Undocumented farmworkers face deportation threats under Trump administration
By Samira Felix
A helicopter hovered low, as close to the ground as a streetlight, beaming its bright lights and multiple cameras at Gustavo and other farmworkers pruning grapevines in the San Joaquin Valley.
On a typical day in the heart of San Joaquin Valley, 20 to 30 workers would be in the fields, but on this January morning in Earlimart, California, just days after the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents carried out “Operation Return to Sender” in Kern County, only five men and four women, all between the ages of 40 and 60, showed up.
The operation occurred in the final days of the Biden administration and a day after Congress certified the 2024 election results, and set the stage for the mass deportation threats promised by the new administration.
The rally was hosted at the Whitney Recreation Center gym in Las Vegas. (Photo by Samira Felix)
“President Donald Trump is saying, ‘If you came to this country illegally, pack your bags because in three months you are going back home,’” Sen. J.D. Vance told an energized crowd at a Las Vegas rally on Nov. 2. Three days later he and Trump won the 2024 presidential election.
Uncertainty and deportation fears reign within the undocumented community, but farmworkers like Gustavo and Xochitl, a San Joaquin Valley activist, are choosing to share their stories online, organize with advocacy groups and participate in marches to represent those who are afraid. For their safety only their first names appear in this story.
California produces over a third of the country’s vegetables and over three-quarters of its fruits and nuts. Data on the number of farmworkers in California and the number of undocumented farmworkers varies from 400,000 to 900,000 and about 40% to 75% are believed to be undocumented.
Xochitl, who has been in the industry for about 17 years, said she does not understand why Trump is targeting the immigrant community.
Xochitl was at the Cesar Chavez Day March earlier this year adovocating for farmworker rights. (Photo by Samira Felix)
“He's coming in with so much anger towards our community,” said Xochitl, an advocate for farmworker and immigrant rights. “It should not be like this because a president is not supposed to intimidate. The president is supposed to guide his people, not massacre them.”
As the helicopter broke the morning calm, a woman from El Salvador and a man ran to their cars and left. But Gustavo, an undocumented farmworker from Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico, who has spent 13 years working in the fields, stood still, staring at the hovering helicopter above.
“Honestly, I didn’t get scared,” said Gustavo, a father of five. “I’ve never been scared because, if it's your time, it's your time and one has to take risks to go out and work to bring food home.”
A few moments later, the crew's manager called and said they were free to leave if they were afraid. But Gustavo said he advised his remaining coworkers to stay because immigration agents, barred from entering the private growing fields, might be waiting outside for them.
So, Gustavo and his coworkers sat under some trees between the rows of grapevines, where they could see all around them. For about 20 minutes, they watched the area and saw a few white cars pass by that scared them. They could not confirm that it was immigration. During that time some people were quiet, but one woman cried, worrying about her children. After a while, the remaining workers continued their workday.
No arrests were made that day.
“That day I really felt hunted,” Gustavo said. “I thought, ‘They’ve already got helicopters, they’re already watching where we are.’ And honestly, we’re not hurting anyone. We go to work to earn money and it’s a really beautiful job.”
He added that farmworkers do not have the luxury of staying home. “We have to go out and work because if we don’t go, we don’t have money,” he said. “We live day by day.”
Gustavo is paid $16.50 an hour, with no opportunities for overtime or vacation. He said if he misses a day of work, he does not get paid. If the weather affects their hours or work days he does not get paid either. He said some farmworkers in citrus production are paid $25 per box, depending on how many they can fill during a workday.
Gustavo uses his social media platforms to inform people about the work farmworkers do and about what is going on within the undocumented community. He has worked with advocacy groups like Shining Families Future to provide resources and basic essentials like food, clothing, household items, and toiletries to farmworkers.
A new era of fear
For many undocumented farmworkers like Gustavo, showing up to work each day is an act of resilience driven by the need to provide for their families, even as the threat of mass deportations intensify.
“The way that they [Trump administration] disrespects everything that they [farmworkers] make happen for our society is unbelievable, it's unacceptable, and it's not what America should be doing,” said Arturo Rodriguez, former president of the United Farm Workers.
Grape farming is Gustavo's main skill as a farmworker, but he also finds work in orange fields for an additional income. (Photo by Samira Felix)
On the first day of his second term, Trump signed multiple executive orders on immigration, including “Protecting the American People from Invasion,” which outlines plans to increase immigration enforcement across the country.
The executive order removed Biden-era immigration informant priorities, allowing the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to withhold federal funds from sanctuary jurisdictions, which are cities, counties and states that limit their officials' involvement with immigration. The order also required undocumented people in the U.S. to register with the federal government.
On April 10, U.S. District Judge Trevor Neil McFadden ruled in favor of allowing the Trump administration to move forward with requiring undocumented people in the U.S. to register with the government.
According to a press release by Homeland Security the law requires undocumented people 14 and older to register and failure to do so could result in fines, imprisonment or both. The policy, which is under the Alien Registration Act, took effect on April 11.
The United Farm Workers, a labor union for farmworkers in the U.S, posted a statement on Instagram opposing the new registry. “The registry invites abuse, fuels discrimination, and risks repeating some of the darkest chapters in our history.”
During a Cabinet meeting on April 10 Trump said that the administration would be working with farmers and hotels to give legal status to certain undocumented workers.
“We are going to work with people so that if they go out in a nice way, go back to their country, we’re going to work with them right from the beginning on trying to get them back in legally,” Trump said.
He suggested the U.S. should take care of farmers and other industries where people are vital. He said employers would be required to vouch for undocumented workers before they could return legally.
