and economic development specialist at Iowa State University and at the Ottumwa Legacy Foundation, where he helps small business owners get their projects off the ground, he has seen a steady uptick in people settling in Ottumwa from different countries and states.

Right before his eyes, Hernandez saw the once almost all-white town turn into a diverse microcosm in rural Wapello County as people from countries including Mexico, Myanmar, Haiti, Cuba and Venezuela came to the town seeking employment opportunities at the town’s two largest employers: JBS USA and John Deere.

Nearly 47% of the once nearly all-white school district he attended over three decades ago is now composed of Hispanic, Black, Asian, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander and multiracial students. Over 16% of Ottumwa is Hispanic, double the statewide figure of 8%.

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Hernandez attributes the town’s turnaround to this influx of immigration. It stabilized Ottumwa’s population while other similarly sized towns across Iowa face rapid population declines. New grocery stores and restaurants sit in once-empty storefronts and the downtown is seeing a resurgence in foot traffic that had disappeared for decades. And the school district completed a round of building renovations after student headcount increased.

But he worries the strength and foundation the community built up over the past decade will start to deteriorate as federal immigration policies implemented so far in President Donald Trump’s second term continue to hit closer and closer to home, which the town already saw this summer.

In July, meatpacking company JBS USA’s Ottumwa location announced that it would have to terminate 200 workers who were notified they were no longer authorized to work in the county after the Trump administration revoked temporary legal status for immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who were granted temporary protected status during the Biden administration.

While the number of workers who were laid off is currently unknown, some have remained in the area due to family ties, while others have moved away to find work elsewhere, said Brian Ulin, the secretary-treasurer for the United Food & Commercial Workers Local 1846 that represents Ottumwa JBS workers.

Ulin said JBS, the town’s largest employer, was able to rehire for the positions and there were no significant impacts to production.

But despite the rehiring, Sandra Wirfs, president of Ottumwa’s League of United Latin American Citizens, said the dismissal of the workers, coupled with current immigration politics, is causing irreversible damage to the town.

“They are our neighbors, they are our community. You know, they live here, they worked here at one point, they're paying taxes, I mean, their kids are in our schools, they're part of our community,” Wirfs said. “I would hate for them to have a target, because it was not their fault. They were doing things right.”

Layoffs and navigating the immigration system

When JBS notified the roughly 200 workers that they were no longer authorized to work at the Ottumwa plant, Wirfs said she was not surprised when many in the community spoke out about it.

Unlike other towns in Iowa that are experiencing similar situations with changes in work authorizations and people losing their jobs, news of Ottumwa’s layoffs made its way into the spotlight, garnering attention from state and national media outlets.

This was primarily due to Mayor Rick Johnson speaking about the impacted workers at a July city council meeting. But Wirfs said she fears the media attention put a “target” on Ottumwa as the Trump administration continues to crack down on immigration.

“What I got from that is that Ottumwa cares so much. Ottumwa’s care is very much about the community. And when that was brought up, it was not brought up for a purpose of saying, ‘Hey, we have 200 families here, you know, come and get them.’” Wirfs said. “I believe the context got out of hand. … I think it was with the best intentions to help, you know, to see what we could do as a community for them. But then it just got out of control.

"I even saw the news, you know, Telemundo, and it was on there, and I was like, 'Oh my god, that was not what it was supposed to be adding,'” Wirfs continued.

Now, a flurry of rapid changes to immigration policy during Trump’s second term keep shifting statuses and blurring long-term outlooks on what immigration will look like over the next three years.

Ann Naffier, the co-head of the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice’s legal department, said that while many of the impacted workers were initially hopeful that they could change their status and return to JBS, the likelihood is slim.

According to Naffier, many of the workers came to the country through the Biden-era CHNV parole program, which was created to allow people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the country temporarily and receive work authorization for humanitarian reasons due to unsafe conditions in their home countries, including war and natural disasters.

Other workers had a combination of CHNV status and Temporary Protected Status, which allows those already in the country to stay temporarily if they are unable to return to their home countries safely due to dangerous conditions.

But earlier this year, the Trump administration terminated the CHNV parole program, which allowed over 500,000 migrants to temporarily live and work in the country, and is ending TPS for numerous countries that qualified for the program.

