It was after 5 p.m., a time for dinner and recreation. Families began their evening routines, and somewhere nearby, someone could be heard practicing a tuba.
On the west side of Santa Maria, Amale and Jose, two Latino undocumented migrant farm laborers, have finished work for the day and just arrived home to their apartment.
They agreed to discuss recent worksite inspections by immigration officials that cost them both their long-held jobs.
Amale’s well into middle age, and Jose, a middle-aged man of short stature, is wearing an orange and yellow jacket vest and stands a little more than 5 feet tall, with jet-black hair and a scruffy mustache.
Jose put his hands in his vest pockets, while Amale appears to be uneasy standing in the open.
Both of them worked at Bonita Packing Company (Bonipak) until March 8, when, according to Amale, around 450 workers—more than half of the company’s labor force—were let go following a surprise visit from officials with the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations division.
They were checking I-9 forms, which are used by employers to verify workers’ identities. Because they didn’t have proper identification, Amale and Jose were among the workers the company was forced to let go.
It was the second such visit by ICE within four months. The first was in December when ICE paid a visit to the Adam Brothers Farms, co-owned by Santa Barbara County 4th District Supervisor Peter Adam, according to ICE documents obtained by the Sun.
Migrant workers from both companies were left without jobs, while farmers were sent scrambling for more workers.
Both events demonstrate the turmoil that followed recent visits by ICE officials. Such visits frustrate farmers who say they already face an existing shortage of laborers in the county.
Many believe the solution lies within new comprehensive immigration reform on a national level. Experts say it’s needed but not likely to occur anytime soon.
A ‘cumbersome’ process
According to the Santa Maria Economic Development Commission, agriculture is a major player in Northern Santa Barbara County, accounting for more than 20,000 jobs.
If what local farmers are saying is true, then that number of employees appears to be dwindling.
Farmers interviewed for this story said they are facing a shortage of farm labor. With Santa Barbara County agriculture valued at more than $1.4 billion in 2013, according to a county crop report, the labor shortage is a problem that’s hard to ignore, and it appears to be a nationwide trend.
According to a 2015 report issued by the Partnership for A New American Economy, the supply of workers to U.S. farmers has decreased by 146,000 people, or 20 percent, between 2002 and 2014.
Local farmers are feeling the squeeze. Kevin Merrill, of Mesa Vineyard Management in Atascadero and a vintner who owns close to 1,000 acres of wine grapes in the county, said that the number of available workers is as much as 60 to 70 percent down from what farmers in the area need.
Some crops can be harvested mechanically, such as his grapes. However, depending on topography of the land, laborers are needed. Many of the crops in the county, such as strawberries, can’t be harvested mechanically because doing so will ruin the quality of the product.
Time and money are at stake. Merrill finds it hard to quantify in dollars but estimates anywhere between a $500 and $5,000 loss per acre without adequate labor.
Growers cite two reasons for the labor shortage: President Barack Obama’s recent “strengthening enforcement” at the U.S.-Mexico border and crackdown on the hiring of undocumented workers; and the H-2A system, or the temporary visa that’s granted to migrant workers strictly for agricultural jobs in the U.S.
The H-2A program is the only legal way to hire migrant workers for farm jobs in the U.S., and the system is highly regulated.
“It’s a cumbersome system,” Merrill said. “It doesn’t work very well.”
Paul Van Leer, a member of Santa Barbara County’s Agricultural Advisory Committee and a farmer who grows avocados and lemons along the Gaviota Coast, agreed.
In addition to paying wages, farmers must provide a full complement of insurance (including medical), housing, transportation to and from the worksite, and other accommodations.
Accounting for competition from other farmers and different work sectors, Van Leer said it’s becoming more difficult than ever to fill the gap.
“There’s just not the amount of people available for all growers,” Van Leer said. “It’s getting worse as time progresses.”
A ‘wink and nod’ system
Farmers often use labor contractors to fulfill the burdensome task of hiring workers, including those without H-2A status. This is where things get complicated.
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which established the H-2A program, makes it illegal for employers to hire undocumented workers.
But this frustrates employers, who are not allowed to question the authenticity of work documentation, like Social Security cards and driver’s licenses, because they can be accused of discrimination. If documents look legitimate, employers must accept them.
Andy Caldwell is a local AM radio talk show host and executive director of nonprofit Coalition of Labor, Agriculture, and Business (COLAB). He is outspoken on these types of topics. He calls it a “wink and nod” system.
“A farmer takes a green card, work visa, Social Security number, California ID, and they have no valid reason beyond face value that these things are fake,” Caldwell told the Sun.
According to Caldwell, there’s a two-pronged process of ICE verification. First, he said, ICE goes to the worksite and asks if they have documentation for every single employee. ICE looks at it at face value, he said.
Then, ICE will run IDs through databases to see if they were duplicated. If the company is caught with employees with fake documentation, they’re fined and given 10 days to fire the employee.
What ends up happening, according to Caldwell, is that the workers go to another farm and the process is repeated. And the company, forced to fire its employees, must scramble to find replacements, Caldwell added, which can be difficult due to a farmworker shortage across several states that’s caused by a decline in immigration from south of the border.
He called the recent ICE operations “unproductive.”
“I don’t like the phenomena,” Caldwell said. “The bottom line here is nothing gets solved by this. Nothing really changes.”
