The kidnapping goon squad gutting our workforce keeps rolling to more cities across the US. Its newest target is Charlotte, North Carolina, and soon ICE and Border Patrol will bring their terror to New Orleans.
But deportations of immigrant workers continue to happen everywhere—including in Iowa.
The latest: Noel Lopez De La Cruz, a 24-year-old landscaper from Mount Pleasant who was brought to Iowa at 2 years old. He has no criminal record.
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Noel Lopez De La Cruz, right, with his fiancee, Brianna Thornton.
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Escucha Mi Voz, an immigrant rights group in Iowa City, says De La Cruz has been behind bars for months awaiting deportation. His lawyers have filed a federal lawsuit arguing for his release, but said his deportation now seems “imminent.”
“My heart is broken,” said Mercedes De La Cruz, Noel’s mother. “Noel has lived in Iowa since he was two years old. This is the only home he knows. He grew up here, went to school here, works here, and he has never been in trouble. I don’t understand how a country that watched my son grow up can now throw him away like this. They are tearing our family apart.”
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Protesters hold up signs at a rally calling for De La Cruz’s freedom earlier this year.
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Brianna Thornton, De La Cruz’s fiancee, plans to follow her betrothed to Mexico, where he is being deported. A fundraiser for the couple’s relocation and legal expenses—including beginning the process of a marriage-based immigration case that the family hopes will allow De La Cruz to one day return—is about $1,000 shy of its goal. You can find that here.
“This is the reality of Trump’s mass deportations: ICE is ripping a young man who grew up in our schools and works in our neighborhoods out of the only home he has ever known and dumping him in a country he can’t even remember,” said Escucha Mi Voz organizer Alejandra Escobar. “That is not justice or public safety; it is state violence against hardworking families, and we condemn it completely.”
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, who is not running for reelection, supports the federal government’s actions: She recently extended the Iowa National Guard’s mission assisting ICE with administrative work through September 2026.
Escucha, along with labor union AFSCME Local 183, is calling on local governments and school districts to protect workers where the state and federal government won’t: by passing Fourth Amendment protections enshrining due process and workplace safety into local law. So far, activists say those entities are “passing the buck.”
“Local elected leaders are fiddling while families are torn apart,” said Escucha Mi Voz member Getsy Hernandez. “We don’t need more photo ops or listening sessions. We need local governments to grow a backbone and pass real 4th Amendment protections now.”
Next up: The Johnson County Board of Supervisors mentions the “32 requests” they’ve gotten to pass Fourth Amendment protections on this morning’s agenda.
Are you or your family at risk of deportation? Email me.
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Amie Rivers
Newsletter Editor, Iowa Starting Line
Member, COURIER United (WGA East)
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Iowa legislators fight for Burlington workers: House and Senate Legislative Democrats called on Case New Holland to reconsider its decision to close the Burlington assembly plant, “and work with local and state officials to preserve the good-paying jobs and manufacturing legacy that have defined Burlington for generations,” State Rep. Dan Gosa of Davenport said.
- Pay paramedics: Eleven Bremer County EMTs and paramedics are suing Waverly Health Center for unpaid wages.
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Pay pilots: Allegiant Air pilots at 22 airports across the US, including in Des Moines, picketed this week to call for a fair contract and an end to bargaining delays. The union said Allegiant keeps asking “for concessions while investing in everything except their dedicated pilots.”
- Pay prison staff: After apparently getting no good bids from companies wanting to take over medical services in Iowa’s prisons—and after a staff exodus—the state is reversing course and saying they’ll keep prison medical staff in-house after all.
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Pay farm workers: Farmers who are seeing Trump deport the immigrant farmworkers they depend on are asking for changes to the H2-A migrant farmworker program. But United Farm Workers says the proposed changes would bring everyone’s wages down.
- Pay ‘some’ TSA agents: The Department of Homeland Security said it would give $10,000 bonuses to transportation security officers who demonstrated “exemplary service” through the government shutdown, but they didn’t specify who that would include.
