It's harvest season. #Cherry farms are short of workers amidst an #ImmigrationCrackdown
July 6, 20258:14 AM ET
By Monica Nickelsburg
"The federal immigration crackdown has raised concerns among #agricultural workers. In Washington, growers say it's leading to a labor shortage during cherry season."
#PublicBroadcasting #News #ICEKidnapping #ICERaids #USPol #CherryHarvest #WashingtonState #FoodWaste #TrumpSucks!
US job openings in accommodation and food services surged in May, signaling potential labor shortages as immigration crackdowns reduce workforce supply.
#YonhapInfomax #USLaborMarket #JobOpenings #AccommodationAndFoodServices #ImmigrationCrackdown #JOLTSReport #Economics #FinancialMarkets #Banking #Securities #Bonds #StockMarket
https://en.infomaxai.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=70386
#NativeAmerican leaders blast construction of #Florida’s ‘#AlligatorAlcatraz’ on land they call sacred
By KATE PAYNE
Updated 5:57 PM EDT, June 26, 2025
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — "Florida Republican Gov. #RonDeSantis’ administration is racing ahead with construction of a makeshift immigration detention facility at an airstrip in the Everglades over the opposition of Native American leaders who consider the area their sacred #AncestralHomelands.
"A string of portable generators and dump trucks loaded with fill dirt streamed into the site on Thursday, according to #activist Jessica Namath, who witnessed the activity. The state is plowing ahead with building a compound of heavy-duty tents, trailers and other temporary buildings at the Miami Dade County-owned airfield located in the #BigCypressNationalPreserve, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) west of downtown Miami.
"A spokesperson for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which is helping lead the project, did not respond to requests for comment.
"State officials have characterized the site as an ideal place to hold #migrants saying there’s 'not much' there other than pythons and alligators.
"#Indigenous leaders dispute that and are condemning the state’s plans to build what’s been dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz' on their homelands. #NativeAmericans can trace their roots to the area back thousands of years.
"For generations, the sweeping wetlands of what is now South Florida have been home to Native peoples who today make up the #MiccosukeeTribe of Indians of Florida and the #SeminoleTribe of Florida, as well as the #SeminoleNation of Oklahoma.
" 'Rather than Miccosukee homelands being an uninhabited wasteland for alligators and pythons, as some have suggested, the Big Cypress is the Tribe’s traditional homelands. The landscape has protected the #Miccosukee and Seminole people for generations,' Miccosukee Chairman Talbert Cypress wrote in a statement on social media.
"There are 15 remaining traditional Miccosukee and #Seminole villages in Big Cypress, as well as ceremonial and burial grounds and other gathering sites, Cypress testified before Congress in 2024.
" 'We live here. Our ancestors fought and died here. They are buried here,' he said.
The Big Cypress is part of us, and we are a part of it.'
"Garrett Stuart, who lives about 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) from the site, described the crystal clear waters, open prairies and lush tree islands of Big Cypress as teeming with life.
" 'Hearing the arguments of the frogs in the water, you know? And listen to the grunt of the alligator. You’re hearing the call of that osprey flying by and listening to the crows chatting,' he said. 'It’s all just incredible.'
"Critics have condemned the #detention facility and what they call the state’s apparent reliance on alligators as a security measure as a cruel spectacle, while DeSantis and other state officials have defended it as part of Florida’s muscular efforts to carry out President Donald Trump’s #ImmigrationCrackdown.
#ImmigrationRaids #ICEKidnapping #ProtectTheGlades #NoAlligatorAlcatraz
#ICEDetentionCenter #ProtectTheSacred #BigCypressNationalPreserve
#StopAlligatorAlcatraz
#ICEACAB #StopDetentionCentersEverywhere
#Florida #sheriff warns protesters ahead of nationwide rallies: ‘We will kill you dead’
‘We will be notifying your family where to collect your remains, because we will kill you, graveyard dead,’ the sheriff eerily warned Thursday
by Madeline Sherratt
Friday 13 June 2025
"A Florida sheriff issued a stark message to protesters planning to demonstrate this weekend against increasing ICE arrests nationwide.