The end of the CHNV program is what caused a majority of layoffs at JBS that predominantly impacted Haitians, according to Naffier. She added that some others impacted were Venezuelan and Cuban.

Naffier said the ever-changing system makes an already confusing legal landscape for immigrants and migrants even more difficult to navigate. She said, besides legal clinics that come to Ottumwa every month or two, few people have access to immigration lawyers.

Ulin confirmed in November that some workers were able to work with lawyers to apply for asylum and remain employed by the company.

Naffier said the asylum process is temporary and means those with it can only stay as long as their case is pending, which can take multiple years. But she added that, in Iowa, only about 3% of people actually win their asylum cases.

JBS did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story but told the Cedar Rapids Gazette in July that the company is focused on hiring people legally authorized to work in the country and said their facilities were operating normally.

“We are only informing them that we have been made aware of their change in status. If those employees are unable to present evidence of ongoing/reverified work authorization, then we are required to terminate their employment,” a company spokesperson responded in an email to The Gazette in July.

Impacts of immigration policy changes across Iowa

While all eyes were on Ottumwa this summer after JBS’s announcement, other Iowa towns with food production companies faced similar situations, with some large businesses laying off workers because of immigration status changes.

Yves Fleurima, with the World Grace Project in Waterloo, a nonprofit that offers guidance and support to migrants and immigrants, said the Tyson pork processing plant in Waterloo terminated the positions of between 200 and 300 workers with CHNV status in July.

Fleurima said all the impacted workers are Haitian. He doesn’t know of any who have been able to return to their jobs because even though some applied for asylum, it took months to process and the company doesn’t rehire employees after a certain amount of time has passed.

“It is very horrible in Waterloo right now, after the Trump administration has cut the work permit authorization under the parole program,” Fleurima said. “Tyson refuses to take them back to work and I can see, like, hundreds of people staying home, looking for a job, and can’t find one.”

He added that he believes, like JBS in Ottumwa, the company was able to fill the impacted positions swiftly.

Tyson did not respond to a request for comment for the story.

Iowa State University economics professor Peter Orazem said that although companies are able to fill these positions, changes in work authorization will have major ripple effects on Iowa’s economy in the long run, as the state’s population growth over the past two decades has been reliant on immigration.

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According to Orazem, 38% of Iowa’s population growth since 2000 is due to immigration.

“Proportionately, foreign-born workers are utilized in the meatpacking industry, and so that will be the longer-term issue,” Orazem said. “If there were ways of using temporary workers on these visas, and that option is removed. Then it'll be more expensive to find labor in Iowa.”

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A new wave for the school district

In the nearly all-white school district Hernandez attended in the 1990s, there are now over 40 languages spoken and nearly half the student body is composed of students of color. The school district offers services for English Language Learners and a migrant education program.

Hernandez said a decade ago, public school enrollment in the district was declining as parents chose to drive their kids to other districts over enrolling them in the Ottumwa Community School District.

But as immigration to Ottumwa drove up headcount, this district was able to complete key renovations to its buildings, including the addition of new playgrounds, upgrading classrooms and science labs and expanding its fine arts center. These upgrades also flipped around community pride in the school district, Hernandez said.

Yuleni Curiel, 21, was in the new wave of students when she entered the school district roughly 15 years ago.

As a student, she saw the changes and improvements firsthand. Before graduating three years ago, Curiel saw the groundbreaking of a new athletic center and a skywalk connecting buildings at her high school.

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But Hernandez noted that if immigrants and their families decide to either leave Ottumwa or stop coming to the town, the school district's bounce back could be threatened.

“We are not a community that can afford playing with the groups that have come in to help revitalize these communities when everybody else was leaving,” Hernandez said. “You see other communities in the state that it's the same story.”

‘We would be in some pretty dire straits right now’

Over the past decade, Ottumwa has hosted RAGBRAI twice, in 2016 and 2024.

Marc Roe, executive director of the Greater Ottumwa Partners in Progress, spoke to riders both years. He said they were “shocked” coming back eight years later to a completely changed downtown.

In 2016, facades were falling off buildings and the street was deteriorating, Roe said.

“A decade ago, our downtown district was effectively dead,” Roe said. “They were almost scared to come downtown in 2016 and they fell in love with downtown in 2024.”

