Conversations Across Our America: Talking About Immigration and the Latinoization of the United States

John Jensen

John Jensen is the chief of police in Melrose, Minnesota. He was one of several people introduced to me by George O’Brien, a retiree and former two-term mayor of Melrose. It was during O’Brien’s tenure as mayor that the influx of Latino immigrants began. His leadership and open-mindedness to Melrose’s newest residents had a tremendously positive impact. He was the catalyst for the formation of Communities Connecting Cultures, a nonprofit immigrant service organization whose single part-time staff person is paid for by the Jennie -O processing plant. Jensen and I met about midday at a small coffee shop in downtown Melrose. As a town leader, he sees his role as that of mediator between longtime residents and immigrants. john: I was just telling George it was kind of busy for me this morning, because I was helping at the church fishing clinic over in Sauk Centre previously , and then I had made arrangements to meet with you, and then we were going out to Elena Cruz’s graduation party later this afternoon. We’ve known the Cruz family since probably 1983. Got to know their dad through the police reserves, and then through dad they had kids who were babysitting age. So there are seven Cruz kids, and we used all but two for overnight baby-sitters. I believe the Cruzes and Carbajals were the first Hispanics to move into the community. Just a wonderful relationship with the Cruz family, and the Carbajals also. Ozzie, Osvaldo, but everyone calls him Ozzie, Carbajal, he was on the police reserves with us when he first got out of high school and then when he got out of the military. Now he’s chief of police in Belgrade, Minnesota. I think for the most part we didn’t see the big influx in the Hispanic community until the days when the stock market was going through the roof. Through that economic growth, especially in the St. Cloud area, there was john jensen 89 an emerging sense of mutuality a labor shortage. A lot of people who were working at Jennie-O migrated to St. Cloud to work for $12 to $15 an hour and left a void in the Jennie-O workforce , and that would be about the time we started to see a large influx of immigrants coming here. louis:How do you think they found out about jobs here? john: Well, in large part that had a lot to do with Dave Carbajal and his wife. They still have roots in Mexico. And then after that there was a fair amount of advertising done. We’ve got a large population from Michoacán. I think the word got out that there are plenty of jobs up here. I think it just rolled from there. louis:From what I hear, Latinos are 20 to 25 percent of the population. john: I would say it is close to that. louis:How long have you been chief of police? john: I started to live here in 1983, and I have been the chief of police since 1998. I’m originally from St. Paul. I was looking for a job, and this one opened up, and I moved here and have kind of set down roots. Melrose Police Chief John Jensen. Photo courtesy of John Jensen. 90 conversations across our america louis:How would you characterize the way in which people have accepted the change? john: You know [pause] I would like to think it went smoother here than other places simply because we did our homework and we talked to places like Willmar and Worthington. I hope that we learned from some of their mistakes. And I think that really helped us. I don’t think there’s total acceptance . Just under the surface there may be a little resentment; in some cases, a lot of resentment. louis:What is that resentment about? Jobs? Cultural change? john: I don’t think it is so much about the jobs. More about cultural change, because everyone does things a little different. We had some instances where people butchered goats in the garage. When they were done they would wash out the garage and the blood would run into the street. I asked people, “What is the difference in that and when we butcher deer—except that we usually already have...