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Iowa sales tax holiday coming up Aug. 7-8
Kadin Luhmann
Iowa Capital Dispatch
Iowa’s Annual Sales Tax Holiday will take place Aug. 7-8, exempting clothing and footwear purchases under $100 from the state’s 6% sales tax and 1% local option sales taxes.
The annual holiday — a feature in 20 other states — gives consumers some relief from sales taxes.Proponents of the holiday arguethat it helps economic growth because it increases retail activity.
Opponents of the holiday point to astudythat says it does not help economic growth because consumers would have shopped at different times.
Kathrien Loughead, the vice president of State Tax Policy, said sales tax holidays suggest policymakers recognize that state sales taxes can discourage economic activity.
“The prevalence of sales tax holidays points to deeper structural weaknesses in state tax codes: their existence reveals that the sales tax is overly burdensome throughout the rest of the year,” Loughead said in a news release. “If policymakers believe that suspending the sales tax for a single week, for example, can stimulate economic growth, they are implicitly acknowledging that the tax suppresses economic growth for the other 51 weeks.”
Loughead added that state revenue losses from sales tax holidays are small and she believes revenue would have to be generated from elsewhere to make up for the losses, which would result in the state losing revenue.
Dana Driscoll, right, and her daughter, incoming Kirn Middle
School eighth-grader Penny Driscoll, peruse the clothing selection
at Target as they take advantage of the state’s sales tax holiday
on Friday, Aug. 1, 2025.
JOE SHEARER, THE NONPAREIL
“They inject unnecessary instability into government and business revenue streams; create administrative and compliance costs for businesses, governments, and consumers; and do not promote long-term economic growth,” Loughead said.
Iowa’s tax holiday is shorter than those in some other states, where they can last up to a week and cover a broader range of consumer items.
Iowa detentions rise as ICE traffic stops expand nationwide
Grace Nieland
Cedar Rapids Gazette
Rogelio Lagunas drives to work with his eyes peeled.
Lagunas, a Cedar Rapids factory worker who immigrated from Mexico more than 20 years ago, has been closely following nationwide reports of increased immigration enforcement and the related surge in detention of foreign-born residents.
Rogelio Lagunas smiles as he hugs friends and co-workers after a
successful check-in with immigration Feb. 3 at the Homeland
Security Investigations office in Cedar Rapids. Lagunas has been a
part of the Cedar Rapids community for over 20 years, and several
of his co-workers came out to support him during his check-in.
Savannah Blake, Cedar Rapids Gazette
“When I’m driving and have a car behind me for a long time, I’ll be like ‘Is this car following me because I’m Hispanic?’” he told the Cedar Rapids Gazette, noting that immigration officials do not always use marked vehicles. “I’m here legally. I have my driver’s license, but we never know anymore.”
Lagunas, an organizer with the immigrant rights group Escucha Mi Voz, said that anxiety speaks to the broader sense of fear and unease that has permeated Iowa’s immigrant community since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Since taking office, Trump has routinely pushed for more aggressive immigration enforcement — rescinding long-standing limits on arrests near schools and churches, challenging birthright citizenship and pressing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field offices to secure record-high arrests.
Enforcement activities have surged as a result, and the data shows that Iowans are getting caught in the swell.
Detentions ‘skyrocket’
Researchers with the Deportation Data Project found that in 2025, ICE conducted 1,647 arrests in Iowa that resulted in the person being detained. By early March of this year, another 363 such arrests were recorded — eclipsing the 337 from all of 2024.
Those figures were compiled by academic researchers at UC Berkeley Law School who obtain federal data sets through Freedom of Information Act requests and other legal tactics, rather than relying solely on the high-level figures posted to the ICE website.
Goettel
As such, there is a natural delay in publication of state-level data, but more recent national tallies show that the upward trend continues: In June, federal immigration agents arrested 43,138 people nationwide, a record high for Trump’s second term.
“We’re seeing a real explosion in the number of immigrants being detained,” confirmed Kate Melloy Goettel, director of the Federal Impact Litigation Clinic at the University of Iowa College of Law. “The numbers have skyrocketed.”
Speaking at a Gazette panel on citizenship pathways, Goettel attributed that increase to the growing number of people who are being detained by ICE despite active attempts to secure legal residency.
Marilee Reinertson Torres, center, of Cedar Rapids, claps and
looks skyward in celebration as an immigrant exits the U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility during a Escucha Mi
Voz protective accompaniment for immigrants going to ICE check-ins
in southwest Cedar Rapids on earlier this year.
Jim Slosiarek, Cedar Rapids Gazette
Goettel said that in the past, immigration enforcement officials offered “favorable discretion” toward those already on a path to legal residency by letting immigration court proceedings play out before taking action.
Reached by email, ICE officials did not immediately return requests for comment for this story.
‘No reason given’
Iowa City-based Escucha Mi Voz has been tracking detentions in Eastern Iowa and recently announced the June 27 arrest and detention of four construction workers headed to a data center job site in southwest Cedar Rapids.
