December 2014 & February 2015
Several years ago, my family and I moved from Philadelphia to Santa Maria, a small city of 100,000 on California’s central coast. Santa Maria’s main industry is agriculture. Its most lucrative crops, which include strawberries, broccoli and grapes, require a high level of manual labor to grow, harvest, and ship. The move toward producing these crops away from others that are more readily cultivated and harvested by machine, happened in Santa Maria from 1980 to 2010. The shift impacted the city profoundly.
The demand for farm field pickers and produce packers (who work in “cooling plans”) led to an explosion of Santa Maria’s population: a flood of immigrant farm laborers. Not long ago, a majority of the city’s populace was white. Today 70% of its residents are of Latino descent. As many as 30% or more of them are undocumented.
And along with the great influx of the undocumented workers and their families, the “ICE man cometh.” Eugene O’Neill’s play, with its theme of the illusionary promise of the American dream, could not be more apropos.
While they carry a large portion of the local economy on their backs - sometimes literally – undocumented farm laborers in Santa Maria have difficult lives with little promise for prosperity. As field workers, they toil for long hours at physically demanding labor in environs laden with fertilizers and pesticides. As packers in cooling plants they work similar hours in winter-like chilled warehouses.
Typically, undocumented farm workers have six-day workweeks. But few collect overtime because their employers have found legal ways to subvert labor laws. Employers have similarly found ways to avoid other benefits, such as health insurance and paid sick days. Sometimes farm laborers have to fight to collect worker’s compensation when they are injured on the job.
Then there are times of the year when there are no crops to pick or pack, and undocumented laborers find themselves unemployed without unemployment benefits. All these factors add up to a formula of persistent poverty among the undocumented people of Santa Maria.
While they receive few benefits, undocumented laborers do pay taxes. Many have false Social Security numbers and identification documents, which are easily obtained. But few ever collect Social Security or use Medicare benefits, because they fear the legal consequences of fraud. It’s fair to say that as a group, undocumented laborers contribute more to the economy of Santa Maria than they take. In fact, the local economy would probably collapse without them.
Undocumented immigrants are young when they arrive in Santa Maria, so most will have children who are born as American citizens. Some arrive here with young children who can grow up not even realizing they lack U.S. citizenship.
For decades, undocumented immigrants have been a quiet and unorganized group in Santa Maria. A dozen years ago there was a movement toward unionization and a widespread work stoppage. The United Farm Workers arrived on the scene, but dropped the ball, so nothing came of the movement. Since then, the undocumented workers in Santa Maria have maintained a low profile, until this year, when they collectively challenged the U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE)—and in a big way!
There has been major shift in emphasis for ICE under the Obama Administration. With the president’s encouragement, ICE has focused more on deporting undocumented aliens who commit crimes. It has done so through its Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO). This may seem to be a fair policy, until one understands what exactly has constituted a deportable crime in the eyes of ICE-ERO.
ICE-ERO’s list has included violent felonies and larceny, but also traffic violations, disorderly conduct, and reentry after having been deported (which carries a two year prison sentence, on average). The list also includes suspected criminal connections, such as having a tattoo indicating gang membership (even if one has left the gang and gone straight). According to a New York Times analysis, about two-thirds of 2 million deportations under Barak Obama were individuals that committed minor offenses. Only 20% had committed serious crimes (“More Deportations Follow Minor Crimes, Records Show,” April 6, 2004).
Not surprisingly, Barak Obama can claim the greatest number of deportations among all American presidents, averaging 400,000 annually during his tenure, according to a recent PEW study (“The Rise of Federal Immigration Crimes,” March 2014).
And unfortunately, the deportation of so many undocumented aliens - especially for minor offenses and illegal reentry - has left many of their children behind. The Nation Magazine (“Deportation Night-mare,” May 5, 2014) reports that between 2010 and 2012, approximately 200,000 parents of US-born children were deported, leading to the placement of 5,000 of their children in foster care, a number that is growing.
