WIMAUMA, Fla. – Rumors about deportation raids started to circulate around the fields again, so Catalina Sanchez and her husband began to calculate the consequences of everything they did.
Cirilo Perez, 36, had to go to work because the tomato crop was getting low, and he needed to pick as much as he could as fast as he could. Sanchez’s medical checkup would have to wait – going to a clinic was too risky. What they fretted most about was what to do with their daughter Miriam – a natural-born citizen in the third grade – who they worried would come home one day to an empty trailer.
“When she leaves, I wonder if it will be the last time I see her,” Sanchez, 26, said on a recent evening.
As President Donald Trump moves to turn the full force of the federal government toward deporting undocumented immigrants, a newfound fear of the future has already cast a pall over the tomato farms and strawberry fields in the largely undocumented migrant communities east of Tampa.
Any day could be when deportations ramp up; that, to them, seemed certain. No one knew when or where. And so the community here is in a state of suspension. Children have stopped playing in parks and the streets and businesses have grown quieter, as many have receded into the background, where they feel safe.
“It’s all gringos here,” said Maria Pimentel, owner of the community staple Taqueria El Sol, who said she had never heard so much English in her restaurant in her life. Business had plummeted, she said, because her Spanish-speaking customers were “scared to come out of their house.”
Trump made clear during his campaign that “those here illegally today, who are seeking legal status, they will have one route and one route only: to return home and apply for reentry like everybody else.”
In the early days of his administration, Trump has begun to follow through on those promises. Earlier this month, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency arrested 680 people across the country. The agency has also become aggressive about attempting to detain undocumented migrants who have been jailed by local authorities. As of Friday, it has issued more than 42,000 detainer requests this year, 35 percent higher than the year before.
ICE described its actions as “routine” and lambasted those who labeled them as “raids” because nearly 1 in 4 of those arrested had no criminal records.
Activists and residents here said they saw at least six people taken away on Feb. 2 during a search for someone accused of selling fake Social Security cards in nearby Plant City, the “Winter Strawberry Capital of the World.” The next day, the number of migrant children who stayed home from school surged by 40 percent, according to statistics from the local school district.
There were crackdowns under President Barack Obama, as well, but local activist Norma Rosalez said people generally trusted him to target only criminals and potential terrorists. Obama also offered protection to “dreamers” – undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country at a young age – but teenagers were now afraid to apply to the program, Rosalez said, over fears that an application would lead an immigration officer straight to their door.
The changed environment made many wonder what would happen to the north this spring and summer, when workers normally move on to Georgia to pick peaches or to Michigan to pick peppers. Many thought they would now stay put. It was safer that way.
“We look at it like this: The country can either import its workforce or import its food,” said Dale Moore, executive director of policy for the Farm Bureau, which lobbies for easing restrictions to get foreign workers for agriculture.
“We’ve been fighting for this for years, but immigration has a different flavor with Donald Trump,” Moore said.
