Agricultural producers are watching what is happening in California as U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents rounded up suspected undocumented immigrants in Bakersfield and elsewhere in Kern County.
The United Farm Workers Foundation told the Fresno Bee that nearly 200 people had been detained early in the week with more expected. The Fresno Bee article included that immigration advocates said that farmworkers were targeted on their way to work and that there had been arrests “happening outside of common public places like grocery stores, a Home Depot, a Chevron gas station, an In-Shape Family Fitness, and along the Highway 99.”
The Bee’s story also includes information from California Citrus Mutual that the organization did not believe that the raids were targeted at agricultural operations but were instead focused on criminal activity of specific people.
The Border Patrol apprehensions are coming during the end of the Biden administration. The first three years of Joe Biden’s tenure as president featured a record number of border crossings.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, under the Biden administration, has been seeking detention facilities in various regions of the country. The American Civil Liberties Union obtained federal documents that revealed some of the administration’s plans that have been apparently in the works for months.
The documents list Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Utah, and Wisconsin as potential detention facilities. The facilities, according to the documents, can be publicly or privately owned and operated.
President-elect Donald Trump promised voters that his administration would conduct the largest mass deportation in the country’s history.
California farmers weighed in on how mass deportations could affect agricultural operations.
ABC News talked to farmers in California’s Central Valley, a 400-mile area that grows about 25% of the country’s food supply. The report stated that nearly one-half of the farm workers in the Central Valley are undocumented.
Agricultural leaders question how the region would continue to harvest the vital food supply without the labor of undocumented immigrants who are willing to do the strenuous physical labor on long days of work in extreme heat.
Iowa agricultural organizations are watching proposed legislation by a Republican lawmaker who will try again this year to pass a bill that could make drivers’ licenses detail whether a person is a U.S. citizen.
Representative Steve Holt -- who represents Denison in western Iowa where immigrants are part of the agricultural workforce – also wants to make it a state crime to transport people who are not in the country legally with the intent to profit from the action or to hide undocumented people from law enforcement.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, has announced that taxpayers will fund 40 new billboards in Central America and Mexico to try to deter migrants from coming into the United States illegally.
Some of the billboards include warnings for those thinking about crossing illegally:
"Stop. If you cross the border illegally into Texas, you will be jailed."
"Your wife and daughter will pay for the trip with their bodies. Coyotes lie. Don't put your family at risk."
The billboards will appear in Spanish, Russian, and Chinese and cost taxpayers about $100,000, according to Abbott’s office.
Abbott has also ordered construction of additional border wall and wiring and sent Department of Public Safety troopers and National Guard members to arrest migrants along the Texas and Mexico border on criminal trespassing charges.
ABC 13-TV in Houston has a story that includes Governor Abbott discussing why he is committed to additional efforts to reduce illegal immigration and a woman who illegally came into the country as a child and now wonders what will happen.
