a day ago
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Fear of ICE raids spreads across California's farmworkers
The nation's most abundant harvest is ripening in California's Central Valley fields, but the people at the heart of these agricultural communities are living in fear.
Whispers of immigration raids — most unconfirmed — swirled from Colusa to Kern counties this week. Roughly half of all farmworkers laboring in America's breadbasket are undocumented, putting this region in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump's ramped-up deportation campaign.
Callers flooded immigration enforcement help hotlines. Local officials chased reports of people being apprehended from jobsites, businesses and even health clinics. People afraid of deportation stopped showing up for work, church and school.
'People are anxious. People are scared.' said Rosa Lopez, an organizer with the ACLU who helps run the Kern County Rapid Response Network. The network operates an immigrant assistance hotline that has exploded this week, from 'a few dozen' calls a week in past months to 'hundreds' a day, she said. Some callers are so scared that they won't leave their house unless they absolutely have to, Lopez said.
Authorities confirmed that federal immigration agents apprehended immigrants in Ventura County on Tuesday. At least 35 people were arrested after officers visited farms and packing facilities in the Oxnard area, according to the Los Angeles Times.
President Donald Trump acknowledged the potential impact of increased raids on America's farming community in a social media post Thursday. American farmers 'have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them,' he said. He added: "We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!"
Earlier this year, Trump mused about creating a pathway to retain farm labor by deporting undocumented farmworkers but then allowing them to return legally if their employers vouched for them. The White House has not elaborated on how such a plan might work.
Fresno County Supervisor Luis Chavez said ICE had staged enforcement vehicles in the Fresno area but he was told by local law enforcement they hadn't yet made any arrests. Fear was mounting. He said he's heard from churches, grocery stores, schools, hardware stores — people are staying home and out of the public.
'It's like a ghost town out there,' Chavez said.
Rumors of raids swirled up and down the Central Valley from Colusa to Kern counties, although they were either debunked or remained unconfirmed as of Thursday. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to specific questions from the Chronicle, but provided a statement from Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin: 'Secretary (Kristi) Noem's message to California rioters is simple: you will not stop us or slow us down. ICE will continue to enforce the law.'
Hundreds of miles away, Los Angeles continued to roil with demonstrations sparked when federal immigration agents launched a dizzying campaign to apprehend people across the region. The White House confirmed at least 300 people had been taken.
The Central Valley had seemed unusually 'quiet,' said State Sen. Melissa Hurtado, a Bakersfield Democrat. But 'I understood very well what was yet to come,' she said. Trump began his second presidency vowing to create the largest deportation program in U.S. history.
And now, as blueberries, peaches and nectaries ripen, farmers wonder if they will have the workforce needed to pick them.
'Without these employees, crops would go unharvested, rural business would suffer, and food prices could rise for families across the country,' Bryan Little, The California Farm Bureau senior director of policy advocacy, said in a statement.
California senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff condemned the agricultural raids in a joint statement issued Wednesday. 'Targeting hardworking farm workers and their families who have been doing the backbreaking work in the fields for decades is unjustified and unconscionable,' they said.
Though authorities only confirmed raids in Ventura County, the spectre of more ICE activity rippled far beyond, sending immigrant advocates chasing false leads and agriculture leaders quelling rumors.
United Farm Workers union representatives rush to sites in response to each hotline call, social media post or other tips reporting a potential immigration raid — and the reports have poured in over the last week, said president Teresa Romero. But the UFW has yet to catch ICE officers in the act.
'By the time we get there, they're gone,' Romero said. 'It is just terrorizing the farmworkers.'
Romero said union members had claimed to witness ICE activity in Tulare and Kern counties, but that she had 'no idea' where the alleged activity occurred or how many people might have been detained. Local farm bureau leaders for Tulare and Kern said they had not confirmed any ICE activity.
Fresno County Farm Bureau CEO Ryan Jacobsen said he spent much of the week calling member farms to verify viral social media posts about ICE raids, but that he couldn't confirm a single one.
Farms in Fresno haven't reported no-shows yet, Jacobsen said, but 'that could change very quickly' if fears proliferate that federal immigration agents will flood fields, whether those fears are founded or not. He said he is making sure farmers know that they can deny entry to ICE officers without a warrant.
In Ventura County, some farm workers did not show up Wednesday to the Oxnard Plain's fertile strawberry, lima bean and cilantro fields, said Javier Martinez, an agricultural farm community assistant for the county. Some of Martinez's relatives stayed home, fearing ICE could be lying in wait, and one ranch only had 5 workers of the usual 30-strong crew, he said.
'It's very scary,' Martinez said. 'There are multiple families that are not gonna go to work for the rest of this week because they are scared of going back to their work and getting raided out of the blue.'
Romero said many farmworkers are too scared to venture out to public parks or to accompany their children to school. But she said they can't afford to stay home from work for long.
'It is terrifying the farm workers, it is terrifying their children, but they continue to work,' Romero said. 'These are people who have to support their families.'