ICE-ERO has been very active in the Santa Maria area. Its agents mostly arrest undocumented aliens as they are released from county and state prisons at the completion of their prison sentences. At times, ICE-ERO agents also conduct raids of homes when they learn of other aliens that have criminal records. The agents take the aliens to their office and processing center located 20 miles away from Santa Maria, on the campus of a federal prison in Lompoc, CA. After processing them in Lompoc, the agents then take their detainees to Los Angeles where they are imprisoned while waiting for a hearing before a deportation judge. The detainees typically wait in prison for several months while they await their hearing.
The ICE-ERO office and processing center in Lompoc is housed in a group of aging trailers. For some time, the agents have wanted a larger and modernized facility. They have also wanted a more convenient location, closer to where most of them live. This year they got their wish, when the General Services Administration made an arrangement with a developer to lease a 12,000 square foot facility to be constructed in the middle of Santa Maria
- next to medical offices and two high end residential tracts.
The announcement of the new ICE facility, which will include a holding cell (jail), created a controversy in Santa Maria. It started with the meetings over the proposed facility before the city’s planning commission. Word of the new facility spread like a wildfire among the farm and cooling plant workers, who had strong feelings about having an ICE facility in their own town - looming over them and in their face. The workers decided to push back.
Typically, a dozen attendees constitutes a big crowd at planning commission meetings in Santa Maria. The meeting scheduled to deal with the permitting of the new ICE facility drew over 1,500 people—almost all Latino laborers and their families. The city had never seen anything like it. City Hall was overfilled. Attendees, hoping to make public comment against the new facility, packed the meeting room, hallways, parking lot, yard, and surrounding sidewalks. By policy, a final decision on permitting new development requires two meetings before the planning commission. Anticipating another large crowd, the city moved the second meeting to a large pavilion at its fairgrounds. It was a wise move. Between three and four-thousand people attended the second meeting (according to the city’s own count)! Again, almost all were Latino laborers and their families. The crowd overfilled the pavilion and spilled out onto the surrounding fairgrounds.
I attended the second planning commission meeting. The public comment period during the meeting went on for hours and late into the night. Person after person—almost all Latino, and some admitting that they were undocumented—even though ICE agents were present—got up to the microphone to express how the new facility would bring fear into the community. Many spoke about good folks they knew who had been detained and deported by ICE. Some spoke of the anguish of having their families torn apart by ICE. Others expressed how much they loved this country, and that all they wanted was to be a part of it, work hard, and make a living.
I found the meeting deeply moving. There was weeping, courageous testimony, and desperate pleading. But above all, there was remarkable civility. The Latino folks, who understood well how they were being exploited day in and day out, still showed deep respect for the planning commission and the permitting process. Even their young children who were present (and there were many, including infants), were orderly and well behaved, and sat patiently for hours through the proceedings.
Sadly, the planning commission decided to permit the new facility through a divided vote. Amazingly, the crowd received the decision gracefully, and departed quietly. (I can’t help but think of how a planning commission meeting with three to four-thousand people would go, done in a place like Philadelphia by comparison!) It was then that I decided to become personally involved and started researching the issues around ICE facility.
I learned through Freedom of Information Acts requests that ICE had never bothered to investigate the possibility of building its new facility at its current location: on the campus of the federal prison in Lompoc (20 miles away from Santa Maria), where it logically belonged. It was relocating its offices and detention center to Santa Maria because it wanted to, not because it needed to. I also researched Santa Maria’s zoning plan, and studied the Land-Based Classification Standards (LBCS) system of the American Planning Association, which guides municipal planning in California. The new ICE facility, with its holding cell, armory, and law enforcement function, was clearly incompatible with the zoning classification assigned to its proposed site.
Interestingly, ICE officials publicly testified that moving their facility into Santa Maria would NOT result in increased arrests or deportations of undocumented residents. ICE agents were already working in Santa Maria and insisted they would maintain the same level of activity. They thus argued that the widespread fear of mass deportations was exaggerated and unfounded. This
proved to be a telling admission for me. Some residents of Santa Maria supported the ICE facility because they believed having ICE agents stationed in town would make the city safer. This was a misperception given ICE’s testimony on the level of its activities.
