A community that backed Trump says no to migrant detention
GOSHEN, Ind. — The sermon had been preached, the last prayers offered. Now, Mike Yoder decided, the time had come to share unsettling news.
As congregants at Silverwood Mennonite Church chatted around a Sunday potluck spread, Yoder, a county commissioner for 13 years and a dairy farmer for much longer, huddled with Pastor Jeremy Shue at the edge of the hall. There was a very good chance, Yoder confided, that the nation’s newest immigration detention centre would soon rise from a soybean field north of town.
“One of the only positives is that it would be less of a drive to protest,” Shue said.
Yoder needed no reminder of the potential for conflict. The Republican had paid close attention when nearly two-thirds of Elkhart County’s voters backed Donald Trump for president after a campaign in which he lambasted immigrants. He knew just as well that the politically mixed county seat and the largest local employers had made a place for thousands of immigrants from Mexico — a significant, but uncertain, number of them in the U.S. illegally. (Lea la historia en español aquí .)