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By Tom Sanders
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Washington state are preying on vulnerable farm workers and snatching them off the street like “serial killers,” a top union leader told Newsweek.
The last few months have seen a surge of ICE activity in the state, with an Freedom of Information Act request revealing that ICE officers have arrested 2,500 people between March and August of this year.
The highest proportion of incidents have taken place in Yakima County, which has seen 445 arrests over the past three months, many of which are reported to be dairy farm workers currently dealing with a outbreak of avian flu that has killed at least one person and potentially infected many more.
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Newsweek has contacted ICE and the Yakima County Health Board for comment.
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“Yakima is ground zero for ICE right now. They have more deportations than Seattle,” Elizabeth Strater, national vice president of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union, told Newsweek. "There are roving patrols of ICE agents, in unmarked cars, masked and armed, and they are picking farm workers off one at a time. One car at a time, going after people on their way to work on agricultural roads.
“They’re not doing the big showy raids. They’re just picking people off like serial killers. The only way the family finds out what’s happened is that they find the car abandoned on the side of the road. And it’s in vast numbers.”
Aside from the moral argument, the ongoing targeting of dairy workers in the area may also be contributing to a public health crisis in Yakima, as the threat of deportation has prevented workers infected with avian flu from seeking medical treatment.
“If a worker is at risk or if he's gotten infected, they don't go to the doctor,” a UFW spokeswoman” told KING-TV in Seattle. “They don't want to miss work, especially with what's going on nationally with the administration and the ICE raids.”
Nearly all the raids in Yakima take place at either traffic stops, or at check-ins with other enforcement agencies. These detainments are referred to as “at large” or street arrests by ICE. David Morales, a volunteer with the Yakima Immigrant Response Network, said nearly all of the detainees they have worked with over the past six months have been in the country for at least five years, with many residing in the U.S. for decades.
“These are really deeply embedded families, and they have many loved ones who are students and full participants that have been employed for decades,” Morales told the Yakima Herald-Republic. “It's a completely different feel when that's happening, because you're completely splitting families apart and just ripping the fabric out of a community.”
'The Cats are Dying'—Fears for Animals as Bird Flu Surges
The backdrop to the raids is the continued spread of avian flu in Yakima County, which has infected at least 33 herds and caused one confirmed death. The Yakima health board reported just three confirmed cases in a recent press release, but the UFW claims there are many more.
“They’re being told there’s a cattle virus,” said Strater, adding that it was "terrifyingly" easy for UFW members to find symptomatic workers. “They are not being told that they are at risk themselves. It wasn’t until a person died that word of mouth started spreading.”
Strater said she believes the majority of infections are being transmitted by aerosolized milk from infected cows coming into contact with the victim’s eyes.
“Between cattle, it’s udder to udder through the milking equipment, but for workers I think the highest number of infections is milk to eye, because it’s difficult to protect the eyes," Strater said. "For the people who are very, very sick, it’s possible they’re inhaling aerosolized milk, and that may be why they’re getting sicker than the people with eye symptoms.”
The vast majority of dairy workers in Yakima are non-English speaking immigrant workers. Although the Health District has set up a hotline offering advice to workers developing symptoms after being exposed to infected dairy, it is in English only and of little use to the Spanish-speaking workers.
“The workers don’t know what to do with the cattle at all,” said Strater. “They say, ‘We don’t know what the cattle need. We don’t know if we’re supposed to be discarding the milk. We don’t know how to discard it.’ The cats are getting into it, and the cats are dying. Even different supervisors on different shifts are giving them different information.
“There might be something on the Yakima County Health Department website, but that’s not where workers are getting their information, and they don’t have the information they need.”
Worsening Health Crisis
The economic conditions imposed upon the workers, plus the nature of their work, have combined to worsen the ongoing health crisis.
“[The workers] can’t miss work because the cattle have to be cared for,” Strater added. “It’s not like a crop where some of the fruit might go off but it’ll still be there in a couple of days. The cattle have to be cared for every single day, and sick cattle need more care. Whether the milk is infected or not, they need to be milked or they’ll die.”
In order to stop the spread of the disease, workers need a “robust, bilingual, culturally competent, multi-agency response,” because they are a “firewall” for the rest of the general public.
“There should be flu clinics that prioritize every dairy worker and their immediate family members," Strater said. "There should be surveillance testing of these workers, the human workers, not the livestock. And when they have to miss work for testing, treatment or quarantine, they need to be compensated. They need to be paid, because they cannot afford not to be, on a very literal level.
“These are very economically vulnerable people. They’re poor. That’s why they do that work. And the workers are desperate for information on how to care for the cattle, and for themselves.”
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: John Fitzpatrick and Dave Siminoff.
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