‘Fields were solitary’: Migration raids send chill across rural California

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to re-elect the White House, fear has been heightened by recent raids by the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in a rural California county.

CBP says that the operation in Kern County, which took place over three days in early January, resulted in the detention of 78 people. The number is closer to 200, according to the United Farm Workers (UFW) union.

“The fields were almost solitary the day after the raids”, a 38-year-old undocumented farmworker named Alejanda, who declined to give her last name, said of the aftermath.

She explained that many employees stayed at home because they were afraid. The orchards are typically full of people this time of year, but when I came home from work, I felt alone.

Local laborers and organizations like UFW see the raids as a “shot across the bow” from immigration enforcement agencies prior to Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday.

A new era of increased deportation and restrictions is anticipated to follow his second term as president.

The concerns raised by such raids extend far beyond the number of people detained, even though only a small number of the hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers support California’s agricultural sector.

“On Wednesday]the day after the raids], I stayed home from work. I barely left my house”, said Alejanda, adding that she kept her five-year-old son home from daycare rather than risk driving to drop him off.

“Everyone is talking about what happened. Everyone is afraid, including me. I didn’t actually see any of the agents myself, but you still feel the tension”.

Emboldened agencies

Trump will likely attempt to fulfill his campaign promise to carry out the “largest deportation programme” in the country’s history on his first day in office following a campaign that consistently pitted undocumented immigrants against them as “criminals” and “animals.”

About 11 million people live in the United States without legal documentation, some of whom have worked in the country for decades, building families and communities.

The first significant border patrol raid in California since Trump’s victory in November’s election in January, which sparked rumors about the potential effects of mass deportations on immigrant communities and the economic sectors that depend on their labor, come to mind.

About 50 percent of California’s agricultural workforce is made up of undocumented immigrants.

Undocumented status has been cited as a means of leverage for employers in California because it frequently gives such workers lower wages and protections in the fields.

However, according to Alejanda, workplace raids like those that occurred in Kern County are not uncommon in the area.

She continued, noting that workers were detained while leaving the fields to go home, adding, “I have been here for five years and have never experienced anything like this before.”

CBP said in a statement that the operation, named “Return to Sender”, had targeted undocumented people with criminal backgrounds and connections to criminal organisations.

#WeFeedYou pic. twitter.com/8e6GE9RRkK

More than five hours by car from the site of the raids were the agents from the CBP El Centro Sector, which is close to the Mexican-Sud American border.

In a press release, Chief Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino stated that “The El Centro Sector takes all border threats seriously.” “Our area of responsibility stretches from the US/Mexico Border, north, as mission and threat dictate, all the way to the Oregon line”.

The operation, according to UFW spokesperson Antonio De Loera-Brust, demonstrates how aggressive organizations like CBP are likely to be as Trump ascends in power.

He also objected to CBP’s description of the raids as being focused on criminals, claiming that the operation cast a wide net and profiled individuals who resembled farmworkers.

Two of the arrested were UFW members who the organization described as fathers who had resided in the area for more than 15 years.

Border Patrol appears to be conducting this untargeted sweep based on profiling on their own initiative and authority by operating more than 300 miles north of the Mexican border, according to De Loera-Brust, who told Al Jazeera.

Source: Aljazeera