"#BrevardCounty Sheriff #WayneIvey warned in a press conference Thursday that if any protesters 'throw a brick, a firebomb, or point a gun,' they will be killed.
" 'If you block an intersection or a roadway in Brevard County, you are going to jail. If you flee arrest, you’re going to go to jail tired because we are going to run you down and put you in jail,' Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey said.
" 'If you try to mob rule a car in Brevard County, gathering around it, refusing to let the driver leave in our county, you’re most likely going to get run over and dragged across the street.'
"Protests against the Trump administration's ongoing #ImmigrationCrackdown have been popping up across the nation after they first erupted in Los Angeles on Friday.
"They are expected to continue through the weekend, in alignment with the president’s birthday parade."
@bouriquet Well, considering how many immigrant farmworkers are afraid to go to work, maybe they will send the Marines to pick lettuce or tomatoes. Or more likely, those who oppose the Trump administration.
Sen. #AlexPadilla is forcibly removed from #DHS Secretary #KristiNoem's news conference in #LosAngeles
Noem was in L.A. to address the ongoing demonstrations against President Donald #Trump's #immigration policies.
June 12, 2025, 2:32 PM EDT / Updated June 12, 2025, 2:59 PM EDT
By Rebecca Shabad and Jacob Soboroff
"Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., was forcibly removed from a news conference in Los Angeles on Thursday after trying to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a press conference related to immigration.
" 'I am Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,' Padilla said to Noem, which prompted several men to physically push him out of the room. It was unclear who the men were, as several were dressed in plainclothes.
"Padilla's office shared a video of the incident with NBC News. The video shows Padilla being taken into a hallway outside and pushed face forward onto the ground as officers with FBI-identifying vests told the senator to put his hands behind his back. The officers then handcuffed him.
"President Donald Trump's immigration policies — and the administration's handling of demonstrations against those policies — have sparked an outcry in recent days. After protesters clashed with officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles on Friday, the president deployed members of the National Guard, and later Marines, to assist local law enforcement. Dozens of demonstrations have taken place across the country in the days that followed.
"Speaking to reporters later Thursday, Padilla said he was receiving a briefing from military officials when he learned Noem was in the same building and decided to join her briefing.
" 'I was there peacefully,' he said. 'At one point, I had a question, and so I began to ask a question. I was almost immediately forcibly removed from the room, I was forced to the ground, and I was handcuffed.'
"He added, 'If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to #FarmWorkers, to #cooks, to #DayLaborers out in the #LosAngeles community and throughout #California and throughout the country.' "
#Florida considers easing #ChildLabor laws after pushing out #immigrants
A new law under consideration in the state Legislature would roll back child labor laws to make up for a dwindling labor pool.
By Ja'han Jones
March 27, 2025, 12:15 PM EDT
"As Florida officials enable Trump’s #MassDeportation policies, lawmakers in the state are looking to children to take on some of the jobs that have typically been done by immigrants.
"Making its way through the state Senate is a new law, Senate Bill 918, that aims to loosen child labor laws and allow teenagers to work overnight shifts.
"As CNN reported: 'The state’s legislature on Tuesday advanced a bill that would loosen child labor laws, allowing children as young as 14 years old to work overnight shifts. If the new law is passed, teenagers would be able to work overnight jobs on school days. They are currently prevented from working earlier than 6:30 am or later than 11 pm per state law.'
"#SB918 also 'includes a number of changes including eliminating working time restrictions on teenagers aged 14 and 15 if they are home-schooled and ending guaranteed meal breaks for 16 and 17 year olds,' CNN reported.
"Florida Gov. #RonDeSantis backs the law and has defended the idea of teenagers and college students working these jobs. DeSantis also explicitly linked the effort to the loss of immigrant labor. Speaking about the consequences of state verification laws at an event with border czar #TomHoman, the governor said, 'Yes, we had people that left because of those rules, but you’ve also been able to hire other people. And what’s wrong with expecting our young people to be working part-time now?'
