ICE audit in Brewster spreads worry in state ag industry
BREWSTER,
Each contained a four-sentence explanation beneath the company's
letterhead: Federal immigration authorities had alerted Gebbers Farms
that a number of its employees' hiring forms were suspect. Unless those
employees could prove they were in this country legally, the company
would let them go.
Many couldn't. Like the vast majority of America's agricultural work
force, they were illegal immigrants who used fake documents to get jobs
picking and packing fruit, in this case in and around this small town on
the Columbia River north of Wenatchee.
Five days later, the company dismissed an estimated 550 workers -- equal
to about a quarter of Brewster's population. It was the biggest firing
of its kind ever seen in
What's happened at Gebbers Farms has been felt far beyond this shaken
community. It's raising worries about more audits and firings across
"If the entire industry was audited it'd be impossible to fill all of
the jobs," says Mike Gempler, executive director of the Washington
Growers League.
As the Gebbers operation slowly returns to normal, the complexity of
illegal immigrants in the work force becomes starkly clear.
Other immigrants -- some legal and some not -- have learned of the
sudden job openings and are arriving to fill the void. Some of the
applicants may not be new at all.
"I was thinking about changing the Social Security number I use and
reapplying," says Antonio Sanchez, a 51-year-old former Gebbers orchard
worker who can't find another job. "I don't know what to do."
Five generations of the Gebbers family have farmed here along the
Today, the family-owned company runs more than 5,000 acres of apples and
cherries, including one of the world's largest contiguous orchards. It
owns a packing warehouse in Brewster, and its products are marketed
internationally.
"This town exists because of them," says Esteban Camacho, who manages a
local bakery, and like most Mexican immigrants here has worked for
Gebbers in the past. By most accounts the company is well thought of. It
built housing and soccer fields for its workers and, unlike many other
growers, provides stable year-round work.
Rumors about the firings abound in Brewster, but details remain scarce.
Lorie Dankers, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
in
"It's a civil process, and as a result it's not in the criminal system.
That information is not public," she says.
Industry officials say ICE has audited a half dozen smaller
ICE first notified Gebbers in 2008 that it had been audited and that it
needed to take action, according to industry officials.
Details of what happened between then and the Dec. 28 firings are
elusive.
Gebbers acknowledged the audit in a brief company statement dated the
day of the firings. The statement closed with: "Gebbers Farms will
continue to welcome workers of all backgrounds with proper work
authorization."
Since that time, company officials have declined to speak publicly about
"the situation."
Even Brewster's mayor says he's had trouble finding out what happened.
The company has politely directed all inquiries to its Wenatchee-based
attorney, Jay Johnson, who only says, "We're moving forward."
What happened at Gebbers reflects a change in strategy under President
Barack Obama's administration, which is shifting ICE's focus away from
targeting illegal immigrants and instead focusing on those who hire
them. The only major workplace raid last year -- when 28 illegal
immigrants were apprehended at a
The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors tougher
enforcement, sees Obama scaling back efforts to crack down on illegal
immigration by emphasizing audits instead of workplace raids.
Immigrant rights advocates call audits the more humane of the two
approaches.
"This is not to say this new approach does not create hardship," says
Matt Adams, legal adviser for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project in
Thirty-three
"We know that changing the behavior of employers to ensure they hire a
legal work force doesn't happen overnight," she says. "We want employers
to know that regardless of size and industry or your location and the
type of business you have, the federal government expects these
businesses to comply with the law."
Few growers in
"It's a bunch of crap. What happened at Gebbers -- it fries my brain
sometimes," says Brody, adding that he shouldn't have to play cop and
verify whether a worker's status is legitimate. "The documents we get
handed, if they look good, we take them."
He says every one of his employees, except for his office manager, is
Latino.
"Americans don't stop by and ask for jobs right now," Brody says. "There
is a 10 percent unemployment rate. And I've not had a single U.S.
American stop by and ask for a job."
On many evenings, the conversation between Daniel and Angelica Aguilar
turns to just that. Like many undocumented Mexican immigrants in
Brewster, the recently dismissed couple and their toddler daughter live
in a tiny one-bedroom apartment near the center of town.