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After JBS fired them when Trump revoked their visas, between 10 and 30 Ottumwa residents had no choice but to return to Haiti—where the nation’s capital remains a battleground dominated by powerful gang coalitions, according to the US military.
- There’s a major shortage of rural doctors, and it won’t get better anytime soon. The VA is also cutting 30,000 doctors and nurses.
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National faculty union calls out university: The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) took the University of Northern Iowa to task over their handling of sanctions against professor Mary Catherine DeSoto that they say “violates the fundamental standards of academic due process and shared governance.” “When the AAUP, the nation’s pre-eminent authority on academic freedom, tells a public university that it has violated basic due process, it should be a wake-up call for every faculty member, student, and taxpayer in Iowa,” said United Faculty President Christopher R. Martin, adding UNI needed to “correct course immediately.”
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What worker rights? Nearly four years after corrections officer Robert McFarland was murdered by prisoners at the Anamosa State Penitentiary, his widow Sara McFarland continues her fight before the Iowa Supreme Court. Her lawyers say Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird wants “to strip state, county, and city employees of legal protection against reckless conduct by co-workers.” The Court is expected to decide the case next year.
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Des Moines has the fourth-slowest entry-level wage growth in the nation, according to a new report from Glassdoor. And next year is predicted to be the worst job market for college graduates in five years.
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The ‘other’ discharge petition in the House that got 218 votes this week was one to force a vote to bring back collective bargaining for federal workers that Trump had taken away. And federal unions are demanding they receive their full back pay, too.
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Voting on a union: The postponed UnityPoint vote among 1,776 health care professionals at four Des Moines hospitals on whether to join Teamsters Local 90 has been rescheduled for Dec. 7-9.
- We’re still boycotting Starbucks: Starbucks Workers United says it’s prepared for the “biggest and longest” strike—which began Nov. 13—in the company’s history.
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Boycott coming: Target, Amazon, and Home Depot are also on the We Ain’t Buying It list of companies to avoid between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, or Nov. 27-Dec. 1. Here’s why.
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- BHFO in Cedar Rapids is closing and laying off 46 workers by Wednesday. Read more here.
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Ceilley Pallets in Waterloo is closing and laying off 12 workers by Nov. 27. Read more here.
- Wells Fargo in West Des Moines is laying off 23 workers by Nov. 28, one worker by Dec. 12, 63 workers by Dec. 26, and 26 by Jan. 2.
- Networking Imaging Solutions in North Liberty is closing and laying off 70 workers by Dec. 18. Read more here.
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Mason City Clinic in Mason City is laying off 147 workers by Dec. 31. Read more about a potential WARN Act violation here.
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RELCO in Cedar Rapids is closing and laying off 34 workers by Dec. 31. Read more here.
- RTX in Cedar Rapids is laying off three workers by Dec. 31.
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Toyota Financial Services in Cedar Rapids is closing and laying off 54 workers by Dec. 31. Read more here.
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I remember the absolutely awful stories coming out of the Tyson plant here in Waterloo at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While writing those articles, I remember someone telling me, “You should write a book.” And though I’m not the book-writing type, reporter Alice Driver was, and we’re all the better for it.
Driver, in “Life and Death of the American Worker,” gained the trust of several families of Tyson workers in Springdale, Arkansas, who were not only victims of a Tyson chemical spill years earlier, but found themselves on the COVID frontlines, too—all while the company insisted (in both cases) that nothing was wrong.
It’s an indictment of what American capitalism has become, and an infuriating read besides. I highly recommend it.
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Would you pass this newsletter along to your fellow workers?
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Reach 21,000+ Iowans who care about their communities! Sponsor Iowa Starting Line’s Dec. 6 Special Edition, “How to Get Involved and Give Back this Holiday Season.” Book by Nov. 21, 2025, and save 20% off your placement.
Click here to get started.
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Thanks for reading. This newsletter was written by Amie Rivers. It was edited by Paula Solis.
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