Residents of Worthington are doing a lot of wondering these days, and not just about the beauty of Christmas.

They are wondering what is to become of their prairie community of 11,283 souls in the wake of the surprise raid on Swift & Co., the city’s largest employer, where a sizable percentage of minorities go to work.

In the 1990s, the city embarked on a grand experiment in multiculturalism, welcoming minorities by the hundreds to save what was becoming a dry, stagnant town. Most of the newcomers were lured by low-paying jobs available at the meat-packing plant. And together, traditionalists and newcomers began a long and winding road toward acceptance.

Worthington is a unique place. It is basically conservative in its politics; its senior citizen population is large, and the soul of the city consists largely of responsible church-going types who embrace traditional values. Yet, there is a progressive strain that has cascaded through the town like a ribbon, infusing the place with a prairie populism that achieved national prominence during the farm crisis of the 1980s. Worthington remains a mixture of stoic traditionalists and forward-looking progressives, struggling together to solve an economic picture that, all too often, appears stuck in neutral.

On Dec. 12, the ground shook underneath Worthington’s feet as it became central stage to the national immigration debate. On that day, a surprise Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid on meatpacking plants in six states resulted in 1,217 arrests on suspected immigration charges including, most notably, identity theft to gain employment. In Worthington, where 31 percent of the population is Latino and a higher percentage than that is enrolled in public schools, 230 were detained.

Reaction to the raid, predictably, was strong. And it spread out from one extreme to the other.

Worthington, like any other Bible belt community, holds firmly to a law-and-order mentality. A certain percentage of the community have long resented the wink-wink Faustian bargain that some say was made when minorities began arriving in droves. But there is also outrage over the feds’ unannounced upsetting of the city’s equilibrium. Why are they sweeping into town trying to solve the immigration debate on the tail end, where people are settled and working and raising families? At least one resident likened the raid to “terrorism.” A Minneapolis immigration attorney bounded into town to play up the race card, calling the raid a violation of the human rights of brown-skinned people.

The bottom line is this: The “Worthington experiment” has been working, pretty much to the degree community leaders have hoped. Cultural understanding has grown, minority-owned businesses have blossomed, and a trend toward depopulation has been reversed. No wonder, then, that the raid is seen as a setback.

Now, what is to become of this prairie experiment in multiculturalism? How quickly can it recover from the shock, and will it?

Until accepting a job offer from The Free Press last summer, I’d lived and worked in Worthington for 22 years, most recently as managing editor of the Worthington Daily Globe. I’ve seen the beginnings of the cultural experiment, when letters to the editor included hurtful comments directed at minorities, but I’ve also seen how most of the community bought into the concept of disparate groups living together in harmony.

At first, minorities came and went. Few of them put down actual roots in Worthington, and many who stayed chose not to fully integrate. We all knew the town contained people with immigration issues, and I spoke with local law enforcement leaders who were very concerned about identity theft and the widespread problems associated with false identity. But I was proud to note the local police were still serious about helping minorities to feel as safe and as comfortable in Worthington as any lifetime resident.

Not surprisingly, I suppose, as minorities appeared in greater numbers, Worthington began to get a reputation in some circles as a crime-ridden gang-infested community. A regrettable percentage of area residents believed the public school system contained an unacceptable level of violent students.

But Worthington’s so-called high crime rate was never true, and that was verifiable through statistics supplied by the local police.

On the positive side, after several years, new minority-owned businesses began to transform a dull and lifeless downtown. It was particularly refreshing to see various minority-owned restaurants thrive and to see the way in which traditional Worthingtonians became regular customers of those establishments. As longtime residents began to accept the newcomers, more of the newcomers began to reach out to the community at large. And more of them stayed. More of them began to give of themselves to make Worthington a better place to live and raise a family.

This week, we learned that 20 people were indicted on immigration-related charges in Worthington, including 15 for alleged identity theft. Mayor Al Oberloh is concerned about economic ramifications. He told me the real impact probably won’t be felt until January, but he’s talked to a few business owners and was told that business is off.