The Postville water tower.. In many respects, Postville — which bills itself as “Hometown to the World” — is a microcosm of America's reliance on immigrant labor.

POSTVILLE — Nearly nine years have passed since immigration agents swooped into Postville, a northeastern Iowa town of fewer than 3,000, and arrested 389 undocumented workers.

Joy Minikwu was a new teacher at Postville High School that year. She remembers well the day when parents didn’t come to pick up their children, when buses carried handcuffed men and women away from the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant and when families left behind sought shelter at the Catholic church.

PHOTO GALLERY: Postville -- Iowa's hometown to the world

Though the students she taught back then have since graduated, the shadow of the May 12, 2008, raid still hangs over the town — and over the lives of her current students.

As an English Language Learner instructional coach for the district, she helps address the needs of the 40 percent of students in this tiny school district who speak a language other than English at home. At times, that means addressing their fears as well as their educational needs. With months of calls from then-candidate and now-President Donald Trump for increased deportations, those fears are heightened.

“It’s insecurity. It’s always in the back of their minds that things could always be uprooted and changed,” Minikwu said. “Everything is up in the air. There’s a nervous feeling; nobody knows what’s going to happen.”

A couple of weeks ago, a rumor circulated on Facebook that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were in the area. Many children were afraid to walk home, so the district arranged a shuttle to take them to their doors.

“We’re very protective of our kids and their current realities. The current reality is a lot of them are on edge,” high school Principal Brendan Knudtson said.

Though things have changed a lot here since 2008, this small community where a sign along the highway reads “Hometown to the World” is a microcosm of America’s reliance on immigrant labor — and what can happen when that system is upended.

Many of the elements found here are mirrored across Iowa. Meatpacking plants attract immigrant labor to harsh jobs American citizens often don’t want. A number of small, rural towns like Postville, including West Liberty, Columbus Junction and Marshalltown, now are at or near “majority-minority” status in their schools, meaning white students no longer are the majority. Along with Latino workers, plants also hire newcomers with refugee status — in Iowa in recent years, that has meant new immigrants from Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan and elsewhere.

That has been the case at the plant, now called Agri Star, where Somali immigrants are the newest wrinkle in Postville’s diversity — diversity that isn’t always easily accepted.

Knudtson said some of his students report racist comments on the sports field when they play against other small-town schools. And at Postville Shul, the private Jewish school serving the Hasidic families that come to work in the kosher plant, Principal Rashi Raices said insults have been yelled at children playing outside the building, and rocks have been thrown at Jewish men walking home from the synagogue on Friday nights.

She reads about threats against Jewish schools across the country, and she worries.

“Even though Postville is a dot on the map, it’s infamous. In America today, you have to be more careful,” she said.

Still, she said she feels accepted by her neighbors. She thinks the challenges people went through after the raid made the town stronger and more united.

“It’s a place which has learned a lot through its struggles,” she said. “Postvillians have learned to coexist.”

That learning hasn’t always been smooth or easy. She said she is understanding toward longtime residents who find adapting to changing demographics difficult.

“This is not the Postville they knew. Some people are not OK with change, and for some people it is easier,” she said. “It takes time and a lot of hard work.”

At times, she said misunderstandings can be cleared up with simple conversations. When she first arrived, she heard people were offended when their observant Jewish neighbors didn’t accept their invitations to coffee or dinner. They didn’t understand that the reason wasn’t lack of neighborliness, but rather concern about following strict kosher religious practices.

At the public high school, cultural competency training also helps teachers understand their students. Somali students, for example, may avoid eye contact — something their American-born teachers could interpret as a sign of disrespect without realizing that in Somali culture, making eye contact is the disrespectful thing to do.