“They’ll go out, they’re going to come back as legal workers, which I think is very important to do,” Trump said.
Gustavo said this is a trap because if he were to leave the country along with other farmworkers there is no guarantee that farms would not hire other people.
Antonio De Loera-Brust, the communications director of the United Farm Workers said the association doubts the program would ever work.
“There's no worker out there who can say, ‘OK, well, I'm gonna self deport, and then, you know, I can come right back because my boss vouches for me,’” De Loera-Brust said. “That program doesn't exist.”
A program that does exist in the United States for undocumented farmworkers is the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers visa, which allows U.S. employers who meet specific requirements to bring foreign nationals to the U.S. to fill temporary agricultural jobs.
“From our point of view, making workers' ability to return to this country depend on their employers is just a recipe for labor violations and abuse,” De Loera-Brust said.
The resistance
In response to the January “Operation Return to Sender” raid, the United Farm Workers, five Kern County residents and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Border Patrol, seeking to prohibit them from stopping, arresting and deporting community members in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
The Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.
“This is a free country,” De Loera-Brust said. “If you're a citizen of this country, you shouldn't have to put up with federal agents stopping and searching and demanding to see identification while you just go about your business.”
During the operation 78 undocumented workers were arrested. According to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement this initiative's goal was to identify, locate and arrest undocumented people who were criminals. Data obtained from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection by CalMatters revealed only one had a criminal history.
Rows of citrus trees in Farmersville, California. (Photo by Samira Felix)
De Loera-Brust said the agents did not go to anyone's homes, but instead went to a Home Depot where day laborers are known to gather. They stopped people at gas stations and other public places frequented by Latino immigrant workers.
He said on the first day of the operation some farmworkers slept overnight in the fields because they were afraid to go home.
“The administration clearly stated that they would go after criminals, so why are they harassing our hardworking people?,” Xochitl said. “All our people want is to work in peace, they aren’t stealing, they aren’t hurting anyone. So why are they harassing and intimidating entire families?”
The people who feed America
Xochitl who was granted a U visa, which grants an undocumented person a work authorization if they have suffered abuse and are willing to cooperate with law enforcement, grew to love working in the agricultural industry and would not want to work anywhere else.
“When harvest time comes, just imagine smelling the fruit, tasting it with its real flavor,” Xochitl said. “Not after it's been through cold storage and when it gets to the city it's a different taste. But when you smell a peach or a nectarine or an apricot and it still has its natural scent when it hasn't been processed in a cooler or wrapped in plastic, that's what keeps me here in the fields. It's like a kind of magic that we farmworkers carry in our minds.”
Signs with "With these hands we feed you!" were handed out during the Cesar Chavez Day March. (Photo by Samira Felix)
Xochitl and Gustavo are two of many people who work in the fields that provide the country with produce. They both said it seems as if farmworkers are invisible outside of their communities.
“All the fruit that reaches people’s tables, like grapes, oranges, lemons, all that fruit that comes out of the San Joaquin Valley here in California, it’s mostly harvested by immigrant people, and a lot of people forget that,” Gustavo said.
According to the “Farm Labor Issues in the 2020s – Summary Report” by the UC Davis Gifford Center for Population Studies, an estimated 2.5 million farmworkers are employed in the United States. Of those about 1.7 million were born in Mexico and about 850,000 are undocumented and not authorized to work in the United States.
“These mostly Mexican-born workers are aging, and their US-educated children shun seasonal farm work, so the farm workers of 2030 and beyond are growing up today somewhere outside the US,” the report states.
A marcher carried a ladder that is often used in farmwork for the entire duration of the Cesar Chavez Day March. (Photo by Samira Felix)
Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, the project director at the UCLA Labor Center said not many Americans would do this job because food production is one of the toughest jobs.
“Nobody grows up in America to be a farmworker,” Rivera-Salgado said. “If you ask around and you interview people in high school, ‘What would be the best job for you? What do you aspire to be?’ No one, even the sons and daughters of immigrants whose parents are engaged in agriculture, nobody aspires to be a [farmworker] because it's this kind of job that has this stigma to it because this is the worst job and the worst paid.
In the past few months there have been marches around the country in support of people who are undocumented. In California, Xochitl has joined the demonstrations. She said her fear went away because of the injustice she said farmworkers face.
“It’s not just about the people in the fields, everywhere, there’s a lack of documentation, everywhere there’s a lack of empathy for our working people, everywhere there are people who point fingers at us, people who don’t want us here,” Xochitl added. “But the work we do, no one else wants to do it.”
The United Farm Workers along with the Cesar Chavez Foundation hosted a “March for Immigrant Workers” on March 31 in honor Cesar Chavez day in Delano, where thousands of people gathered in support.
Nationwide protests known as “A day without immigrants” have also been held to showcase the contributions made by immigrants in the United States and to protest the Trump administration's immigration policies. On these days people do not go to work or to any stores and businesses close in solidarity.
“Workers are going to fight,” Rodriguez said. “They'll always fight because they have nothing to lose. They're fighting for their dignity, for their respect, for their families, for each of them. They came here to this country to have a better life, and that's what they're going to do.”
Xochitl and Gustavo both said they accept and understand that there will always be deportations, but they urge the government to spare those who do not have a criminal record.
“It’s fine if they come to arrest criminals, it’s fine if they come after bad people who don’t contribute anything to this country’s society,” Xochitl said. “But why go after hard working people, after honest people? Why criminalize immigrants as a whole?”