Among those detained were Wilman Gorutt Muchacho, Dailyn Zambrano Morales, Lenin Primera Esis and Job Guerra Finol.
Department of Homeland Security officers gather on the south
side of the U.S. Immigrant and Customs Enforcement facility as
demonstrators also gather for protective accompaniment for
immigrants going to ICE check-ins Sept. 2, 2025, in southwest Cedar
Rapids.
Jim Slosiarek, Cedar rapids Gazette
In a statement verified and distributed by Escucha Mi Voz, Muchacho said he was driving the foursome to work when a series of unmarked vehicles activated emergency lights and boxed them in. Masked men exited the vehicles, wearing tactical vests marked “Police — ICE” over otherwise civilian clothing.
The four workers were removed from their vehicle, questioned about their immigration status and transported to the ICE office in Cedar Rapids before formal detention at the Linn County Jail.
“They arrested me without telling me the reason or why they were doing it,” wrote Muchacho, who has since been deported. “Everything that is happening is very unjust. … We leave everything in God’s hands and pray that justice will be done.”
The group’s individual immigration backgrounds and statuses remain unclear, but Escucha Mi Voz organizers say none of the four detainees have a criminal record and an independent search of state court records showed no prior or pending cases. The remaining three workers remain in detention at the Linn County Jail.
The circumstances around the stop echo an enforcement pattern that has drawn national scrutiny in recent weeks after ICE officers this month fatally shot two men during separate vehicle stops in one week: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine.
Public backlash was swift, and AP reports state ICE officials on July 14 ordered agents to put a pause on most vehicle stops. The next day, however, Trump posted to social media, “We CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!”
Federal officials have since confirmed the use of traffic stops as immigration enforcement tools has resumed, fanning concerns among area advocates about the potential for safety risks for foreign-born drivers.
Revitalized during the infancy of Trump’s second term, the program deputizes certain officers from participating agencies to perform some immigration-related enforcement activities. Iowa State Patrol is one of two Iowa agencies to sign such an agreement, joined by the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.
An Iowa State Patrol trooper monitors the scales in September
2025 at the southbound weigh station on Interstate 380 near
Brandon.
Nick Rohlman, Cedar Rapids Gazette
Separately, Lagunas said Escucha Mi Voz has confirmed two ICE detentions from early July that followed routine traffic stops by the Iowa State Patrol. Both drivers were pulled over for alleged window tint violations and asked about their immigration status during their stop.
“These are no longer isolated incidents,” Lagunas said. “Every Iowan should expect traffic laws to be enforced fairly — not selectively in ways that funnel people into the deportation system.”
For its part, the Iowa State Patrol maintains that its cooperation with ICE activities is “no different than that which exists with other federal law enforcement agencies” such as the FBI or the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Public Information Officer Alex Dinkla said in an emailed statement that “the Iowa Department of Public Safety continues to comply with its state law requirements to assist in the enforcement of immigration laws.”
The statement continues that “if, during a traffic stop, the Iowa State Patrol has reason to question a driver’s immigration status they may contact Immigration and Customs Enforcement for further direction.”
To date, Dinkla said Iowa State Patrol has received no word from federal officials regarding any sort of pause or changes related to immigration inquiries during traffic stops.
Know your rights
In response, advocacy groups like Escucha Mi Voz and the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa are urging immigrants to know their rights when it comes to potential ICE encounters, on the road or otherwise.
The ACLU encourages people to carry a valid driver’s license whenever possible and keep vehicle registration and proof of insurance up to date. During a traffic stop or other physical interaction with law enforcement, remain calm and keep hands visible at all times.
An auditorium at Dream City, an Iowa City nonprofit, is filled
with community members during a legal observer training in January
2026 hosted by nonprofit Escucha Mi Voz.
Cedar Rapids Gazette
Never try to drive or run away from law enforcement and remember that anyone within the United States — regardless of legal status — has the legal right to remain silent when asked about their immigration status.
Escucha Mi Voz also recommends community members memorize the phone number for their lawyer, if they have one, or make note of the advocacy group’s statewide rapid response hotline available at 319-382-5203.
Speaking alongside Goettel, panelist Yer Vang said such tips can help immigrants feel safer going about their day-to-day lives while simultaneously navigating a complicated immigration system.
Vang
As director of immigration legal services at Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Dubuque, Vang has seen firsthand the importance of that security and what fear and anxiety can do in immigrant communities when left unchecked, much like Rogelio Lagunas who keeps his eyes peeled as he drives through town.
She argued that fear runs in both directions — and that the fear directed at immigrants deserves the same scrutiny as the fear immigrants feel.
“I would like us to reframe this because there’s also a fear that’s unfounded from the other side,” Vang said. “We’ve had this history in our 250 years (as a country) of having these cyclical fears of immigrants, and I think we should try to understand that.”
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