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ELIZABETH BAIER: Juan Ramirez and his wife Laura sit in the living room of their Austin bungalow. They flip through a photo album that chronicles many of the family's firsts.

LAURA RAMIREZ: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

INTERPRETER: Those were the first days when we got here. Christian's first birthday, the first Hispanic person we met in Le Sueur.

ELIZABETH BAIER: Juan moved to the US illegally from Central Mexico in the mid '80s. He worked picking fruit in California. He was later granted amnesty and became a US citizen after the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

Juan and Laura moved to Austin in 1992 and Juan held a number of slaughterhouse positions at Quality Pork Processors or QPP. After five years, he worked his way into Hormel where the pay was better and the job less dangerous. He says he was one of just two dozen Latino workers there at the time.

JUAN RAMIREZ: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

INTERPRETER: The work is very hard. And the way of being is very hostile too, especially when you arrive as a Hispanic. The workers see you differently.

ELIZABETH BAIER: Juan and Laura are both fluent in English, but say they feel more comfortable articulating their thoughts in Spanish. Juan updated his training and works as an electrician assistant at Hormel. Laura works as a success coach at the kindergarten center. In those early years in Austin, Laura, who is now a US citizen, remembers it wasn't always easy being among the first Latino families.

LAURA RAMIREZ: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

INTERPRETER: There are times when we went to the store and people would follow us to see what we were doing. I'd have all four of my kids with me so it looked like a little kindergarten. The kids would tell me, mommy, that lady is following us. I'd say, don't worry, we're going to take them on a trip around the store.

ELIZABETH BAIER: Still, both say they came to feel at home in Austin. They had steady work to support their four children. They enjoyed the slower pace of a small town. They had hopes and aspirations and were learning to adapt to life in a place with few people like them. Their first support network came from the four other Mexican families in town and a Spanish mass held once a month.

- [SINGING IN SPANISH]

On a recent Sunday morning, several hundred people packed the Queen of Angels Catholic Church. It's one of three Spanish services at the church now. This is the go-to place for Mexicans where they come to hear their language, learn about community resources, and find sanctuary.

The pews are filled with young families. Some men and boys wore cowboy hats and pointed boots. Many women remained seated during the service tending to fussy babies.

Sister Ruth Snyder helps with the church's Hispanic ministries. By many accounts, she's considered one of the strongest liaisons between the Latino community and Greater Austin. Snyder believes the rapid influx of immigrant workers has created a strong anti-immigrant sentiment in town. Much of it stems from old timers who remember the city before the 1985 Hormel strike.

RUTH SNYDER: It's an emotional thing, not an intellectual thing, I think. They think you can return to the old Austin, some of them do. So it's hard to deal with emotions and feelings. You can do some with education, but it doesn't always reach.

ELIZABETH BAIER: Today, official counts put the number of Latino residents at about 2,500, but most officials agree that's a conservative estimate. Some say it could be as high as 5,000. That's about a quarter of the city's population.

Most work at QPP. Union officials estimate as many as 90% of QPP's 1,200 workers are Latino. At Hormel, about a quarter of the company's 1,400 employees are minority. Snyder and city officials say the tension in Austin is largely because many of the immigrants work using illegal documents, although no organization or agency has any data on that.

RUTH SNYDER: If that could be changed where they could have papers to be able to stay and work, I think, then we could address how to integrate them better into the community. But until that happens, that division is always going to be there legal and illegal.

MARTHA DIAZ: Good morning. Thank you all for coming today.

ELIZABETH BAIER: Inside the community learning center, Martha Diaz plays a video called Know Your Rights for about 30 adults. She's a caseworker with the Winona Diocese of Catholic Charities and holds these sessions every few months. The diocese opened the Austin office last year to accommodate the city's growing Latino community.

SPEAKER 1: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

ELIZABETH BAIER: One woman asks Diaz what to do if immigration officials come to her house. Others want to know what to do if they're pulled over by the police or what will happen to their children if they are arrested. Diaz says this fear and anxiety is common among Latinos here. As a result, Diaz says many Latinos in town lie low venturing out only for trips to church or the supermarket. Immigrants who use illegal documents cannot obtain a driver's license and are scared they'll be pulled over and possibly deported.

MARTHA DIAZ: It's not the policeman is your friend mentality that we had growing up. It's your fearful of the police. And what's very, very sad is that the children are growing up with that fear. So the children that are citizens are growing up with the fear that the policemen are going to come and take mommy and daddy away.

ELIZABETH BAIER: It's close to midnight on a recent Friday night and officer Eric Blust has just pulled over the driver of a white minivan. He walks toward the car. Sandra Rodriguez is in the driver's seat, three kids are in the back. A teenage daughter interprets.

ERIC BLUST: Does she have a license?

SPEAKER 2: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

No, no, just an ID.

ERIC BLUST: No license? Just an ID?

SPEAKER 2: Yeah.

ERIC BLUST: Do you have your ID with you?

SPEAKER 2: Yeah.

ELIZABETH BAIER: The 29-member police department has one community service officer who speaks Spanish, but no bilingual police officers. Blust takes the ID and returns to the squad car.

ERIC BLUST: You'll see we'll see a lot of these. And because of this, I mean it's a valid Minnesota ID. Picture and everything looks like her and things match up, I can't really question, I guess, how she got this or anything. So I'm assuming that she's here legally and all that thing.

ELIZABETH BAIER: Blust says he could do more investigating but won't because the only law Rodriguez broke tonight was driving without a license. That's a misdemeanor. Since she cooperates with him, Officer Blust finds her about $100 and lets her go.

ERIC BLUST: Do I really want to dig into that deeper when there's a younger family there? And if she is here illegally dealing with all that and bringing that up when she went through the process of getting this--

ELIZABETH BAIER: According to Austin Police records, the number of citations for driving without a license more than tripled from 2000 to 2009. Officials say the department is also actively cracking down on forgery cases. Immigrants who use fake documents can face forgery, fraud, or identity theft charges. The number of forgery cases in Austin went from 86 in 2000 to 141 in 2009.

Police say they're caught in a hard place. On one hand, they want to be proactive about crime, like drunk driving and drug trafficking. On the other, they acknowledge they're the source of fear for a community that already mistrusts them. And they say they can only go so far as sharing information and coordinating arrests with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, but they single-handedly can't enforce federal immigration policy.

Several times throughout his shift, Officer Blust drives through a downtown parking lot near several bars and restaurants. On one end, about two dozen men stand around a taco truck for a late night snack. 27-year-old Jorge Pozos set up the truck a year ago.

He's lived in Austin for 10 years and before that in Albert Lea and Chicago. Pozos' watched communities and cultures collide in those places. He says the process of mutual accommodation is slow, but not impossible.

JORGE POZOS: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

INTERPRETER: We can't just say I am one and I don't care about the police. We have to respect the rules, especially because we're in a country that's not ours. They've given us an opportunity to work, an opportunity we didn't have in our own country.

ELIZABETH BAIER: Despite the obstacles, Pozos sees two cultures blending. He says about 40% of his customers are non-Mexican, but it'll take time and an open mind for the old and new Austin to fully understand each other. Elizabeth Baier, Minnesota Public Radio News, Austin.