My Hometown

“Wearing jeans and a John Deere cap, he turned the radio to an oldies station and, with hands callused thick by 50 years of farming, steered the vehicle toward the edge of town. He stopped in front of familiar farmhouses surrounded by fields of soy and corn, where blond children boarded the bus, chatting in English. ‘Morning,’ the 71-year-old Vietnam veteran said. This was the Worthington he knew. But then Brink headed back into town, past the meatpacking plant that was the area’s main employer and into the neighborhood he called Little Mexico, even though most of its residents were Central American. This was the Worthington he did not know — the Worthington he resented.” WaPo’s Michael E. Miller takes you to a town far from the southern border, but at the front lines of America’s immigration battle. Immigrant kids fill this town’s schools. Their bus driver is leading the backlash.