The Fate of Detained Workers Depends on Us

For everyone who cares about Migrant Justice leaders Ignacio “Nacho” de la Cruz and his 18-year-old stepdaughter Heidi Perez, it’s great news that the immigration court has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to release them—at least for now.

Well more than 100 people protested outside Burlington, Vermont’s Federal District Court for a rally with moving speakers both Monday and Tuesday—and just as many had shown up at the Statehouse a few weeks before to demand their release. The courtroom itself was also packed for a habeas corpus hearing for Heidi, which is probably irrelevant given her upcoming release. But she and her stepfather are still vulnerable to deportation.

Why were the two detained at all? Coverage in Vermont Digger presents an unnerving picture of a “fishing expedition.” Perez and de la Cruz describe in “declarations” injuries which occurred when the driver’s window was broken by a Border Patrol supervisor, as well as physical maltreatment and a threat to their children once they were in custody. At the time, they say the agent refused to answer why he had stopped them apart from the fact that the driver spoke Spanish. The report of his affidavit in Digger reported that he expected to see more people in the back of the van (which he did not). He said that the driver and Perez refused to roll the window down fully, produce a driver’s license, or respond to his questions. From their point of view, they were within their rights to call the Migrant Justice hotline, and asked repeatedly why they were stopped and whether they were free to go. Since the detention, the government has also alleged that de la Cruz may have been involved in smuggling people based on the phone they seized from him. The alleged incident involves six people (reported here.) No charges have yet been filed against him.

Situations like this are going to arise more and more often everywhere in the country, and on our doorstep in Vermont. Under new legislation which eviscerates low-income healthcare access, ICE will gobble up more than the combined budgets of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the U.S. Marshals Service; and the Bureau of Prisons.

If there was ever a time to show up in public and financially for Vermont’s dairy workers and their organization, it’s now.

Even after hearing of the upcoming release, a progressive lawyer friend and I were left with a queasy feeling about the ultimate outcome after Monday’s hearing for Heidi—despite Heidi’s being a poster child for everything we would want for an immigrant in this country. She graduated from Milton High School just days before she was detained. Even as a junior, she was a leader and speaker with the Milk with Dignity campaign to improve conditions for Vermont’s migrant dairy workers. Perez was among those behind the Education Equity Act, which allows financial aid and in-state tuition regardless of a student’s immigration status. Her opinion piece in Vermont Digger, coauthored with Brissia Hernandez, said, “When we first moved to Vermont, there was basically no hope for students like us to go to college, even though we have been dreaming of it since we were little.” Perez has a scholarship to attend Vermont State University this fall. She thinks far beyond her own needs, and made our state a fairer, better place.

She’s done everything right—except that she is undocumented.

In the same Vermont Federal District courtroom, habeas corpus hearings were also held for Rümeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi and Kseniia Petrova. Each was in the country legally, and their legal status was capriciously revoked without due process. In contrast, Perez and de la Cruz are caught in a trap, a “cruel system” as several rally speakers described it. We depend on their labor but make it all but impossible for them to achieve legal status in the U.S. The government in power is pushing to expunge them from our country.

The power of the federal government is now behind every Border Patrol agent, the quotas are out there, and the agents are expected to fill them. We can’t really count on the administration’s mixed messages. Most of Vermont’s dairy workers and many of our construction and landscape workers are vulnerable to the same treatment that was meted out to Perez and de la Cruz. Recent raids have upset the whole dairy industry. No matter what someone’s rights may be in the technical sense, Border Patrol has carte blanche in most of Vermont. Only by making it politically and socially unacceptable—and ultimately illegal—to hunt for undocumented people and treat them inhumanely, can we really change this situation.

Even if these two prominent leaders were not targeted initially (and they may have been), a simple identity check would have revealed who they are. Conservative estimates say we have 800-900 dairy workers plus families in Vermont, and only a handful have been detained, fewer deported—and two of that handful are Migrant Justice leaders.

Will the legal system—whether the District Court or the immigration court—ultimately give relief to the undocumented workers who have been persecuted under every president, Democrat or Republican? Except when the government missteps or treats people badly, it’s hard to imagine real relief. Watching a 4-year-old girl in pigtails cavorting on the edge of the rally, I shuddered to think her undocumented parents might be deported. Among the speakers was Wuendy Bernardo, the primary caregiver for her own five children and two orphaned younger sisters. ICE requires her to report every month now, where hundreds have accompanied her on the last several visits. Her quiet dignity, her grave face, and the child clinging to her side told the whole story. She said “Here, we can feel the sun and the wind. In detention, you don’t feel that. You don’t even know if it is night or day.”

If the legal system offers only limited relief because it has now been tuned toward cruelty and persecution, our answers are in the streets, in the legislature, in the media—and beyond that in human kindness. People on dairy farms are afraid to go shopping. They are afraid to send their kids to school. Migrant Justice needs our presence and our help. As a worker-led organization, it has been a consistently positive force in winning legislative victories, with de la Cruz as an important figure in most. It builds solidarity, exposes abuses, and fights for better conditions.

If there was ever a time to show up in public and financially for Vermont’s dairy workers and their organization, it’s now. It's too dangerous for them to be on the streets themselves, and besides, most of them are working 12-hour shifts. It’s our turn.