"In recent years, several states — many of them led by #Republican governors — have rolled back child labor laws. This map from the Economic Policy Institute illustrates the spike in states rolling back these laws from 2021 to 2024. Back in 2023, for example, #Arkansas Gov. #SarahHuckabeeSanders signed a bill that made it easier for companies to hire children without getting consent from their parents. One month earlier, The New York Times published a bombshell report about the exploitation of immigrant children in #factories operated by some of the most well-known companies in the U.S.
"That story should have spurred a nationwide push to strengthen child labor laws. Instead, states like Florida are going in the opposite direction, weakening such laws in part to deal with the fallout from the conservative movement’s demonization of immigrants. They’re essentially using child labor to paper over the gaps left by their draconian immigration policies.
"#Project2025, the far-right playbook for Trump’s second term, specifically calls for rolling back #HazardRegulations around child labor. The text claims, 'Some young adults show an interest in inherently dangerous jobs' and argues that 'with parental consent and proper training, certain young adults should be allowed to learn and work in more dangerous occupations.'
"Even as child labor laws are being rolled back, the Trump administration is working to gut social services, including funds that help provide school lunches to children and programs, like the supplemental nutrition assistance program, that help feed poor families. And if those cuts stay in place, they may leave American families with few alternatives to sending their children to work to keep food on the table."
Source:
https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/florida-child-labor-law-sb-918-rcna198275
#DeSantis #DeSatan #SNAPCuts #ResistICE #Authoritarianism #USPol #MedicaidCuts #TrumpIsANazi #AuthoritarianRule
#ThisIsFascism #ImmigrantsFeedUs #ImmigrationCrackdown
When The U.S. Government Tried To Replace #Migrant #Farmworkers With #HighSchoolers
August 23, 201810:41 AM ET
By Gustavo Arellano
Excerpt: "He remembers the first day vividly. Work started before dawn, the better to avoid the unforgiving desert sun to come. 'The wind is in your hair, and you don't think it's bad,' Carter says. 'Then you go out in the field, and the first ray of sun comes over the horizon. The first ray. Everyone looked at each other, and said, 'What did we do?' The thermometer went up like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. By 9 a.m., it was 110 degrees.'
"Garden gloves that the farmers gave the students to help them harvest lasted only four hours, because the cantaloupe's fine hairs made grabbing them feel like 'picking up sandpaper.' They got paid minimum wage — $1.40 an hour back then — plus 5 cents for every crate filled with about 30 to 36 fruits. Breakfast was 'out of the Navy,' Carter says — beans and eggs and bologna sandwiches that literally toasted in the heat, even in the shade.
"The University High crew worked six days a week, with Sundays off, and they were not allowed to return home during their stint. The farmers sheltered them in 'any kind of defunct housing,' according to Carter — old Army barracks, rooms made from discarded wood, and even buildings used to intern Japanese-Americans during World War II.
"Problems arose immediately for the #ATEAM nationwide. In California's #SalinasValley, 200 teenagers from #NewMexico, #Kansas and #Wyoming quit after just two weeks on the job. 'We worked three days and all of us are broke,' the Associated Press quoted one teen as saying. Students elsewhere staged strikes. At the end, the A-TEAM was considered a giant failure and was never tried again." [Until today, apparently...]
#immigrants #ImmigrantsFeedUs #Farmworkers #ResistICE
#Authoritarianism #ImmigrationCrackdown
#ICERaids #HungerGames #EatTheRich
#ThisIsFascism #Project2025
And who will work in the fields? Children?Folks who have just lost #FoodAssistance and #Medicare?#Protestors who piss off Trump?
#Trump’s Immigration #Crackdown Hits #CaliforniaFarms
#Farmworkers hid in fields on Tuesday as word spread that ICE agents were conducting raids in California’s breadbasket, an activist said.
By Bernard Mokam and Pooja Salhotra
June 11, 2025, 9:08 p.m. ET
Excerpt: " 'The #Trump administration is ramping up its immigration crackdown, with a focus on workplaces with undocumented #laborers, such as #farms, #restaurants and #construction sites. Estimates show more than eight million undocumented #immigrants work in the United States.
