Mass deportation policies terrorize hard working people, keeping no one safe

Carmen, who only shared her first name out of fear she would be targeted by immigration officials, is photographed at her apartment Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, in the San Francisco Bay Area. | Godofredo A. Vasquez/AP

The Trump administration’s mass deportation policies are striking terror among immigrants as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) began arresting hundreds of hard-working people at locations across the country.

Trump termed the presence of 11 million undocumented immigrants a “national security issue” and has vowed to deport them. On Jan. 22, he issued executive orders dispatching 1,500 U.S. military personnel to the U.S.-Mexico border to stop the “illegal invasion threatening” the country. Trump also revoked birthright citizenship guaranteed by the 14^th Amendment, which a judge has since blocked.

Immigrant rights, civil and human rights, and labor organizations rejected Trump’s claims and condemned the detentions and deportations. “(The Trump executive orders) will harm all communities, not just immigrant communities. There are millions of mixed-status families in our country, including over five million kids who have undocumented parents—the human impact will be very real,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice.

Federal immigration officials say they are prioritizing those with criminal records. But witnesses say ICE and USBP are using racial profiling, not alleged criminal records, to sweep up anyone in the vicinity of targeted sites. All immigrants, with or without documented status, are being criminalized and put in danger.

In the face of arrests and harassment, tens of thousands of agricultural workers in California’s Central Valley stayed home, fearing detention or deportation, disrupting the citrus crop harvest, which threatened to leave oranges rotting in the groves and will inevitably lead to more sharp increases in the price of agricultural products that all U.S. consumers will pay.

Twenty-five percent of farmworkers in Kern County, located at the southern tip of the Central Valley, stayed home on Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, and 75% stayed home on Tuesday. Half the agricultural workforce is estimated to be undocumented.

“There’s a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety for everyone with an undocumented loved one, which is a significant portion of the Latino community in Kern County,” said United Farm Workers Union (UFW) organizer Antonio De Loera-Brust.

The UFW said its members had been “randomly detained while traveling home from work” in Kern County. The California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice (CCIJ) branded the raids as “intimidation tactics and racial profiling.” Two of those arrested were UFW members, whom the union described as fathers who had lived in the area for over 15 years.

Sara Fuentes, who manages the store of a local gas station, says she has never seen anything like this before.

“It was profiling, purely (targeting) field workers,” said Fuentes. At 9 a.m., when the store was busy with farm laborers on the way to work, two men in civilian clothes and unmarked SUVs started detaining people outside the store.

“They didn’t stop people with FedEx uniforms. They were stopping people who looked like they worked in the fields,” said Fuentes.

The arrests have alarmed the agricultural industry. “We’re in the middle of our citrus harvesting,” Casey Creamer, president of the business group California Citrus Mutual, told CalMatters. “This sent shockwaves through the entire community. People aren’t going to work, and kids aren’t going to school.

The actions expose the pain and chaos the policies are inflicting on immigrant workers and their families and their folly, which will be catastrophic for families, communities, businesses, and the economy.

“If this is the new normal, this is absolute economic devastation,” said Richard S. Gearhart, an associate professor of economics at Cal State-Bakersfield. “You are talking about a recession-level event if this is the new long-term norm,” he said, and skyrocketing prices for consumers.”

The agricultural industry employs between 400,000 and 800,000 farmworkers in California. The California Public Policy Institute estimates that more than 90% of farmworkers are immigrants. By other estimates, over half of these immigrants are undocumented, and the vast majority are Latino.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, California accounts for about 13 percent of the country’s agricultural production value, worth more than $25 billion annually.

California supplies 30% of vegetables, 60% of leafy green vegetables, and 80% of oranges the nation consumes. The industry exports oranges to 16 countries. The region also produces cereal grains, hay, cotton, tomatoes, vegetables, other citrus fruits, nuts, table grapes, and wine grapes.

Half of California’s agricultural production comes from “The Big Three” counties: Fresno, Tulare, and Kern.

Raids and harassment by U.S. Border Patrol agents began on Jan. 7, the day after Congress certified Trump’s election. ICE and USBP are hotbeds of right-wing extremism and were emboldened to start implementing the expected Trump policies.

“The fields were almost solitary the day after the raids,” said a 38-year-old undocumented farmworker named Alejanda. “This time of year, the orchards are usually full of people, but it felt like I was alone when I returned to work.”

“On Wednesday [Jan. 8], I stayed home from work. I barely left my house,”  said Alejanda, who kept her five-year-old son home from daycare rather than risk encountering ICE agents. “Everyone is talking about what happened. Everyone is afraid, including me. I didn’t see any agents, but you still feel the tension.”

Immigration advocates say USBP was sending an unmistakable message and instilling fear among immigrant workers. The USBP actions included racial profiling, stopping cars on State Route 99, and harassing day laborers at Home Depot, restaurants, coffee shops, and stores.

The UFW estimated that authorities detained 200 workers in dragnets in Kern and Fresno counties and that 1,000 people may have been detained and released in total.

In another effort to instigate terror, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would roll back an Obama-era directive to allow immigration enforcement personnel to enter and detain people in hospitals, schools, campuses, places of worship, courtrooms, funerals, and weddings.

“Random actions like this are not meant to keep anyone safe. They are intended to terrorize hardworking people,” said the UFW. “This is a troubling preview of what we expect our communities to endure over the next 4 years. The UFW and our farm worker movement are hard at work on the ground making sure farm workers are prepared for this reality, without being intimidated into accepting dangerous conditions or labor abuse.”

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CONTRIBUTOR

John Bachtell

John Bachtell is president of Long View Publishing Co., the publisher of People's World. He is active in electoral, labor, environmental, and social justice struggles. He grew up in Ohio, where he attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs. He currently lives in Chicago.