Governor Kim Reynolds on Monday announced several appointments to Iowa’s various boards and commissions, which include a few area residents.

Ofelia Rumbo of Buena Vista County and Nancy McDowell of O’Brien County were appointed to the State Workforce Development Board…Amanda Miller of Pocahontas County was appointed to the Board of Sign Language Interpreters and Transliterators…Sam Kooiker of O’Brien County was selected to the Civil Rights Commission…and Loretta Laubach of O’Brien County was chosen to be part of the Real Estate Appraiser Examining Board.

All of those appointments ARE subject to Senate confirmation.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (KCRG) – Activists across Iowa protested a state immigration law that was set to take effect July 1.

The law would allow law enforcement to file criminal charges against people with outstanding deportation orders or who previously had been denied entry to the U.S.

The law is currently not in effect due to a court challenge.

Max Villatoro was one of the people at the Iowa City rally to oppose SF 2340 on Monday night. He was there even though, in a way, he said he has nothing to fear from this law. That’s because deportation, the worst thing he could imagine, is something he’s already been through.

“They call [it] separation of family, but I will say it’s like destruction of family,” said Villatoro.

Villatoro was deported in 2015. He missed seven and a half years of his kids’ lives.

“When I came back, they’re already grown up, both of them.”

He is now in the U.S. legally, has a work permit, and is making progress toward being a permanent resident.

Critics of this new law worry that people like Villatoro— people who are here legally but who have been deported before—would be in danger of being removed from the country again.

“It would put people at risk who have been deported or have previously been removed from the country, of being removed again,” said Yaneli Canales, Villatoro’s niece.

Critics also say the law would encourage racial profiling. Manny Galvez said he’s a citizen, but he believes that’s not what a police officer would assume.

“It’s going to be so scary, because what they’re going to see in my face—they’re going to see my face, my skin, [and] most likely, they’re going to think I don’t have a document,” said Galvez.

Finally, critics echoed the judge who put the law on pause by saying federal immigration law preempts anything on the state level.

“Iowa cannot deport people. This is a federal issue,” said Galvez.

“We need to fix the immigration situation in this country. And the best [solution] is immigration reform,” he added.

TV9 reached out to Governor Kim Reynolds’ office to get a statement in response to this story. A representative shared the following:

“As the Attorney General’s office argued, the illegal re-entry legislation does not affect those who are in the country legally. The legislation makes it a state crime, just as it is federally, to re-enter Iowa if an individual has been denied admission or deported before, or left the country while under order of deportation. Every state is now a border state because of the Biden Administration’s open border policies.”

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A new plan for Iowa agriculture seeks to increase the state’s production of food rather than ethanol and animal feed, the Iowa Food System Coalition announced at a Monday press conference.

The plan, known as Setting the Table for All Iowans, outlines the coalition’s policy goals which include producing more locally grown food, getting more young people to become farmers and providing more financial assistance to farmers.

Chris Schwartz, executive director of the coalition, said the plan is an opportunity to positively impact farmers, the economy and the local community.

“There’s room to grow and strengthen our agricultural tradition as well as our collective health and our economy,” Schwartz said at the press conference.

Director of Grinnell Farm to Table food hub Tommy Hexter said many commodity farmers are struggling because most of the profits are going toward the middlemen like seed, equipment and marketing companies. 

However, Hexter said selling produce locally cuts out most middlemen and leads to more money going into farmers’ pockets.

“Setting the Table for All Iowans provides an opportunity to build that system where Iowa’s farmers and small business owners can truly thrive,” Hexter said in the press conference.

Iowa leads ethanol production

According to data from the Iowa Farm Bureau, about 50%-70% of Iowa’s corn production is used to make ethanol compared to the national average of about 35%-40%. Iowa alone accounts for nearly 30% of the nation’s ethanol production.

In 2023, Iowa produced about 4.6 billion gallons of ethanol.

The plan also focuses on how to retain and attract farming talent to Iowa through investments in obtaining refrigerated trucks, increasing the number of rural grocery stores and providing needed equipment to small businesses.

“This plan provides us a pathway to collaborate and really support one another,” Senior Program Director at Iowa Valley RC&D Giselle Bruskewitz said.

President of the Iowa Farmers Union Aaron Lehman, a fifth-generation family farmer, said investments like those are vital for the Iowa agriculture industry where there are more farmers above the age of 65 than below the age of 35.

“We know that the oldest generation of Iowans owns over two-thirds of Iowa’s farmland,” Lehman said. “We need to invest in those opportunities for a more diverse and younger set of leadership opportunities for people in farming.”

Over the past two years, the Iowa Food System Coalition has organized a Food and Farm Day at the Iowa Capitol and invited legislators and state agencies to a food policy summit.

One of the next steps for the coalition is to educate legislators about the plan so it can be used as a guide to create state policies, Schwartz said.