“They Actually Had a List”: ICE Arrests Workers Involved in Landmark Labor Rights Case
An immigration raid in western New York on Friday targeted a group of immigrants involved in a landmark statewide effort by farm workers to unionize.
On Friday morning at around 9:30 a.m., federal agents in unmarked cars and bearing no agency insignia pulled over a bus in Albion, New York, about 35 miles west of Rochester, and took 14 people of Lynn-Ette & Sons Farms into custody. All of the detainees, who hailed from Mexico and Guatemala, were year-round employees of Lynn-Ette & Sons Farms, a family-owned business in nearby Kent, New York, which has been locked in a multiyear battle to prevent workers from unionizing.
The company is one of five agricultural businesses that, together with a state growers’ association, have tried for years to overturn or chip away at New York’s 2019 farm labor law. The law enshrined protections for the right of farmworkers — whether seasonal or year-round — to seek union representation.
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Noah Hurowitz is a journalist based in New York City and the author of "El Chapo: The Untold Story of the World's Most Infamous Drug Lord." His work has appeared in New York Magazine, Business Insider, Rolling Stone, and many more.
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