Hiding in the fields – farm workers fearing deportation stay in California’s shadows

The women crouch down motionless, kneeling between endless rows of fruit bushes, almost hidden from view. “Are you from ICE?” one of the women, a farm worker in a hat and purple bandana, asks us fearfully.

After assuring her that we’re not with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has been raiding nearby farms and arresting workers over the past week, she straightens her back, rising slightly out of the dirt. “Have you seen any ICE vans? Are there patrol cars out there?” she asks, still unsure if we can be trusted and she can emerge.

The woman, an undocumented migrant from Mexico, has been picking berries in Oxnard, California since arriving in the US two years ago. It’s a town which boasts of being the “strawberry capital of the world”. As her work shift ended on Wednesday, she and her co-workers hid in the…Read The Full Article/Content Here.