"During the cherry picking season, there's maybe 2,200 of us working in
the orchards," says Daniel Aguilar, a 26-year-old who had worked for the
company for four years. "Of those, there wasn't a single white American.
"Why does it bother them that we're doing the work they don't want to
do? I understand that you want to protect your country and everything,
but we're not taking anything away from anybody."
One of ICE's goals with the audits is to deter other companies from
hiring illegal immigrants. If there are no jobs, maybe they'll stop
coming.
In part, the Gebbers firings have produced the desired effect. Of the
dozen or so families in Brewster interviewed by the Yakima
Herald-Republic, about half said they planned to return to
"What's the point of staying? There are no jobs," says one woman, who
identified herself only as Mariela in fear of being deported. "We owe
two months of rent now. Sure, in
But for every illegal immigrant who leaves, there seems to be another
one willing to risk his luck.
Before dawn one recent foggy Tuesday, groups of warmly dressed men
gathered in a parking lot alongside U.S. Highway 97, which cuts through
Brewster. They waited in the cold for Gebbers vans to pick them up for
work pruning apple trees.
"I just got a job here," says one young man, who'd learned about sudden
openings from a relative while living in
The others laughed nervously.
"Are there supposed to be more audits?" one called out, before saying he
needed to find a better Social Security number.
The presence of new workers who are here illegally has created some
resentment among those who were laid off. But some have a hard time
blaming their fellow countrymen.
"It's not their fault they're working," says Janeth Hernandez, who
doesn't know how her family will make the rent this month. "They have to
fight the good fight, too, just like us."
Despite the new hires, Gebbers hasn't completely resumed normal
operations, according to some longtime workers, both current and former.
This time of year, for example, roughly 350 employees typically prune
trees in Gebbers' vast orchards, former workers and others say. Last
week, they said perhaps 50 to 70 were there.
"Few people remain in the fields," says Brigido Xhurape Avelino, a
licensed vendor who sells bottles of Pepsi, chips, cookies and new
clothes from a green push cart to Gebbers workers. In the past, he would
average $250 a day in sales. Now he's making $50.
The December firings clearly disrupted the Gebbers operation, says Dan
Fazio, the Washington State Farm Bureau's director of employment
services. And nobody wants to imagine what would happen if the layoffs
took place during, say, cherry picking season.
"It's wrong for the administration to be doing raids or I-9 audits
without investing time and energy into a functional guest worker
program," says Fazio, noting that growers can't compete with lower wages
in Chile and China.
"Where are we going to get the stable work force -- unless (the
government is) not really concerned about getting fresh fruits and
vegetables from the
"But you're just going to steal the workers from the farm across the
street. And you really don't know if they're more legal than the next
guy."
ICE encourages the companies it audits to use the federal E-Verify
system, which allows employers to check whether new hires are legally
authorized to work in the
A spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which
operates E-Verify, says no companies in Brewster use it. About 15
But industry leaders say most growers are reluctant to use the program
because it won't give them an answer they like.
And in politically conservative
"We get a lot of criticism on that issue," Fazio says. "They want the
illegals to disappear and they want the employers that hire illegals to
be put in jail. We want to assure these people that farmers don't want
illegals more than any other citizen ...
"But when you ask these people, 'Do you want to have your apples from
U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Pasco, says it doesn't have to be an either-or
issue.
"First we have to realize that we have to secure our borders. Everybody
I think agrees with that,"
Few
The Growers League, meanwhile, supports the so-called AgJobs bill, which
would create a path toward legal status for illegal agricultural workers
as well as revisions to the current guest worker program.
In Brewster, the next six weeks will see a tense waiting game for former
Gebbers employees.
The company has given those who live in a series of camps deep inside
its orchards until the end of March to vacate. School officials are
bracing for the loss of children of the fired workers and the state
funding that comes with each one. Food bank volunteers say they're
seeing plenty of new faces.
Despite what happened, few former employees will complain about the
company. They just want their jobs back. The rumor these days is that in
March they'll be rehired.
"Fifteen years I've worked for this company," says one man, who declined
to give his name for fear of losing his housing. "I still have some
hope, that maybe by March everything will get sorted out. In the
meantime, these are the most difficult times."
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