Life in California's fields: 'The American dream eats us alive'

Immigrant farmworkers toil in jobs that most Americans wouldn't endure for a week. A reporter experiences the toll.

- Brittny Mejia

REPORTER BRITTNY Mejia joins migrant farmworkers to harvest mini watermelons.

ROBERT GAUTHIER Los Angeles Times

The American squatted in the dirt, struggling to free the cantaloupe from its prickly stem, almost toppling over.

On either side, men bent at the waist, clearing fruit with one quick sweep of the knife and moving on to the next. The American fell further behind.

The men laughed as she stumbled about, ever more sunburned. But there was no mocking in their laughter. They knew what it was like to be American, if only because their children are.

Many of the workers had emigrated from the same agricultural town in Sinaloa. They had worked on their parents' farms, before crossing illegally into the U.S. They teased one another, complained about overbearing mothers-in-law and celebrated milestones, like a daughter's quinceanera.

In the three months of harvest that brought them together, they endured six-day workweeks, picking mini watermelons and cantaloupes in summer temperatures that sometimes topped 100 degrees. One day’s work at the peak of the season could yield 12,000 watermelons for just one crew.

I stood in this cantaloupe field in rural California, among seemingly endless lines of fruit waiting to be plucked on a Tuesday this fall. I was the only American-born picker here.

Esteban Rodriguez, who has worked around 40 seasons or so, gently took a knife from my hand.

"I'll cut them and hand them to you," he offered, a compromise that would keep me from bending over every few feet.

As Trump has directed ICE and Border Patrol to nab more undocumented immigrants, dramatic images have mostly focused on raids in cities. America's agricultural fields have, perhaps surprisingly given prior immigration enforcement there, taken a back seat.