"Last Friday, federal immigration agents swept through the garment district of Los Angeles, setting off protests that have rattled sections of downtown L.A. and have spread to a number of cities across the country.
"For #farmworkers — about 42 percent of whom are undocumented, according to the Agriculture Department — the escalation in arrests has created widespread fear.
" 'Children are terrified,' Ms. Romero said. 'They don’t want to go to school because they don’t know if their parents will be home when they come back.'
"Local leaders have rebuked the escalation, which could bring hardship to one of California’s agricultural corridors. The #CentralValley — which grows #almonds, #grapes, #walnuts and #cherries, among other crops — produces a quarter of the nation’s food, worth an estimated $17 billion a year, according to federal data.
" 'These actions are completely unjustified and harmful,' said Mayor Luis McArthur of Oxnard. 'They create chaos in our city without contributing much to public safety. Furthermore these actions undermine the very principles of #DueProcess.'
"The raids this week represent the first organized immigration enforcement from the new Trump administration to hit California’s agricultural region, which covers about 40 percent of the state, Ms. Romero said. A handful of federal operations have been conducted in other rural communities in recent weeks. Last month, federal agents pulled over a bus in #AlbionN., and detained 14 immigrants who worked at a nearby farm. In April, three children and their mother were detained at an upstate New York dairy.
"Rural migrants are particularly vulnerable to immigration enforcement because they stand out in towns that are often racially homogenous, said Will Lambek of Migrant Justice, an advocacy organization for farmworkers in #Vermont, where eight dairy workers were detained in April.
"In California, Ms. Davalos said the agents could have made more arrests had the community been less prepared. Once a volunteer spotted officers in the area, an alert was sent through a network of support.
"Federal agents were denied entry to at least nine farms in the Central Coast, Ms. Davalos said. Some growers parked their vehicles in front of their gates. Employees also obscured their cars.
'We demonstrated the power of brave, nonviolent #resistance to #ICE’s tactics of #terror,' Ms. Davalos said, lamenting what she described as politically driven attempts to reach a deportation quota. 'At the end of the day, they’re seizing our family, friends, neighbors and co-workers.'
"If federal immigration enforcement activities continue, #FoodProduction will become increasingly difficult, and food prices could rise, warned Bryan Little, senior director of policy advocacy at the California Farm Bureau."
Read more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/us/trump-ice-raids-california-farms.html
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/NFWuO
#Trump’s #BigBill Would Let Him Expand His #LosAngeles #ImmigrationCrackdown ‘Everywhere’
“If it works out well in L.A., expect it everywhere,” a Trump official says of the admin’s plans for #militarized #ICERaids around the country
By Andrew Perez, Asawin Suebsaeng
June 12, 2025
"Donald Trump’s '#BigBeautifulBill' wouldn’t just force millions of #poor people off their #HealthInsurance and #FoodAssistance to help pay for more #TaxCuts for the rich.
"The Trump #TaxBill would steer tens of billions of dollars to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for #detention capacity, employee bonuses, and to hire new agents. It would supercharge ICE’s ability to conduct raids, and allow the administration to expand the campaign of terror it’s waging on immigrants in Los Angeles to blue cities around the country.
"ICE’s aggressive worksite raids and courthouse arrests throughout the Los Angeles area have, of course, inspired a wave of protests — giving the president an excuse to send the U.S. military to a Democratic city, something he’s long fantasized about, while inspiring demonstrations across the country.
" 'This bill would give Donald Trump the ability to do what he’s doing [in California] on a scale we really haven’t seen before,' says #DavidBier, the director of immigration studies at the #CatoInstitute, a libertarian think tank. 'He will be able to replicate this militarized approach to Los Angeles across maybe dozens of American cities.'
"For Trump and key officials, including immigration-crackdown policy architect #StephenMiller, this is exactly the point, with Los Angeles currently being used as an autocratic staging area. They want to replicate this militarized, ramped-up blitz of ICE raids, backed by the U.S. armed forces, in several other Democratic strongholds — particularly if larger-scale protests spread to other cities.
