Montpelier, vt. (AP)-After six 12-hour Milkenkoegen services, José Molina-Aguilar's only day off was hardly relaxing.
On April 21, he and seven colleagues were arrested at a dairy farm in Vermont in what proponents were one of the largest immigration raids ever of the state.
“I saw through the window of the house that immigration was already there, within the farm, and then they held us,” he said in a recent interview. “I was busy with asylum, and even with that they respected the document that I still kept in my hands.”
Four of the workers were quickly deported to Mexico. Molina-Aguilar, released after a month in a detention center in Texas with his asylum shop still awaiting, now works on another farm and speaks out.
“We have to fight like a community, so that we can all have the rights and continue to fight that we have in this country,” he said.
The owner of the intended farm refused to comment. But Brett Stokes, a lawyer who represents the prisoner employees, said that the raid sent shock waves throughout the northeastern agricultural industry.
“These strong arm tactics that we see and these increases of enforcement, whether it is legal or not, all play a role in setting up fear in the community,” said Stokes, director of the Center for Justice Reform Clinic at the law of Vermont and the Graduate School.
Given the mixed messages from the White House, that fear remains. President Donald Trump, who campaigned a promise to deport millions of immigrants who worked illegally in the US, paused arrests on farms, restaurants and hotels last month. But less than a week later, the assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security said that the enforcement of the workplace would continue.
Such uncertainty causes problems in large states such as California, where farms produce more than three -quarters of the fruit of the country and more than a third of the vegetables. But it also affects small states such as Vermont, where Dairy is just as good part of the identity of the state as his famous maple syrup.
Almost two-thirds of all milk production in New England come from Vermont, where more than half of the state's agricultural land is devoted to dairy and dairy crops. There are approximately 113,000 cows and 7,500 goats spread over 480 farms, according to the Vermont Agricy of Agriculture, Food and Markets, which holds the annual economic impact of the industry at $ 5.4 billion.
That impact has more than doubled over the past decade, with widespread help from immigrant work. More than 90% of the farms investigated for the recent report from the Agency worked migrating employees.
Among them, Wuendy Bernardo, who has lived in Vermont for more than a decade and has an active request to stop her deportation on humanitarian grounds: Bernardo is the primary caregiver for her five children and her two orphans, according to a 2023 letter signed by tens of laws.
Hundreds of Bernardo supporters showed up for her most recent check-in with immigration officials.
“It's really difficult, because every time I come here, I don't know if I go back to my family or not,” she said after being told to return within a month.
Just like Molina-Aguile, Rossy Alfaro also worked 12-hour days with a day off a week on a farm in Vermont. Now a lawyer in migrant justice, she said that the dairy industry would collapse without immigrants.
“It would all go down,” she said. “There are many people who work long hours, without complaining, without being able to say,” I don't want to work. ” They just do the work “
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Ramer reported Van Concord, NH