In the last 10 years, Ottumwa has invested significantly in its downtown. The city has utilized funding from a Community Development Block Grant from the Iowa Economic Development Authority and the Ottumwa Legacy Foundation to update the facades of historic storefronts that would have otherwise been torn down. They redid the streets with new infrastructure, put in parking spots, widened sidewalks and commissioned public art that lines Main Street.

A downtown that once had 15% of buildings occupied now has 15% vacant, according to Roe.

Beyond downtown, Ottumwa has also spearheaded an effort to provide more amenities for the town in hopes that it will encourage people to stay and draw in younger families. In the last 10 years, the city completed 13 miles of bike trails and just last year, both a $3 million soccer complex for community members and a 10,000 square foot all-wheel skate park opened.

While state and nonprofit funding has been essential to these improvements, Roe said a steady population due to immigration is the backbone of the town’s livelihood.

Since 2020, the town’s population has grown by 2%. In 2000, roughly 3% of Wapello County’s residents were non-white, but that number sat at over 14% in 2024.

In 2024, nearly a fifth of Ottumwa was Hispanic, while Black or African American residents made up nearly 6% of the population and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders made up over 4%.

“The biggest factor that we have seen, without any shadow of a doubt, is immigration into the community,” Roe said, gesturing toward the street outside of the Greater Ottumwa Partners in Progress downtown office. “If we hadn't had, over the last decade, the migration of folks into the community, we would be in some pretty dire straits right now, both from a population standpoint and economic development standpoint.”

Moving forward

Jesus Jaime has owned La Guadalupana on Church Street in Ottumwa for 26 years. He first opened the store when he moved to town from the Toledo and Tama area west of Cedar Rapids. Before moving to Iowa, Jaime lived near Salinas, California, where he worked in fields harvesting produce, including lettuce.

When he opened the store, it was the only Latino grocery store in town, but now it is one of many.

While a few customers browsed the shelves under pinata-lined ceilings on a Wednesday afternoon in mid-December, Jaime explained that foot traffic in the store has been cut nearly in half since July. He believes the layoffs at JBS caused the drop in business because many no longer have paychecks coming in.

Mexico Lindo, another grocery store just a five-minute drive away, has also seen business significantly slow over the last four to five months.

Curiel works at the store, which her parents have owned for 20 years. The business has steadily grown over the years and expanded into the larger space next door to its original location. Along with grocery items, it sells home goods, gold and first communion dresses.

She was born and raised in Ottumwa and is in her third year at Indian Hills Community College in its dental hygiene program. She describes Ottumwa as a “homey” small town that has grown more diverse and innovative.

But Curiel said more people have been “scared” to come to the store since July and the business has seen a decline in customers. She said a few of her friends’ parents were workers impacted by the work authorization terminations who are now struggling to find jobs, with some of them leaving town.

“A lot of them are just taking a break, … but a lot of them are really struggling to find jobs, because not everyone's hiring," Curiel said. “A lot of them are actually going back to their country as well because they just can't find any jobs available to them.”

Since July, Wirfs and other members of LULAC have come together with community leaders to provide resources and support for the roughly 200 workers. They have hosted resource fairs, connecting people with food and housing assistance as well as legal services.

But Wirfs said that has barely scratched the surface, as families are having to move in together, cut back on grocery purchases or leave their community entirely to find employment.

Fear toward the federal immigration crackdown started before July, when the VIVA Ottumwa Latino festival canceled what would’ve been its 10th celebration in May after community members expressed concern that it could be a target for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

“How bad would you feel not being able to go to the store, not being able to go and say, 'I need toilet paper, I need basic needs, and I cannot get out of my house because I'm afraid I'm going to get arrested, and what's going to happen to my family?'” Wirfs said.

Hernandez is also noticing a change in the town. He says he has seen more for sale signs in front of houses recently. He knows people who are trying to make ends meet after losing their jobs, including one woman who is selling home-cooked food out of her house and babysitting.

And he is concerned for the community that he has spent decades helping to build.

“I think there's some assumption that everything is going to be OK,” Hernandez said. “If you don't know the history of Ottumwa, then you don't know how hard it has been for us to come to this point of pride and success and how fragile these communities can be.”