Iowa School District Left Coping With Immigration Raid's Impact

School officials in Postville, Iowa, were still working last week to cope with the logistical and emotional aftermath of a raid on a local meatpacking plant by federal immigration authorities last week that left some students’ parents in custody and tensions high in the local Latino community.

David Strudthoff, the superintendent of the 600-student Postville Community School District, said the raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents began at about 10 a.m. Monday, and he spent the whole rest of that day—until midnight—trying to ensure that the children whose parents worked at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant had someone to care for them.

“All of the Latinos [from the school district] were impacted,” Mr. Strudthoff said Tuesday in an interview. About 220 students in the Postville school system are from immigrant families, he said, and many children were separated from parents or siblings employed at the plant. Mr. Strudthoff said about 150 Latino students were missing from school on Tuesday, and he was planning to send faculty and staff members to their homes to tell parents that it was safe to send...