Sweeping changes to immigration policy and increased deportations under President Donald Trump’s second term has caused fear among immigrants living in Iowa. 

Many immigrant families have generational roots to the Hawkeye state, including the family of Vince Cano, who first arrived in the U.S. almost 100 years ago and contributed to the maintenance of Iowa City’s railroads, establishing the city’s first barrio along the railroad tracks. 

Over half a century before the city of Iowa City acquired the small plot of land that would become Oak Grove Park in 1973, the 1.6 acres of land sitting along the railroad tracks was once home to the city’s first barrio, its history largely forgotten under the park’s playground and basketball court. 

Made up of converted boxcars and wooden “shanties,” one-room houses that would have been approximately 14’ x 20’ in size, the homes in the neighborhood lacked electricity and running water and often only contained a single kerosene lamp for lighting, but it was here that the families who inhabited the neighborhood grew.

The neighborhood, which developed along Page Street near the freight depot and stockyards between South Van Buren and South Dodge Street in the early 20th century, was created by immigrants from Mexico who were hired by the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad Company, or CRI&P RW, to work on the railroads running east and west through Iowa City, as well as their families.

Vince Cano, who will turn 83 this year, is the youngest son of one of the five original families who lived in the neighborhood before it was destroyed by the CRI&P RW Company in 1936. While he didn’t live in the barrio, in a letter that Vince Cano sent to The Daily Iowan, he recalled his family’s story of immigrating from Guanajuato, Mexico, to the United States, searching for work as they rode trains into Texas and Minnesota before ultimately arriving in Iowa, where they would eventually find work on the very tracks on which they had traveled.

That was almost 100 years ago, with March 2 marking the 99th year since Magdaleno and María Cano, Vince Cano’s parents, first immigrated to the U.S., where they sought better opportunities for their children and hoped to escape the violence of the Mexican Revolution as Mexico sought to rid itself of the dictator Porfirio Díaz.

“The struggles of the peón to free himself from the bondage that had been promoted in the last part of the 19th century by Díaz still had not been successful by 1920,” Vince Cano wrote in his 1985 fictionalized biography, “Leno and María: A Success Story,” which is held in the University of Iowa’s Women’s Archives. “Many who were sick of the violence and terror began looking North for refuge.”

As Trump enacts immigrant policy changes, many seeking refuge north of the U.S.-Mexico border in the present day face increased risk of deportation, challenges to accessing basic rights, and legal confusion, something Iowa City City Council member Mazahir Salih has noticed as the executive director of the Immigrant Welcome Network in
Johnson County.

“The big issue right now is confusion and instability, people are really confused,” Salih said. “We are seeing work permits canceled or delayed and refugees losing access to assistance due to status. We see an increased need of immigration attorneys right now and people sometimes don’t have the money to pay for an attorney.”

When Magdaleno and María Cano crossed into Texas with two of Vince Cano’s siblings, Elena Juliana and María Guadalupe, they also faced instability as they searched for work and navigated a country Magdaleno had only visited once before. Shortly after arriving in Texas, though, they learned about a job opportunity in Crookston, Minnesota, to work on a sugar beet farm from contratistas, or labor contractors who often served as middlemen between immigrant laborers and companies seeking workers. 

The work was physically demanding, requiring the Canos to wake up as early as 4:30 a.m. and work until there was no more daylight.

“There existed no agreement between the Mexican government and the United States concerning these workers,” Vince Cano wrote in his novel. “There were no prior guarantees as to salary or living conditions. Being very limited in the English language, they were left to the mercy of the contratista.”

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The work was also short-term, and once the farming season was over, the Canos were forced to search for another way to support themselves. 

It was following this brief stay in Minnesota and on the way to Chicago that the Canos arrived in West Liberty, Iowa. 

While sitting at the train station, Vince Cano recalled that Magdaleno heard someone whistling a Spanish tune, and upon further investigation, met a young boy named John Ponce, whose family lived and worked in West Liberty and offered the Cano family housing. It was there the Canos learned of job opportunities with the CRI&P RW company working as traqueros, or track laborers. 

The traqueros worked long hours repairing roadbeds, weeding and trimming plant growth, repairing switches, and tightening bolts. Vince Cano eventually joined his father to work on the railroads as a way of paying his tuition  at the UI. His father worked for the CRI&P RW for 40 years. 

“I would jack up the rail with a jack while another would tap the gravel under the rail to level it out,” Vince Cano wrote in his letter. “This routine was done for miles under the hot sun. We ate our lunch by the side of the tracks and relieved ourselves under the nearest tree and/or bush. A typical day was eight hours.”

