Bonita Packing Company (Bonipak) fired nearly 300 farmworkers last week following a visit by agents from the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, according to Central Coast Alliance United for A Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) Community Organizing Director Hazel Davalos, who confirmed the firings to the Sun.
Messages left with Bonipak by the Sun were not returned before press time.
However, Davalos said she’s been in contact with some of the workers and they were let go because their identifications couldn’t be verified.
In the year or so that Davalos has been living on the Central Coast, she said these types operations by ICE were “unheard of” until now and suspects they could be connected to the newly built ICE facility on McCoy Lane that went into operation last summer.
“It really raises the question: Is it a coincidence that the ICE processing facility is opening up and now we see this sort of enforcement?” Davalos asked.
David Marin, deputy field director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) in Los Angeles has repeatedly said that the new facility is meant to only hold and process “criminal aliens,” or undocumented immigrants who have committed violent crimes.
This mission contrasts with the worksite enforcement operations from ICE, which are conducted by the agency’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) team and have nothing to do with ERO.
Although she was reluctant to use this analogy, ICE Spokeswoman Lori Haley described the HSI as “the FBI of Homeland Security” that comprises special agents who do criminal investigations for a variety of crimes other than worksite enforcement, such as going after child predators and human trafficking.
Haley couldn’t talk about the recent enforcement action, citing an active investigation, but she said that many of the investigations involve multiple agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Justice, which prosecutes criminal cases from ICE. She denied that the recent worksite investigations have anything to do with the new ERO holding facility.
“We want to make sure that employers are complying with the law and hiring workers legally,” Haley told the Sun. “A lot of companies work with us for that reason, so they can get into compliance.”
A similar worksite investigation occurred at Adam Brothers’ Farming sites—which is co-owned by Santa Barbara County 4th District Supervisor Peter Adam—back in December, according to an ICE document obtained by the Sun.
When contacted, chief of staff Bob Nelson told the Sun that Adam didn’t want to comment on the investigation.
“Obviously there’s a little bit of sensitivity here when dealing with Mr. Adam and his business, not with Mr. Adam as a supervisor,” Nelson said.
Andy Caldwell, a local AM radio host and executive director of nonprofit Coalition of Labor, Agriculture, and Business (COLAB), generally agrees with securing borders, but called the recent ICE operations “unproductive.”
Caldwell told the Sun that employers have no choice but to accept work IDs at face value. He calls it a “wink-and-nod” system that ultimately hurts both employer and employee.
“The employee just goes out to another farm and gets another farm job using the same documents they more than likely used with their previous employer and the cycle begins all over again,” Caldwell said. “Except the first company has to scramble to find replacement workers.”
This article appears in Mar 24-31, 2016.
