Protests Mount Against ICE Detentions of Immigrant Farmworkers
In response to federal immigration enforcement targeting farmworkers and their communities around the country, the United Farm Workers union (UFW) organized a demonstration in New York today, challenging Trump administration immigration policies and calling for the release and a halt to the deportation of farmworkers already detained.
The union has been organizing demonstrations all week, following the arrests of 14 farmworkers in western New York last Friday. They are organizing at an ICE detention center in Batavia, New York, today to “demand the release of detained farmworker leaders,” according to calls to action from the UFW.
The UFW demonstrations come on the heels of another protest, this one in Washington state yesterday morning, where civil rights groups are also demanding the release of detained farmworkers, including a union organizer.
“We in the labor movement know all too well: an attack on the rights of any worker is an attack on the rights of every worker.”
In both cases, unions say workers appear to have been targeted by agents for their organizing.
Across the country, federal agents for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have detained farmworkers and union organizers amid a wider immigration sweep, in line with President Donald Trump’s policy agenda. Nearly 50,000 were being held in CBP and ICE detention in April. It is unclear exactly how many are farmworkers or labor organizers, but such arrests have been confirmed in California, New York, Vermont, Washington.
In California, Border Patrol agents made 78 arrests in Kern County, targeting a Home Depot, a convenience store frequented by farmworkers on their way to work, and drivers on roads running between farms, CalMatters reported.
In Vermont, at least three dairy workers have already been deported to Mexico after nine arrests there in April. Migrant Justice, a Vermont-based human rights organization, says thousands of people marched against ICE detentions last week.
“ICE has deported three farmworkers without due process, in clear violation of their rights,” Brett Stokes, a professor at Vermont Law who leads the legal team representing eight of the farmworkers, said in a statement. “We will fight for justice for those unjustly deported and will continue to move for the release of those still in detention.”
Arbey Lopez-Lopez, who was detained separately from the other eight, has a hearing scheduled with an immigration judge May 15. “The remaining farmworkers in detention have yet to receive a hearing date,” Migrant Justice said.
In New York, on the morning of May 2, federal agents pulled over a bus full of farmworkers in Albion, west of Rochester, detaining 14 employees of Lynn-Ette & Sons Farms. The UFW says the agents had a list of names, including union leaders who had been organizing at the farm. Those were the workers detained, the union said.
