ICE raiders on farms round up union supporters

ALBION, N.Y.—Donald Trump’s ICE raiders are at it again. Only this time, they’re raiding farms and factories in rural areas—and arresting union proponents along the way.

The only unanswered question about such arrests, which target Hispanic-named people or anyone with brown skin, is whether the farm owners are deliberately calling ICE (the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency) to raid their facilities when union organizing starts.

That’s what poultry plant owners, especially in the anti-union South but also in mid-Ohio, did during Trump’s first term.

But even without that obvious anti-union bias, the ICE agents’ attitude and tactics are as disturbing now as they were in 2017-21. And the raids are more geographically widespread, with ICE agents nabbing, jailing, and then deporting workers from Florida, Vermont, Mississippi, California, Washington state, and upstate New York, so far.

It’s that last raid, near Albion, just west of Rochester, that’s the most suspicious. Farm worker justice groups say the corporate farm is in a years-long battle against United Farm Workers organizers.

“Trump and his cronies want farm workers afraid,” the United Farm Workers tweeted after the latest raid. “They know when workers fear federal agents, they’re less likely to report wage theft or bad conditions. We’re fighting hard against the Trump Admin’s destructive, xenophobic campaign. Donate today! ufw.org/fightback #WeFeedYou”

The Republican president’s disdain for Spanish-speaking people and other workers of color is well-known, including by the ICE agents and their independent union. Ditto for Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents.

That ICE agents’ union was a Government Employees sector. It broke away and became independent because its leaders felt AFGE and the AFL-CIO were too “soft” on migrants. The agents union leadership loudly endorsed Trump’s hard-nosed and hard-assed anti-migrant policies all three times he’s run for president.

Well-known tactics

The agents’ tactics have become even more well-known now than they were during Trump’s first term. Then, they swooped in on rural-area poultry and pork processing plants, picking up people inside, detaining them, and eventually deporting them.

Now, the ICE agents not only raid the plants, but also farms and top universities in major metro areas. They grab, handcuff, shackle, and wrestle to the ground not just Hispanics but foreign students here on legitimate visas who also dare to dissent from Trump’s wholesale backing of Israel’s murderous war in Gaza. The students are also non-white.

The farm raids are another matter, leading to a United Farm Workers protest in Manhattan.

On May 12, the United Farm Workers reported it won a first contract for farm workers at A&J Kirby Farms for 50 farm workers in Orleans County, N.Y. The pact was won only after A&J refused to bargain with the union for two years and then hemmed and hawed through another year of talks mediated by New York State.

But just 10 days earlier, ICE agents had swooped down on a bus full of farm workers, including several pro-union advocates, near Albion, N.Y. They arrested 14 workers on their way to Lynn-Ette & Sons Farms, UFW Secretary-Treasurer Armando Elenes reported to Migrant Justice. The union and the bosses are in arbitration for a first contract at Lynn-Ette & Sons.

The union said ICE “agents had a list of names, including union leaders who had been organizing at the farm. Those were the workers detained.” They’re at a detention center in Batavia, N.Y., and UFW has been organizing protests there ever since.

“Our top priority right now is to get these workers out. We are doing everything we can think of to accomplish that,” said Elenas. “Some workers who were detained were actively involved in organizing their workplace. We still have more questions than answers on how they came to be targeted.

“But if any workers at any company are ever targeted for immigration enforcement because of their involvement in union organizing, that would be a violation of our Constitution’s First Amendment right to freedom of association, including with your union.”

Lynn-Ette, interestingly enough, bought ad time during a local newscast to express concern for the workers’ families and would help them. Lynn-Ette says it never called ICE, and ICE didn’t tip them off about the raid.

The Albion raid wasn’t the only recent one since Trump returned to the White House, and turned ICE loose on anyone brown whom he hates—migrants, farm workers, or students. Other raids included:

• Nine dairy workers were detained in rural Vermont in April. “ICE deported three farmworkers without due process, in clear violation of their rights,” their legal team head, University of Vermont Law School professor Brett Stokes, told Migrant Justice.

Will fight for justice

“We will fight for justice for those unjustly deported and will continue to move for the release of those still in detention.” The ninth, Arbey Lopez-Lopez, had an immigration judge’s hearing scheduled for May 15. ICE wants to kick all nine out of the country, obeying Trump.

• A young United Farm Workers organizer, Alfredo Leo Juarez, was in Sedro-Woolley, in rural Washington state. Advocates there say he was detained precisely because he was an organizer. Though he put up no resistance, ICE agents smashed in his car windows, pulled him out, and drove him away.

“We believe he was targeted,” fellow organizer Edgar Franks told Farmworker Justice. “The way ICE detained him was meant to intimidate. They hardly gave him any chance to defend himself or explain.

“He wasn’t resisting, and he just asked to see the warrant. They asked to see his ID, and right when he was reaching for it, they broke his car window. The ICE agents escalated really fast.” Agents wore black jackets with the word “police” in white on their backs, and no identification.

• Seventy-eight farm workers were arrested in Kern County, Calif., in the heart of the state’s agriculture-dominated Central Valley. Some were picked up while riding trucks to work. CBP agents grabbed others waiting at a Home Depot for rides to jobs.
• Trump’s ICE raids “are hurting agriculture here” in rural Mississippi, Larry Rubin, the former Washington Bureau Chief for People’s World, e-mailed from Holly Springs. An official release from the Department of Homeland Security reveals they’ve been doing a lot more than that.

The release said ICE agents arrested 680 deportable “illegal aliens” in raids on five big farming complexes in rural Mississippi in recent days. It claims all were here under false papers or none at all.

But Special Agent Anthony Todd Williams Jr., who sought and signed all five warrants for the raids, said the companies aren’t blameless either. They faced fines of $3000 per worker for failure to check the workers’ documents, specifically I-9 forms certifying the workers are legally in the U.S.

The catch is that independent analysts have for years reported numerous problems with the I-9 system, and especially with misidentifications. That’s no help when ICE agents come calling.

“Workers and organizers alike are on really high alert,” one union spokeswoman told The Intercept. “They are used to working hard, and they’re used to needing to be resilient, but this is a different level of fear. They’re avoiding simple stuff like going to the grocery store as a family. They’re scared.”