Red tape, explained
Jason Resnick is the vice president and general counsel for the Western Growers Association (WGA), an Irvine-based farming group with about 5,000 members. According to Resnick, the WGA represents half of the fruit and vegetable production and one-third of organic produce in the U.S.
He also handles H-2A applications for WGA members. During the application process, one must endure a tightly coordinated, albeit redundant, effort between seven government entities, including the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), and several state workforce agencies. Not only does he call the process duplicative, but he also said it’s antiquated.
When the Immigration Reform and Control Act came into being, the Internet was practically non-existent and business at the USCIS was conducted mostly via telephone calls and snail mail.
Things haven’t really changed much, according to Resnick. When he met with officials of some of the aforementioned agencies in Washington, D.C., he learned that the IT systems for processing H-2A systems were out of date. The USCIS, he said, doesn’t even have a machine to scan and transcribe email addresses into the database.
“We’re hoping those systems can be upgraded so that we can file our applications electronically at all agencies and get real-time status of the application,” Resnick told the Sun, adding that it would shave days off farmers’ wait times. “We’re talking about perishable crops, and perishable crops can’t wait for harvesters.”
Claire Nicholson, a USCIS spokeswoman from Los Angeles, was unaware of some of the details of how application information is processed. But she told the Sun that the USCIS is “very responsive” and that anyone can call or email her agency for questions or status updates regarding their applications. She added that there are national security implications for the rigorous process.
“We want to make sure we do our due diligence in background checks for national security reasons,” Nicholson said.
According to Resnick, it’s not just California feeling the worker shortage, but Colorado as well as Arizona.
Resnick said his meetings in D.C. were constructive and he’s hoping they will encourage agencies to do everything in their power to work more effectively, although he added more needs to be done through Congress.
A lawful chilling effect
Despite heavy opposition, the Santa Maria City Council went forward in 2014 with allowing ICE to build a holding facility on McCoy Lane. It replaced the office previously housed inside the federal prison in Lompoc.
Rumors among the farm laborer community have fueled speculation that the proximity of the new ICE facility and the recent worksite inspections are more than simply a coincidence.
David Marin, deputy field director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations in Los Angeles, repeatedly insisted to local media outlets last August that the facility was strictly meant for processing criminals in the country without documentation.
Speculation about the new ICE facility continued when within four months of the completion of the facility, agency officials were soon visiting the Adam Brothers Farms. In December 2015 workers were let go. ICE inspected Bonipak on March 8, and hundreds of migrant workers were laid off.
Documents acquired through Freedom of Information Act requests through a third-party were obtained by the Sun and show that ICE was investigating both farms.
Bonipak did not respond to a Sun request for interview. Adam, who is up for re-election this year in his district, didn’t respond directly to calls made by the Sun. When contacted, a spokesman for Adam said the supervisor didn’t want to comment on the matter.
“Obviously there’s a little bit of sensitivity here when dealing with Mr. Adam and his business, not with Mr. Adam as a supervisor,” said Bob Nelson, Adam’s chief of staff.
Although she couldn’t speak to each investigation, ICE spokeswoman Lori Haley said that the visits to worksites are strictly for compliance and shouldn’t be confused with what their counterparts do at the McCoy facility.
“We want to make sure that employers are complying with the law and hiring workers legally,” Haley told the Sun in a previous interview. “A lot of companies work with us for that reason, so they can get into compliance.”
Haley said the worksite visits were made by agents from Homeland Security Investigations, which she described as the “FBI of Homeland Security” and have nothing to do with the McCoy ICE facility.
Hazel Davalos, a community organizer for the Central Coast United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE), told the Sun that these types of investigations were virtually “unheard of” until now.
“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.
Through a translator, both Amale and Jose said they felt betrayed by ICE.
“They broke their promise because now they’re checking the companies [farms],” Amale said, adding that she felt criminalized by ICE’s worksite checks.
“They said they never were going to go through the companies, they were only going to check the criminals,” Jose said.
Ripe for reform
Recent efforts to change the system have stalled. There was promise in 2013 with the introduction of S.744, a piece of legislation sponsored by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that would have made it possible for undocumented workers to gain legal status and eventually citizenship. Conservative Republicans opposed the bill. Although it passed the Senate, then-Republican House Speaker John Boehner refused to introduce the bill to the House floor and it eventually died “on the vine,” as Western Growers Association’s Resnick put it.
It’s unclear if it’ll be reconsidered any time soon. Since then, a U.S. presidential race has ensued, and Resnick said the legislation doesn’t have much chance of being reheard until after the election in November —if at all.
At the judicial level, the U.S. Supreme Court on April 18 began considering the legality of Obama’s late-2014 executive order to halt the deportation of 4 million undocumented immigrants.
At the end of the day, many of the fired Bonipak workers, like Amale and Jose, were able to find work the very next day through a contractor.
Despite having worked with Bonipak for more than 11 years, Amale said her work history wasn’t considered and she had to leave without any severance benefits.
“Some employees have been there 20 to 30 years and now they’re unemployed,” Caldwell said.
When asked if Amale is worried that ICE is trying to force workers like her to leave the country by putting her out of work, she replied that she isn’t worried, at least not yet.
“In the future I might be,” Amale said.
Staff Writer David Minsky can be reached at dminsky@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 21-28, 2016.