Migrant workers: illegal or important? Migrant workers: illegal or important?

Arrests leave Granby onion farm scrambling to find help to harvest crop in July.

By Catie O'Toole

Staff writer

Jim and Cathy Zappala have 700 acres of onions in the ground, but no employees to pick them.

Between now and harvest in July, they have to find a way to replace the 22 farmworkers whisked from their farm in Granby 11 day ago.

Federal immigration agents say the workers were in the country illegally.

"We arrest people every day," said Mike Gilhooly, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman. "It's what we do. No one should be surprised."

But the Zappalas say the arrests are part of a bigger problem one that is affecting farmers and ranchers all over the country.

An American Farm Bureau Federation study last year found that if farmers' and ranchers' access to migrant labor is cut off, the agriculture industry could lose up to $9 billion annually in production to foreign competitors.

About 3 million people work in agriculture in the U.S. About 2 million are drawn from farm families and about 1 million are hired. An estimated 500,000 or more of the 1 million hired are not authorized to work in the U.S., the report said.

On May 23, a national fugitive operations team from Immigration and Customs Enforcement drove to Oswego County in search of a man who had been told to return to his homeland of Mexico.

"He had been ordered removed by an immigration judge, and he had defied that judge's order," Gilhooly said. "We were simply running a fugitive operation. It's very routine."

Immigration agents pulled over a van on Muck Drive in Granby because they thought the fugitive was inside, Gilhooly said. He wasn't there, but agents arrested 16 people in the van because they, too, were not supposed to be in the country, Gilhooly said.

"We questioned them and we made a determination based on lack of documents and interviews," he said.

Agents drove them to the Zappala farm, which also is on Muck Drive, so the migrant workers could collect their belongings. While they were there, ICE agents arrested six more illegal aliens, Gilhooly said. They were all adults and all migrant workers at the farm, he said.

The next day, immigration agents apprehended the fugitive they had been looking for, Gilhooly said. The fugitive did not work on the Zappala farm, as the others did, Cathy Zappala said.

Gilhooly said the fugitive did not have a criminal record. Three of the 22 migrant workers, however, previously had been removed from the United States and returned illegally, Gilhooly said. All are being detained now.

All 23 people arrested will have a chance to go to immigration court, Gilhooly said. A judge will hear their cases and decide whether they should be deported.

The Zappalas are still working on getting some more workers before harvest in July. One option, Cathy Zappala said, is to get workers from the federal H2A program, which supplies guest workers.

"If we don't have a migrant labor force, it's impossible to raise any transplanted onions like the Empire Sweets because they're all hand-harvested," she said.

Workers on the Zappala farms earn at least minimum wage, which is now $7.15 an hour, Zappala said.

Between 30 and 40 people are needed in the field each spring to plant onions. In July, the onions are ready to harvest. That job requires 40 to 60 workers.

"They pull these onions out of the field with their hands and put them into pallet boxes, and the onions are sent to be packaged," Zappala said.

Even though the onions are in the ground growing right now, there is still work to be done, including irrigation and weeding, she said.

"I guarantee I can't get any Americans to do it," Zappala said. "But that's what the Hispanics do. They're hard workers. They're here every day. I really appreciate them. Because without them, we wouldn't be in business."

Cathy Zappala said she followed all of the procedures the Department of Labor requires before hiring any worker, including the 22 arrested last month.

Cathy Zappala said she questions how the workers were treated the day they were arrested, but declined to comment further.

Patricia Rector, coordinator of the Central New York Labor-Religion Coalition in Syracuse, said she also has some concerns.

"How are the detainees being treated? Are there medical issues and are they being addressed?" she asked. "Part of the concern we have is that it is very troubling to us that we don't know what the conditions of the detainees are like."

Gilhooly said arrested illegal aliens are placed in facilities inspected and approved by ICE as a detention center.

"We have very high detention standards," Gilhooly said. "We take our job in detaining people in a safe and humane environment very seriously."

Rector said she also worries about the effect of immigration raids on the economy.

"Agriculture depends on workers to do the work. They are facing labor shortages because these raids have terrified workers, regardless of their status. That reverberates into the local economy," Rector said. "If you can't pick your onions, if you can't harvest your apples and you can't milk your cows, how can you stay in business?"

Rector said this issue affects more people than just the laborers themselves.

"The deeper story is what conditions would drive workers to take such great risks to come to this country for largely low-paid work?" she asked. "It's an old American story. My forebears had a path to citizenship. Now we're treating these hard-working people as if they were terrorists."