Residents of Worthington are doing a lot of wondering these days, and not just about the beauty of Christmas.

They are wondering what is to become of their prairie community of 11,283 souls in the wake of the surprise raid on Swift & Co., the city’s largest employer, where a sizable percentage of minorities go to work.

In the 1990s, the city embarked on a grand experiment in multiculturalism, welcoming minorities by the hundreds to save what was becoming a dry, stagnant town. Most of the newcomers were lured by low-paying jobs available at the meat-packing plant. And together, traditionalists and newcomers began a long and winding road toward acceptance.

Worthington is a unique place. It is basically conservative in its politics; its senior citizen population is large, and the soul of the city consists largely of responsible church-going types who embrace traditional values. Yet, there is a progressive strain that has cascaded through the town like a ribbon, infusing the place with a prairie populism that achieved national prominence during the farm crisis of the 1980s. Worthington remains a mixture of stoic traditionalists and forward-looking progressives, struggling together to solve an economic picture that, all too often, appears stuck in neutral.

On Dec. 12, the ground shook underneath Worthington’s feet as it became central stage to the national immigration debate. On that day, a surprise Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid on meatpacking plants in six states resulted in 1,217 arrests on suspected immigration charges including, most notably, identity theft to gain employment. In Worthington, where 31 percent of the population is Latino and a higher percentage than that is enrolled in public schools, 230 were detained.

Reaction to the raid, predictably, was strong. And it spread out from one extreme to the other.

Worthington, like any other Bible belt community, holds firmly to a law-and-order mentality. A certain percentage of the community have long resented the wink-wink Faustian bargain that some say was made when minorities began arriving in droves. But there is also outrage over the feds’ unannounced upsetting of the city’s equilibrium. Why are they sweeping into town trying to solve the immigration debate on the tail end, where people are settled and working and raising families? At least one resident likened the raid to “terrorism.” A Minneapolis immigration attorney bounded into town to play up the race card, calling the raid a violation of the human rights of brown-skinned people.

The bottom line is this: The “Worthington experiment” has been working, pretty much to the degree community leaders have hoped. Cultural understanding has grown, minority-owned businesses have blossomed, and a trend toward depopulation has been reversed. No wonder, then, that the raid is seen as a setback.

Now, what is to become of this prairie experiment in multiculturalism? How quickly can it recover from the shock, and will it?

Until accepting a job offer from The Free Press last summer, I’d lived and worked in Worthington for 22 years, most recently as managing editor of the Worthington Daily Globe. I’ve seen the beginnings of the cultural experiment, when letters to the editor included hurtful comments directed at minorities, but I’ve also seen how most of the community bought into the concept of disparate groups living together in harmony.

At first, minorities came and went. Few of them put down actual roots in Worthington, and many who stayed chose not to fully integrate. We all knew the town contained people with immigration issues, and I spoke with local law enforcement leaders who were very concerned about identity theft and the widespread problems associated with false identity. But I was proud to note the local police were still serious about helping minorities to feel as safe and as comfortable in Worthington as any lifetime resident.

Not surprisingly, I suppose, as minorities appeared in greater numbers, Worthington began to get a reputation in some circles as a crime-ridden gang-infested community. A regrettable percentage of area residents believed the public school system contained an unacceptable level of violent students.

But Worthington’s so-called high crime rate was never true, and that was verifiable through statistics supplied by the local police.

On the positive side, after several years, new minority-owned businesses began to transform a dull and lifeless downtown. It was particularly refreshing to see various minority-owned restaurants thrive and to see the way in which traditional Worthingtonians became regular customers of those establishments. As longtime residents began to accept the newcomers, more of the newcomers began to reach out to the community at large. And more of them stayed. More of them began to give of themselves to make Worthington a better place to live and raise a family.

This week, we learned that 20 people were indicted on immigration-related charges in Worthington, including 15 for alleged identity theft. Mayor Al Oberloh is concerned about economic ramifications. He told me the real impact probably won’t be felt until January, but he’s talked to a few business owners and was told that business is off.

Swift lost about 400 employees due to the raid, he said. Some of them just got up and left town.

If you know anything about Oberloh, it’s that he is unafraid to speak his mind. His bluntness is one of his best qualities — that and the fact his outgoing personality wears equally well with movers and shakers as it does with regular people. Oberloh believes the raid magnifies the failure of the federal government to arrive at a common-sense comprehensive immigration policy. He favors a guest-worker program that would allow law-abiding immigrants to continue contributing to their communities.

Just the same, he refuses to criticize immigration officials who, he says, were “just doing their job.” But he adds: “I will be definitely unhappy if that’s as far as it goes, and no immigration bill comes out of this.”

The mayor talked things over with Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who asked what the atmosphere is around town.

“I said, ‘Tense. If in one word, it’s tense,’” Oberloh reported.

Minorities are fearful, mistrusting, in some cases afraid to leave their homes. “If you knew, say you were down in Mexico or in some other country, and you knew they were looking for somebody like you. You’d think twice about running to the store,” said the mayor.

Unfounded rumors were widespread after the raid. One rumor was circulated that 40 people were held up in their home. Another spread that people were pulled out of their homes. And another was heard that all exits from Worthington were blocked.

All false.

It remains to be seen where Worthington will go from here. Economically, the raid is a definite setback. Emotionally, the signals are mixed. Undoubtedly, minority residents already lacking trust will, at least for a time, be even more circumspect. But there have been encouraging signs as well, as individuals and groups actively work to come to the aid of those directly affected.

“It shows in the days following this raid, there were community groups that were wondering, ‘What can we do? What can we do to lessen the impact on families?’” Oberloh said. “One of the city councilmen said to me, ‘We’ve been shown over the years that Worthington is a community that welcomes diversity. And now we’re going to do what we can to fix it.’”

Mayor Oberloh calls Worthington “a prairie melting pot.” It is an apt phrase. Worthington’s leap from the old ways to the new ways demands the attention of every Midwesterner curious as to what the future might become for their own small communities. Years ago, forward-thinking Worthington leaders embraced inclusiveness and set about making it happen. There have been fits and starts, but there’s no going back now.



Doug Wolter is night news editor at The Free Press and a member of the editorial board.