A Town of Immigrant Farm Workers Says No to ICE Detention Centers

New York Times via Yahoo! News ^ | February 20, 2020 | by Miriam Jordan, The New York Times

[Oldeconomybuyer]

McFARLAND, Calif. — As an immigrant in the country illegally, Maribel Ramirez does not officially have a say in the affairs of the small agricultural town in California’s Central Valley that she has called home for 20 years.

But late into the night Tuesday, she stood with hundreds of field workers and other residents outside McFarland’s City Council chambers, a bullhorn in her hand. “No ICE! No GEO! We’re farmworkers, not delinquents,” they chanted in Spanish, led by Ramirez, 42.

At issue was a multibillion-dollar corporation’s proposal to convert two state prisons slated for closure into detention centers for immigrants in the country illegally, operated under contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement — a plan that city leaders said could provide this impoverished town with a financial lifeline.

A new law in California outlawing private prisons will cost the city $1.5 million a year in taxes and other fees paid by the prison corporation, the GEO Group, unless the company can convert the two facilities it has operated there into immigration detention centers.

McFarland, which gained its only previous measure of fame in the 2015 Kevin Costner movie, “McFarland, USA,” is home to thousands of workers like Ramirez, who toil in the vineyards and the almond, pistachio and citrus orchards that stretch out in every direction. Up to half of the city’s 15,000 residents, according to private estimates, are in the country illegally.

[MarineBrat]

Target rich environment.

[sheana]

She’s 42 and has been here 20 years. That means she’s popped out a few ‘American’ babies that all qualified for every free goodie available because of her low farm worker wages. That’s how they receive freebies.