Immigration raids have changed, but not their emotional toll

Recent enforcement actions reignite childhood memories of strawberry fields.

- BY HUGO MARTÍN

AGENTS are now seizing people from bus stops, homes, courts - not just farms.

In the Central Coast, where my father farmed strawberries, the land is mostly flat for miles in every direction so it was easy to spot the green vans and trucks of the Immigration and Naturalization Service heading our way in the distance, kicking up a cloud of dust in their wake.

It was the late '70s and raids were an occasional part of working in the ag industry.

When the trucks were spotted — most often by a worker — a loud call would go out: “La Migra, la migra.” That's when immigrant workers without legal status would drop what they were doing and sprint away, either for a nearby riverbed or over a set of raised railroad tracks adjacent to the fields.

The immigration raids on my father’s strawberry fields fascinated me when I was a boy. It wasn’t until I was older that I understood the impact on the workers who were rounded up and deported, as well as the effects on the families left behind. I now recall them in a more somber light.