Eerie silence hangs over Central Coast farm fields in wake of ICE raids

Oxnard, California – On Wednesday at 6 am Juvenal Solano, Ventura District of the sticker and celery fields hiding this fertile width of the cracking roads slowly drove along the cracking roads, peeled for symptoms of problems.

A spooky silence was hung in the morning. Typically, the workers who would mix up and down the strawberries were largely largely. Many field farms were closed and locked.

Still, a director Solano Mixteco Indigena Community Organization ProjectI felt relieved. The silence was better than the chaos where immigrant agents raided the fields in Oxnard and wandered among the communities in which Ventura and Santa Barbara districts raised a significant part of the states, avocados and celery.

The organization, which is a part of a wider fast response network offering support and consultancy to workers targeted by immigration raids, was caught on duty when the calls started calling for federal agents gathered nearby. Group leaders, at least 35 people were detained in raids, and they are still trying to identify integers, he says.

Last week, Solano said that the migrant authorities who arrested the organization’s undocumented residents received scattered reports. However, Tuesday, federal agents trying to access areas and packaging soles, a new approach and said it is in the scope. Solano, like other organizers, wonders what their next movements will be.

“If he didn’t appear in the morning, they’ll appear in the afternoon,” Solano said. “We will remain awake to everything that happens.”

Migration and Customs Protection and Border Patrol Agents emerged from Central Coast to San Joaquin Valley in food production areas, and most of the activity focused on the Oxnard Plain. Ventura District Farm Office General Manager Maureen McGuire said that federal agents visited five packaging plants and at least five farms in the region. Agents stopped people on their way to work.

In many cases, according to McGuire and community leaders, farm owners refused to give access to agents without judicial warrants.

California, which has grown more than one -third of the country’s vegetables and more than three quarters of its fruits and nuts, is based on undocumented labor to bow its crops for a long time. Although there are also a seasonal-imported number of farm workers imported through the controversial H-2A Visa program, at least half of the state’s 255,700 farm workers are undocumented immigrants. UC MERCED Research. Many have lived in California for years and left roots and started their families.

Until this week, California’s agricultural sector had largely escaped from the large -scale raids of the Ministry of Internal Security in urban areas, last Los Angeles and Orange districts. California farmers, many of which were the fiery supporters of Donald Trump, seemed quite calm because the President promised that non -president workers were deported.

Many expect Trump to find ways to protect the labor force, without enough workers, food will rot in the fields and grocery prices will be sent quickly.

However, this week brought a different message. When asked about the enforcement actions in food production zones, Trump’s border policy chief advisor Tom Homan said that breeders should rent a legal labor force.

“There are programs – you can make people come and do this job,” he said. “So work with ice, [U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services]And rent a legal labor force. Knowingly renting an illegal alien is illegal. “

Ventura County Strawberry fields had much less workers on Wednesday the day after federal agents targeted the region for immigrant raids.

(Michael Owen Baker / Times For Times)

Two US senators of California, both democrats made a joint statement that disrupts the raids of farm on Wednesday and said that targeting farm workers to deport will weaken businesses and families.

Sens Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff said, “It is unjust and unimaginable to target hardworking farm workers and their families who have been withdrawn in the fields for decades,” Sens Schiff said.

The California Farm Office also made a statement that continuous implementation would disrupt production.

“We want to be very clear: California agriculture depends on the workforce and values ​​the workforce of California Farm Office Politics Bureau. “With the limited harvest activity, we are still early in the early hours of the season, but this will rise soon. Federal immigration application activities continue in this direction, it will be harder to produce, process and take on the shelves of grocery stores.”

Micop General Manager Arcenio Lopez said he was particularly worried about the possibility of domestic workers, because many of them cannot read or write English or Spanish and cannot only speak their indigenous languages. The leaders of the organization suspect that most of those detained on Tuesday are indigenous and hurry to find them before they sign the voluntary deportation documents they do not understand. They call that everyone arrested is looking for a help line that they offer legal aid.

Rob Roy, President of Ventura District Agriculture Association, said that he will come this time and give training on their legal rights since November. Many of them know how to ask for a call. However, this still leaves the undocumented workers vulnerable on the way to and from going to work.

Roy, “I think they are quite safe here in general, farms or building,” he said. “But they’re very worried when they quit.”

Elaine Yompian, an organizer with VC Defensa, said that she called on their families to avoid exposure if possible.

“In fact, many families who communicate with us, if you can’t work today, don’t go, don’t go, Yom Yompian said that they can provide limited support to families with their donations.

He said that their loved ones were struggling to understand what the next step was.

“People are horrified; they don’t know at what point, Yom Yompian said. “They are guilty or bad people from the streets are completely wrong. They only take the working class people who try to pass.”

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.