10 of Vermont's immigrant farmworkers petition ICE to stop their deportations

Ten of Vermont’s immigrant farmworkers filed a joint petition on June 20 for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stop their deportations.

The 10 farmworkers are all men from Mexico who have lived in Vermont for years. Some arrived to U.S. on the H-2A visa for temporary agricultural workers, but those visas have since expired, and the workers are now unable to obtain legal permission to live in the country.

The 10 workers are also active members of Migrant Justice, a Burlington-based nonprofit that works for the human rights of Vermont’s immigrant communities.

"I came to Vermont from Mexico when I was 16 years old and have been working on dairy farms ever since. I was pulled over by ICE in 2019 for no reason and detained," said Pedro Ubaldo, one of the ten workers, through a translator. "Now they are trying to deport me to Mexico, but my life is here. I am fighting to stay in Vermont to provide for my family and organize with my community for a better future.”

Migrant Justice said the men — who have been dubbed the "Migrant Justice 10" — were racially profiled by ICE and arrested for lacking immigration papers. They were each arrested separately over the past several years and incarcerated in immigration detention facilities until they were released on bond. Many deportation cases were put on hold due to the pandemic, but trials are now ramping up again — and the threat of deportation is imminent, Migrant Justice said.

The Burlington Free Press reached out to ICE's Boston Field Office, to whom Migrant Justice's petition is addressed, for comment. The office has not yet replied.

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ICE says in its federal guidelines, "Racial profiling is simply not something that will be tolerated, and any indication of racial profiling will be treated with the utmost scrutiny and fully investigated."

ICE doesn't track the racial demographics of the people it deports, but does track their national origins. In fiscal year 2017, the year for which data is most recently available, ICE said that they deported over 226,000 people — 92% of whom were from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Haiti.

Who are the Migrant Justice 10?

The Migrant Justice 10 say in their petition that they use the money they make as farmworkers to support their loved ones.

Sebastian Aguilar-Jimenez is a 21-year-old who supports his parents, two younger siblings, and uncle, who is deaf and unable to speak. Hugo Rojas-Cortes is a 44-year-old who supports his wife and three children, paying for chemotherapy for his eldest daughter, who has breast cancer.

Ismael Mendez-Lopez has lived continuously in the U.S. since 2008, supporting his elderly parents, aunts, sister, nephews, and children. He was arrested in 2019 while food shopping at a Walmart in Derby.

"I think they detained me because someone at the Walmart saw we were Hispanic, and wanted to alert border patrol," said Mendez-Lopez through a translator. "But we weren’t doing anything. We were simply buying food."

Agents arrested Mendez-Lopez "based on information from a concerned citizen," Border Patrol told the publication Seven Days in 2019.

José Luis Córdova-Herrera was arrested in 2018 while leaving a dentist appointment. Medical facilities are "generally protected from enforcement actions by ICE," according to the agency's federal policy. Border patrol denied that they sought out a medical facility when arresting Córdova-Herrera.

Migrant Justice says ICE is retaliating against them

The Migrant Justice 10's petition calls on ICE to exercise its powers of discretion to drop the deportation cases.

The petition refers to federal guidelines for prioritizing immigration cases that threaten "national security" and "public safety." Migrant Justice argues that none of the ten farmworkers pose a threat to anyone's safety — and in fact, are working to make their community a more safe place by asserting the rights of Vermont's immigrants.

The Migrant Justice 10 have been active in campaigns to expand immigrants' access to driver's licenses, stop police discrimination, and pass equitable COVID relief. They have also helped to develop Milk With Dignity, a program that Ben & Jerry's signed on to in 2017, which legally requires companies to source milk from dairy farms that meet fair and safe labor standards.

This advocacy work of the 10 men gives reason for them to not be deported, Migrant Justice argues, as federal guidelines classify a "noncitizen's exercise of workplace or tenant rights, or service as a witness in a labor or housing dispute" as a "mitigating factor" in deportation proceedings.

The stated purpose of the guidelines is "guarding against the use of immigration enforcement as a tool of retaliation for the assertion of legal rights."

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"It is an unfortunate reality that unscrupulous employers exploit their employees' immigration status and vulnerability to removal by, for example, suppressing wages, maintaining unsafe working conditions, and quashing workplace rights and activities," the Department of Homeland Security wrote in the 2021 guidelines.

Immigration officers have a long history of retaliating against Vermont's immigrants for asserting their rights, said Migrant Justice organizer Will Lambek.

This retaliation was the basis for a 2018 federal lawsuit Migrant Justice filed against ICE. In the lawsuit, Migrant Justice accused ICE of infiltrating their private meetings with undercover informants, surveilling them, and arresting over 20 of their members — three of whom were threatened with deportation.

The lawsuit was settled in 2020, with ICE agreeing to not deport the three workers, and to not target a Migrant Justice member "for exercising his or her First Amendment Right."

Read moreICE settles lawsuit filed by immigrant activists in Vermont

"We were successful in that 2018 lawsuit, and now we're back here to take initiative again to stop the deportation of these 10 members of Migrant Justice," said organizer Rossy Alfaro through a translator at a June 20 rally supporting the Migrant Justice 10's petition.

The petition is also backed with the support of letters written by Vermont elected officials, including Rep. Peter Welch, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt, Lt. Gov. Molly Gray, Chittenden County State's Attorney Sarah George, and Lamoille County State’s Attorney Todd Shove.

Vermont's migrant workers: the broader picture

Vermont's dairy economy is sustained by approximately 1,500 migrant workers, according to a 2021 study at the University of Vermont. These workers are 90% "potentially undocumented," mostly from Mexico, and work an average of 64 and a half hours per week at $7.75 an hour (almost $5 below the Vermont minimum wage of $12.55), according to 2016 estimates cited by the UVM study.

"Undocumented migrants have become integral to keeping smaller farms open, and low wages and relaxed working conditions are considered to be the cost of producing milk at record levels and to sustain the industry in a highly competitive milk market," the article states.

The article also found that health and safety issues are commonplace among Vermont's migrant dairy workers, with many being exposed to dangerous working conditions without adequate training or equipment.

One of the formative incidents behind the creation of Migrant Justice was a safety issue — the 2009 death of 20-year-old José Obeth Santiz Cruz, who was strangled to death by a mechanized gutter scraper on a farm in Fairfield.

In 2019, Migrant Justice surveyed over 100 migrant dairy workers across Vermont, and found that 30% didn't have a day off in the week, 38% worked over 12 hours in one day, and 54% faced extreme cold in the on-farm barns they live in.

Nationally, 49% of all farmworkers in the U.S. are undocumented, according to a 2018 report by the Department of Labor.

Additional translation for this story was done by Emilia Cardona.

Contact April Fisher at amfisher@freepressmedia.com. Follow her on Twitter: @AMFisherMedia

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Vermont farmworkers petition ICE to stop their deportations