Hiding in fields – farm workers for fear of deportation in California shadows

Women are on the bottom without mobility, and the kneeling between endless rows of fruit bushes, almost hidden from view.

“Are you from ice?” One of the women, workers on the farm in the purple hat, asks us with fear.

After we assure her that we are not with the United States for Immigration and Customs (ICE), which was shaking the nearby farms and arrested the workers during the past week, she is correcting her back and raising a little dirt.

“Did you see any ice trucks? Are there regular cars there?” She asks, she is still not sure if it can be trusted and can appear.

Women, an undocumented migrant from Mexico, chose the berries in Oxenard, California since their arrival in the United States two years ago. It is a city proud to be “the strawberry capital in the world.”

With the end of her work on Wednesday, she and her colleagues in the fields hidden, pending her being captured by a friend and not sure whether it is safe to go out in the car park.

On the previous day, nine farms were visited in the Oxnard area by snow agents, local activists say, but without inspection orders they were refused to enter and instead they picked up people in the nearby streets, and arrested 35.

The workplace raids are part of President Donald Trump’s goal of arresting 3,000 illegal immigrants daily. On the campaign path, he pledged to deport non -employees accused of violent crimes, a promise that received widespread support, even among some of the Spanish assets.

But in Los Angeles, there was a violent reaction and the streets have sometimes turned out of violence, which led him to send controversy to the army to the second largest city in the United States.

“They treat us like criminals, but we only came here to work and have a better life,” says the woman, who left her children in Mexico two years ago and hopes to return to her next year.

“We don’t want to leave the house anymore. We don’t want to go to the store. We are afraid to hold us.”

Lucas Zucker, a societal organizer in the Central Coast area in California, says that the large -scale raids on the workplace in Hartland agricultural in California have not been seen over the past fifteen years.

But this seems to have changed this week last week.

“They only sweep immigrant societies such as Oxenard randomly, looking for anyone who can find him to meet his political shares.”

More than 40 % of American farmers’ workers immigrants are not documented, According to the 2022 report issued by the US Department of Agriculture. In California, more than 75 % is not documented, According to the University of California, Mercyd.

The raids on farms and companies that depend on the agricultural industry have risen across California, and throughout the entire country, this month.

The arrests raised fears of food supply lack in America, if immigrants are arrested or forced to hide, fearful of coming to work.

This effect was not lost on the White House. Although he won the elections decisively after the promise of collective deportation, Trump admitted on Thursday the difficult time in the crackdown in the agricultural sector.

“Our farmers are badly harmed. As you know, they have very good workers. They have worked for them for 20 years. They are not citizens, but they have turned, as you know,.”

In April, he said that some migrants may be allowed to continue working in the United States, provided they have an official recommendation from the employer and leave the United States first.

The result of one raid can be seen on Tuesday in Oxenard, a municipality of 60 miles (100 km) from the center of Los Angeles, in a video posted on Instagram by a local flower merchant.

Short A man runs in a wide field of crops, through a thick morning fog, where he chases the factors on foot and in trucks. Then it is seen that it falls on the ground, between the rows of plants, where the agents move to arrest him.

When the BBC Oxenard visited on Wednesday, a Customs and Border Protection truck (CBP) was seen parked outside the organic products transport company. The security guard insisted that his visit was not related to immigration, saying: “This is not ice. We will never allow the ice here.”

Many of the inactive tractors and trucks surrounded by an acre of agricultural lands, as an unknown number of workers chose to stay at home.

The effect is the presence of ripple effects on other companies. Raquel Pérez watched from her Mexican restaurant for her family, trying to enter the Boskovich Farms farms, a filling facility for vegetables and herb across the street.

Now, she has her work, Casa Grande Cafe, only one customer during a crowded lunch hour, because farmer workers remained at home. It is estimated that at least half of its ordinary customers are not documented.

“No one comes today,” says her mother, Paula Perez. “We are all on the edge of the abyss.”

Raquel says it’s more interested now for the future of the restaurant – which offers Chilaquiles, Flan, and other Mexican dishes – than it was during Covid, when its customers continued their work as usual, while preserving the nation -filled food.

“They do not realize the domino effect that this will have,” she says about the raids. Other companies around them have already been affected by agriculture. The business adjacent to the purchase and sale of wooden platforms, and local car mechanics are also closed.

“If strawberries or vegetables are not chosen, then this means that there will be nothing to enter into packing homes. This means that there will be no trucks to take things.”

A immigrant sells strawberries from his truck on the side of the road that the raids had already had a devastating effect – on both his actions and hopes to become a legal resident in the United States.

“Less people go out in search of trips, buy less than me,” says Oscar, who comes from the Mexican state of Tlaxcala.

“I am afraid, but I can’t stop going out to work. I have to present to my family,” he says.

Óscar says he is working to finish the touches on the migration situation, but with Ice agents they are now waiting for the courts for immigrants who seek to treat the papers, as it is not sure what to do after that.

“There are not many ways to be legally left here.”