You can see strawberry fields seemingly forever, details big and small — a rutted path, an orange tractor, a worker’s checkered blue shirt — discernible on the plain.
Yet depending who you ask, there are two completely contrasting ways to view what is happening in Ventura County, in a corner of California.
US President Donald Trump’s immigration policies are spreading fear and threaten to scatter farm workers, potentially disrupting the nation’s supply of fruit and vegetables.
Illustration: Mountain People
Or it is business as usual: no change, no drama — a busy, productive economy humming as normal.
Both versions, for now, are accurate — a dissonance stemming from ambiguity over current government policies and the fact that no one has any clue what will happen next.
“Today I heard they’re picking people up in Malibu,” 38-year-old Javier Carranza said, pausing from hacking at weeds in a row of strawberry bushes. “I don’t know if it’s true, but I can tell you we’re afraid. People don’t want to go out to stores or restaurants.”
The previous week, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained several undocumented people a few kilometers from where he spoke, part of a nationwide sweep that netted 680 people.
The crackdown was sweeping up honest, hardworking immigrants alongside criminals, said Carranza, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico.
“It’s unjust. If one orange in a bag is bad, it does not mean all the oranges are bad,” he said.
The policy was also dumb, because Mexican and Salvadorean workers might flee the fields, worsening a personnel shortage that has already hobbled some farms, he said.
“The [government] doesn’t know this work, doesn’t know that we’re out here every season, in the cold, the heat, the rain. You don’t see gringos out here,” Carranza said.
Carranza’s employer, Phil McGrath, is politically liberal, a rarity among California farmers who tend to be Trump-supporting conservatives.
Trump could damage agriculture, he said, adding: “He’s scaring people and there’s already a labor shortage.”
George Samora, another farmer, agreed.
“Nobody has enough workers,” Samora said.
The fear gripping Latino communities is pervasive.
“El ICE estuvo en la Costa Central” — ICE was in the central coast — blared the front page of El Latino.
“Stress levels are reaching levels never seen before,” an editorial said, warning that law enforcement agencies that routinely shot and killed black people would not hesitate to round up brown ones.
Advertisements for legal firms offering immigration services sat alongside a column giving tips: Do not open the door to ICE agents unless they show a judicial warrant; do not speak to agents without an attorney; say nothing about where you were born; memorize relatives’ telephone numbers.
Activists have distributed cards, printed in English, to be given to ICE agents: “Please be informed that I am choosing to exercise my right to remain silent,” one read.
“I do not give you permission to search any of my belongings based on my fourth amendment rights,” another read.
Some businesses in Oxnard — Ventura’s biggest city — have felt the impact.
“People are canceling trips and holding off on booking,” said Alma Ibarra, of Tropicana Travel.
Even those with green cards have been reluctant to visit relatives in Mexico, she said.
In contrast, Cesar Nava, head of the Nava law firm, has seen business double as clients flock for advice about permanent residency and naturalization.
“It’s fear. If people believe there are ICE raids, they won’t go out of their houses,” Nava said.
Lucas Zucker, of the advocacy group Cause Now, said the government had sown an atmosphere of terror.
“We’re really just seeing the beginning,” Zucker said.
The contrasting view — that all is fine, or at least normal — is equally pervasive and a microcosm of the nation’s polarization, or dual realities.
“It’s a lot of hype from the advocacy groups and the media,” Ventura County Agricultural Association head Rob Roy said. “I deal with over 100 farms and not had one farmer come to me with any complaint about immigration issues or raids.”
ICE enacted similar raids under former US president Barack Obama, who deported a record 2.5 million people with little media outcry, he said.
“But with Trump, suddenly the moral fiber of our country is coming apart. I don’t think ICE is going to start running into fields and taking away farm workers. I don’t believe that,” he added.
Roy rejected reports that some farmers who voted for Trump thinking that his immigration rhetoric was hot air were possibly having buyer’s remorse.
“Not in Ventura County, that I see,” he said.
Tom Nassif, head of the powerful Western Growers Association, is a Trump adviser and tells farmers not to fret, that the president will not deport their workforce.
“I think there’s less reason to worry than most people believe there is,” he told The Associated Press last month.
The association declined to comment for this article.
Trump supporters interviewed at random in Oxnard expressed confidence in his immigration policies — and appreciation for Latino workers, documented or not.
“They’re good workers and we’re lucky to have them,” 82-year-old Mary Bandy said. “If they behave themselves, they’re welcome to stay.”
She trusts Trump to strike the right balance.
Her husband, Doc, 89, said Trump’s aggressive moves were a negotiation tactic.
“He’s overreached a little bit, but I’m sure he’ll back off a bit. As long as the [workers] are not criminal and not putting a load on the government, bring them in, that’s how this country was made,” Doc Bandy said.
Activists have said there is mounting evidence that the government is targeting not just criminals, but ordinary people, including Dreamers.
For California’s farmers to overlook that, they said, is blinkered. Or, as the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields puts it: “Living is easy with eyes closed / Misunderstanding all you see.”
Nava thinks both sides need a reality check.
Social media and some regular media peddled panic, he said.
For instance, Facebook posts reported a raid on El Pescador, a restaurant in Fillmore, but he was eating there at the purported time and there was no raid.
“These false stories produce an overreaction,” he said.
However, the fear was very real and might bite farmers, Nava said.
“If people relocate, then there goes the labor force,” he said.
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