While this labor was initially done by young, single men who the CRI&P RW housed in the neighborhood on Page Street, the railroad company eventually introduced families into the neighborhood in the 1920s to establish a consistent labor force as opposed to the short-term labor provided by the young men who previously lived in the housing.

“For our family, it was a godsend as it provided a place to live, to work, to worship, and to be educated, and to improve our fates; opportunity is everything,” Vince Cano wrote.

The Cano family moved into the neighborhood in 1928, but before they arrived, two other families had already moved into the barrio. 

UI graduate Nathaniel Otjen is the author of the essay, “Creating a Barrio in Iowa City, 1916–1936: Mexican Section Laborers and the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad Company,” which is housed in the Iowa Women’s Archive. In his essay, Otjen described four other “core families” who lived in the barrio alongside the Canos: the Gutiérrezes who arrived in 1921 and lived in 720 Page St. with five children, the Alcalás who arrived in 1925 and lived in 716 Page St. with two children, the Canos who lived in an open boxcar along the tracks, the Ramírezes who arrived after the Canos and lived in 718 Page St., and the Sánchezes who lived in a boxcar before renting a home two blocks north of the freight depot. 

“It was definitely an ‘aha’ moment when I was sitting there looking through those newspaper clippings and found basically that there used to be a barrio that existed in what is now Oak Grove Park and that I had lived just next to that, across the street, essentially,” Otjen said. 

Otjen, who learned about the barrio as he was researching for an honors project on immigrant gardeners, became interested in the neighborhood partially because of his own family history of Irish immigrants. 

Shelton Stromquist, professor emeritus in the University of Iowa’s history department, said that following World War I, Irish, German, and Scandinavian immigrants who worked on the construction of the railroads were replaced by immigrants from Mexico and African Americans migrating from the South. 

While immigrants and labor workers may have been separated by cultural or language barriers, one aspect that often united them was their status as a laborer under a large corporation and the unsafe labor conditions, unfair wages, and unjust treatment they received from employers.

“What they had in common with other immigrants from other cultures or with other workers who were not immigrants, was their status as employees of a big corporation, a big and powerful corporation that was, in general, seeking to hold down their wages and to not give them much of a voice in the terms of their employment,” Stromquist said. 

Similar issues continue to affect immigrant and low-wage workers in Iowa today, alongside facing threats of deportation under Trump’s second term as president.

“Immigrants, then and now, feel a certain vulnerability in the labor market, even more so now,” Stromquist said. “That, combined with the fact that they were at the mercy of a very powerful corporation that could essentially dictate the terms of labor, meant that immigrant railroad workers were in a very marginal and fairly weak position in terms of bargaining for their rights.”

While the families in the barrios didn’t often receive support from their employers or the city, the families often supported one another. 

Within his letter, Vince Cano provided chapters from another fictionalized biography he wrote about his family in 2024, “The Big Move: Magdaleno & María Launch New Generations: Immigrating to the United States of America 1927-2002,” where he described the families of the barrio assisting the Canos in building an addition to their home that could serve as a kitchen.

“They were close to each other, as togetherness meant survival,” Vince Cano wrote to the DI. “Unlike today, we may not even know who our neighbors are and could care less.”

The five families established themselves in Iowa City and worked to sustain themselves in their neighborhood, raising chickens, goats, and pigs and cultivating gardens. The Cano family also grew to include seven children. 

In 1936, the CRI&P RW company required the families to relocate and demolished the neighborhood. With nowhere else to go, the Canos and the other four families living in the barrio were forced to reestablish themselves, often facing housing discrimination due to their ethnicities, occupation, and family size. 

“The environment in 1928-1940 was selective as to what citizens were accepted,” Vince Cano wrote. “The inhabitants did not interact with people outside of the barrio. Shopping for groceries and/or clothes and church attendance were tolerated, but you never forgot your place, lest you be reminded.”

The Canos moved from house to house until 1939, when they settled at 1300 S. Linn St., near what an October 2023 Gazette article attributes to being near what is now South Gilbert and Second Street, before purchasing a house on South Capitol Street in 1952. Magdaleno would continue to work as a section laborer for the Rock Island Railroad and María would begin work as a seamstress at Mercy Hospital. All seven of the Cano children would graduate from secondary school and go on to graduate from college, with María Guadalupe going on to create the UI Health Care Spanish interpretation program.

While Vince Cano and his siblings have worked to document the history of the barrio through their writing, there is no physical reminder of the neighborhood where it sat in what is now Oak Grove Park. 

Otjen said he attempted to have a plaque put up in honor of the neighborhood’s history. 

“This is an important part of the city’s history and also the region’s history,” Otjen said “It’s something that absolutely needs to be thought about and recognized today. Building and creating better futures, that’s always premised upon historical pasts, so you have to recognize the through lines between those.”