As the summer harvest launches, uncertainty hangs over California fields

As the significant summer harvest season in California’s wide agricultural regions start, farmers and workers say that the Trump administration’s stable pressure on illegal migration can affect them with a series of contradictory signals.

California is growing more than one third More than three quarters of the country’s vegetables and the central valley, central coast and other agricultural regions of the country’s fruits and nuts. Industry produced approximately 60 billion dollars of goods in 2023, According to government figures – According to the studies of the University of California, a large extent connected to the talented labor of a at least 50% undocumented labor force.

Without workers, juicy beef tomatoes, which mature and need to be loaded by hand, rot in ivy. Yellow peaches reach the sensitive mixture of dessert and weighing. The same as melon, grapes and cherry.

For this reason, when the federal immigration agents entered the fruit fields of Oxnard last week and detained 40 farm workers, the state up and down breeders were worried with their workers.

Many of them have been afraid of gathering and being deported, many of whom have been living in their communities for decades and left their families and livelihoods. Farmers were worried that the labor force was forced to shadows for either the locking in detention centers or for the fear of arrest – the labor force would be lost as most needed. Everyone wanted to know if the surprise raids in Oxnard, most of the farm workers earned the most money, or whether the pressure throughout a wider state, which is just a one-time execution, was the beginning of a wider state.

According to farmers, workers’ defenders and elected officials, the answers were not clearer in the following days.

Fresno District Farm Office General Manager and Almond and grape farmer Ryan Jacobsen, “California agricultural community is trying to understand what is going on,” he said. “The essence of time ,, because the farms and gardens,“ The most intense time is in our time, ”he added.

Following the raids in Ventura County last week, breeders around the country urgently began to lobby the Trump administration, arguing that the execution action on farm operations could prevent food production. According to the Ventura County Farm Office, 45% of the workers pointed to the fields around Oxnard Post-Reilim, where they stayed at home in the following days.

The president seemed to have received Trump message. On Thursday, the truth told Social, together with the leaders in the hospitality industry, that migration policies complained that “because they are very good, long -term workers, they are almost impossible to replace them”.

“Not good” and “changes are coming!”

Same day, According to a New York Times reportWith the US immigration and customs conservation, a senior official wrote to regional ice directors who told them to leave farms with restaurants and hotels.

“Today, it is effective, please keep all the business site execution investigations/operations related to agriculture (including fisheries and meat packaging facilities), restaurants and business hotels,” he wrote.

Many of California agriculture received hearts.

Then Monday News came Staying away from farms, hotels and restaurants is reversed.

According to the Washington Post, Ticia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Internal Security Department, will not be a safe space for industries that host violent criminals or who knowingly try to undermine ICE’s efforts. ” “The field of study continues to be the cornerstone of our efforts to protect public security, national security and economic stability.”

In the heart of California, Jacobsen from the Fresno District Farm Office spoke for many farmers when he said, “We don’t have a clue right now.”

White House spokesman Abigail Jackson asked the administration to clarify the policy of migration raids in agricultural lands on Tuesday.

“The president focuses on the immediate removal of illegal foreigners with dangerous criminals,” Jackson said, “Anyone who is illegal here is obliged to be deported.”

Nevertheless, Jacobsen and others said that the turmoil in Ventura district last week, as well as agricultural operations in other parts of the province, was largely escaped from mass migration scans.

In the meantime, the workers continued to come to work and most of them even returned to the fields in Ventura district.

According to a few people discussed, last week’s raids have been an important result: Employers reach the workers’ rights organizations and want guidance to how to keep their workers safe.

“Some employers are trying to take steps to protect their employees as they are,” the secretary-share of the United Farm workers said.

He said that the organization and others have trained employers about how to respond if migratory agents appear on farms or packaging soles. A basic message, said: Do not allow representatives on the property if there is no signed order.

Indeed, most of the breeders whose property is suppressed in Ventura County seem to have understood this; Lawyers reported that Federal agents were removed from a series of farms because they do not have orders.

In Ventura County, Lucas Zucker, co -director of Central Coast Alliance United for a sustainable economy, underlined the extraordinary alliance between farmers and workers ‘advocates who often endeavored on issues such as workers’ salary and protection.

Two days after the raids, Zucker read a statement condemning the migration scans on behalf of Maureen McGuire, CEO of Ventura District Farm Office, an organization representing the breeders.

“Farmers, not as abstract workmanship, but as people who deserve honor, security and respect, not as abstract workmanship and valuable community members,” he said. “Ventura district agriculture depends on them. California economy depends on them. America’s food system depends on them.”

Before reading the expression, Zucker aroused a slight laugh when he told the crowd: “For your acquaintances [with] Ventura County may be surprised to see that it causes a statement from the Farm Office. We conflict with many issues, but this is something we unite and we talk in a single voice of the word. “

“Both of the agricultural industry and farm workers are under attack, federal agencies appear at the door, Z said Zucker. “Nothing can bring people together as a common enemy.”

This article is part of Times’ Stock reporting initiative– financed by James Irvine FoundationTo investigate the difficulties faced by low -income workers and efforts to address Economic division of California.