Leaders of Iowa’s Catholic Church are showing support for migrants.
President-Elect Trump says he plans to use the U.S. Military to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Bishops representing the state’s four Catholic Dioceses signed a letter expressing solidarity and asking the State of Iowa to treat migrants justly and with dignity.
Iowa’s four Catholic Dioceses are in Des Moines, Dubuque, Davenport, and Sioux City.
Executive Director of the Iowa Catholic Conference Tom Chapman said a growing part of the church includes people from Hispanic and Latin American communities, including undocumented immigrants.
“I think at the local level, most people are very happy to have immigrants there. I know in Sioux City Catholic Charities, they have a very extensive welcome program for immigrants, and those are things that are happening in different parts of the state,” Chapman said.
Chapman says the church already serves undocumented immigrants through ministry -- and Catholic Charities helps people with legitimate claims receive legal status to stay in the United States.
The American Immigration Council estimates there are more than 52,000 undocumented immigrants in Iowa.
*New data shows the number of abortions in Iowa dropped significantly in August. That was the first month that a law banning the procedure as early as six weeks of pregnancy was in effect.
The Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, estimated there were an average of about 400 clinician-provided abortions a month in Iowa for the first six months of the year.
That dropped by 35 percent to about 260 abortions in August.
Isaac Maddow-Zimet is a data scientist with the Guttmacher Institute. He expects data to show an increasing number of Iowans are traveling out of state for care or receiving abortion pills in the mail from providers out of state.
The law that went into effect on July 29 bans abortion when cardiac activity is detected. It has exceptions for rape, incest, life of the pregnant person and fetal abnormalities.
*In other news, a new report says a pilot program that matched public funds with private donations in 10 Iowa communities increased child care capacity without raising prices for families.
The state matched private donations with $3 million of federal funding to boost wages for child care workers. A report by the Iowa Women’s Foundation and the Common Sense Institute found the pilot program added 275 child care openings across seven communities in less than a year.
Postville Childcare Executive Director Kristy Turner, in Postville, Iowa, said she almost closed her child care center, which her own kids attend. But the pilot program allowed Turner to hire more staff.
“And now that I see the landscape is a little bit different at our center, I recently within the last month brought on eight new children, and within the last three months, we opened a room that we previously had closed,” Turner said.
The report says expanding the program statewide would help thousands of Iowa parents join the workforce and grow the state’s economy. But it’s not clear if the state will keep investing in child care solutions funds, and communities aren’t sure if they can maintain them without that support.
After that report came out, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds on Wednesday announced a reopening of the state’s Child Care Business Incentive Grant, which supports projects from Iowa businesses that expand child care options for their employees.
That grant that initially began in 2022 helps businesses and employer consortiums cover the costs of any infrastructure required to build child care centers in their communities.
*Additionally, millions of dollars in American Rescue Plan Act funding for homeless students still remain unspent in some Midwestern states, according to a recent report from the U.S. Department of Education.
According to October data, about 40 percent of the money allocated to the four-state region of Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas remained unclaimed as of the deadline.
The deadline for all states to spend or allocate $800 million in funding specifically aimed to aid homeless students was Sept. 30. The October report shows that, at the deadline, more than $280 million of the funding was left to be spent around the country.
Education department officials said the unspent amount will shrink as school districts apply for reimbursements and file extension requests through the states.