I then registered as one of four appellants against the permitting of the new ICE facility before Santa Maria’s city council, which had final say over the matter. The other appellants included: a group of home owners who feared for their value of their properties because their residences were in the vicinity of the proposed site for the ICE facility; a local chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens who argued the new facility would be
detrimental to the welfare of the Santa Maria community because it would scare away farm workers who were essential to the local economy; and a nonprofit called the Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement, arguing that immigrants as a group, are more law abiding than regular citizens.
The city council meeting scheduled to hear the appeals was also held in the pavilion at the fairgrounds, and again drew thousands of attendees. I presented mostly technical arguments against the ICE facility to city council, arguing the incompatibility of the zoning and that the new facility presented no gain for the city. My logic on the second point was that the facility would actually increase the criminal presence in Santa Maria, since ICE agents, by their own testimony, would not be effecting more arrests. Instead, they would be bringing aliens convicted of crimes from prisons outside the city, into the city for processing.
The arguments and hours of public comment against the ICE facility (with not a single comment in favor of it), fell on deaf ears for 3 of the 5 city council members, who stated that Santa Maria needs the ICE facility to help promote public safety. The ICE facility was approved, and is currently under construction.
So what is the message of this story? First, that American sentiment toward its Latino immigrants is so irrational, that we are willing to act against our own welfare, such as by undermining our local economies. The Santa Maria Valley farming industry would collapse without the labor of undocumented immigrants.
Secondly, that our politicians too readily use fear in attempting to govern. Since ICE has made clear it will not step up its arrest activities in Santa Maria, the city council members who support the ICE facility are counting on fear to keep the undocumented immigrants from engaging in criminal activities, and are willing to let the broader Latino community suffer for it.
And thirdly, that the United States has a virtual serfdom when it comes to immigrant workers and its farming industry. Our country greatly needs its undocumented workers, but treats them in ways that keeps them poor, vulnerable, and powerless.
While I was writing this article, President Obama signed an executive order allowing certain undocumented immigrants to stay and work in our country for up to three years. The executive order, referred to as the “Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Residents” (DAPA), applies to undocumented adults that have lived in the U.S. continuously since January 1, 2010 and had a child who was either a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident on November 20, 2014. Immigrants will be able to apply for DAPA status beginning in May of 2015.
President Obama’s executive order also expanded the existing “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” program (DACA). This program allows undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. under the age of 16, and have lived here continuously since January 1, 2010 and are either in school or have graduated from high school or obtained a GED, to also temporarily stay and work in the U.S. Immigrants can apply for the expanded DACA
status beginning in February of 2015.
The president’s actions are well intended, but I question their efficacy. First, the president’s order will not significantly alter the deportation operations of ICE-ERO. ICE-ERO will still have authority to deport undocumented immigrants who have children that are US citizens, or immigrants who came to the U.S. under the age of 16, if these immigrants have committed a significant misdemeanor (or three minor misdemeanors) or are considered a security threat. This gives ICE wide discretion.
But more importantly, consider the situation of otherwise law abiding, undocumented immigrants. The president is asking them to come forward, identify themselves to the federal government, register for work permits, and obtain
a real Social Security number --revealing where they live and who they work for -- so they can obtain temporary legal status. In other words, the president is asking undocumented immigrants to trust that in three years the new president and Congress will continue his policy.
The new, temporary immigration policy requires tremendous risk-taking by undocumented immigrants. Indications are that many immigrants will take this gamble, because they so genuinely seek to be legal “Americans.” The battle over immigration rights will likely be front and center in electoral politics over the next few years, and intensify when a new president and Congress begin their terms in 2017. It’s a battle that people concerned with social justice are called to join.
Scott Fina
CPF West
http://sanctuaryphiladelphia.org/ We are an interfaith, multicultural immigrant justice organization working with communities across faith, ethnicity, and class to end injustices against immigrants, regardless of status. … We work together to bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice and transform our communities into a place where immigrants, families, friends, and neighbors are safe, respected, and welcomed; where economic, spiritual, and emotional wholeness are realized; and where borders and divisions disappear as we build a community welcoming to everyone.
New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia
NSM@sanctuaryphiladelphia.org (215) 279-7060