"As Rolling Stone previously reported, the president and his senior officials have already mapped out near-term plans for how to further ratchet up the already tense blitz of ICE operations, especially in the coming days in Los Angeles, where the federal agents are now being protected by Trump’s literal troop deployment to the city, against the wishes of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
"Sources familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone that senior Trump administration officials are closely monitoring the situation in L.A. as a test case for what they want to do soon in places such as #Chicago, #philadelphia #BostonMA, or the #WashingtonDC, area."
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/SgWWL
#BigUglyBill #USSenate #USPol #Authoritarianism #protestors #SilencingDissent #USPol #NoKings #Protest #Solidarity #Immigrants #MassDeportation #EndICE #StopICE #Project2025 #MAGA #ThisIsFascism
#USConstitution #DueProcess #FirstAid #JustFollowingOrders #NationalGuard #Resistance #FashPatel #TrumpIsANazi #StephenMillerIsANazi #ResistICE #FuckICE #KillThePoor #EatTheRich #NoTaxBreaksForTheRich
Gardeners’ World host Monty Don skewers Trump amid BBC bias concerns | TV & Radio | Showbiz & TV https://www.allforgardening.com/1329827/gardeners-world-host-monty-don-skewers-trump-amid-bbc-bias-concerns-tv-radio-showbiz-tv/ #bbc #BbcBias #DonaldTrump #garden #gardener #GardenersWorld #gardenersworld #gardening #GardeningUk #immigration #ImmigrationCrackdown #MontyDon
Crowds of hundreds gathered Sunday in Houston and San Antonio in protest of federal authorities’ redoubled efforts to detain and deport undocumented immigrants.
"One morning, sitting in an immigration office in Memphis, Kasper Eriksen found himself transformed. Only a day before, he was a welding foreman, a husband and father of four who lived on a family farm in Sturgis, Mississippi. Now, he was a detainee, bound and shackled to the sterile white seats of a detention shuttle in Tennessee, headed southwest, barely able to wriggle.
It was here, late on April 15, with chains around his belly, hands and ankles, that the Denmark-born man fully realized that what he was experiencing was not a brief disruption from his many years in America—some clerical error that could be unmade in an afternoon’s discussion, or with the swift intervention of a judge.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement transported Kasper to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center, also known as the LaSalle Detention Center, in Jena, Louisiana, with a dozen other detainees. Not sons, not fathers, not husbands, but detainees, “aliens”: in the eyes of the law, that remains his primary designation. ICE deposited him in a facility where he shares a cell with just under 100 other people, cycling in and out, sharing little in common beyond the uncertainty of their future.
Kasper has never been charged with or convicted of any crime. He has not been accused of being a member of MS-13 or Tren de Aragua. What led the government to rip Kasper out of the arms of his family was, to the best of his knowledge, a single document. Form I-751, appropriately clinical, a “Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence,” was just one of the endless documents he needed on his decade-plus journey to American citizenship."
"Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE), the iconic and long-running hacking conference, says far fewer people have bought tickets for the event this year as compared to last, with organizers believing it is due to the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts and more aggressive detainment of travellers into the U.S.
“We are roughly 50 percent behind last year’s sales, based on being 3 months away from the event,” Greg Newby, one of HOPE’s organizers, told 404 Media in an email. According to hacking collective and magazine 2600, which organizes HOPE, the conference usually has around 1,000 attendees and the event is almost entirely funded by ticket sales. “Having fewer international attendees hurts the conference program, as well as the bottom line,” a planned press release says.
Newby said there isn’t a serious danger of the event not going ahead, but that the conference may need to "significantly decrease” its space in the venue to manage HOPE’s budget.
Emmanuel Goldstein, HOPE conference chair, told 404 Media “We're always looking at potential reasons why ticket sales may be adversely affected, such as location, dates, lineup, etc. The only common reason we're hearing from people this year is that they don't feel comfortable coming to the States due to fear of harassment or detention.”"
