Seibert says she hopes that the Somalis will make Postville their home. As a landlord, she likes that they are family-oriented and that most don’t drink alcohol, in keeping with their Muslim beliefs. Among her favorites is Abdirahman Dagane, who ran the Somali social club. Dagane is 26, exceedingly polite, with boyish looks and outfits of buttoned-up white shirts, khakis and sweater vests. He was 11 when fighting broke out in his Somali village. Playing with friends at the time and unable to find his family before they fled town, he spent the next couple of years living in the back of a village restaurant. Eventually he made his way to Kenya, where he found one of his brothers in a refugee camp. After moving to Minnesota as a refugee, he spent less than a year in 10th grade before dropping out to earn money for himself and his family.

Dagane has heard the talk around town that Somalis don’t work as hard as the Guatemalans. “With Somalis, if the supervisor yells, they aren’t going to take it,” Dagane said. “The Guatemalans always kept working because they don’t have papers.”

We were sitting in his kitchen on a rainy Saturday a year ago, while lamb boiled on the stove and a five-pound bag of basmati rice sat on a chair next to us. Upstairs, in the three-bedroom apartment that Dagane shared with four other Somali men, the furnishings included little more than a TV, a couple of tables and mattresses on the floor.

While many Somalis were in Minneapolis for the day, Dagane — whose car bumper sticker reads “One who prays but does no work is as one who shoots without a bowstring” and who lists his activities on Facebook as “work and making something better” — preferred to stick around in Postville, doing errands, enjoying the quiet of the town. He hoped to make more money, marry and raise a family there.

Dagane had orchestrated a meeting at the local mosque to identify people who could serve as liaisons between the Somali community and Postville leaders. He and his friends also had plans to open a tea shop. It would be the only Somali-run business in town and a step toward making Postville their own.

Not long after I last saw him, Dagane called me with some news. Dagane, his best friend and three others had left Postville, lured by manufacturing jobs with Whirlpool in Amana, Iowa, that paid $12 an hour, had better health insurance and offered more time off. Guhat, the Somali of the brown suit and the Marlboros, also left, along with several other Somalis, for a meatpacking plant in Kansas with higher starting wages. This is the story of meatpacking towns: if workers can move on, they usually do.

And while the opening of a Costco or another large retail business might create a more stable work force for Postville, local leaders don’t count on that happening, given the economy and Postville’s size and remote location. “The town feels fortunate to have a meatpacking plant,” Mark Grey says, “even if it creates its own set of problems.”