The Nation, APRIL 29, 2021
The Story Behind Your Salad: Farmworkers, Covid-19, and a Dangerous Commute
Each day, Mexican farmworkers endure a grueling journey to get to their
jobs in US lettuce fields. This year, that journey turned potentially
deadly.
By Esther Honig
It’s one in the morning and the stars are out as hundreds of people
shuffle slowly along the wall that marks the US border in the small
Mexican city of San Luis Río Colorado. In heavy boots and wide-brimmed
straw hats, most everyone here is headed to work in the vegetable fields
of Yuma County, Ariz. Bundled against the frigid November air in puffy
coats and fleece blankets, they carry thermoses of hot coffee and mini
coolers packed with breakfast and lunch, often small, tightly rolled
meat burritos. The wait to get through the small port of entry averages
two hours and on some days can take as long as four.
This article was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment
Reporting Network.
Every winter, as farms in the northern United States go dormant,
Arizona’s agricultural season comes to life. Yuma County, known as the
nation’s winter salad bowl, produces melons, broccoli, and 90 percent of
the leafy greens consumed during the colder months in the US. From
November until late April, between 8,000 and 10,000 people, according to
one estimate, cross the border daily, spending seven hours or more
traveling from their homes in Mexico to work in Yuma’s fields. Some are
foreign guest workers who come on a special visa; others have green
cards or dual citizenship but choose to live in Mexico, whether because
it’s cheaper or because they have a family with mixed immigration
status. These commuters make up around a quarter of the estimated 38,000
farmworkers who shoulder Yuma County’s $3 billion agricultural industry.
This past year, the pandemic turned an already difficult commute into a
hazardous and potentially deadly endeavor. The line for the port of
entry is effectively a mass gathering of essential workers with zero
enforcement of local health guidelines. Mask use is spotty; people crowd
together to prevent anyone from cutting in front of them; and no one is
taking anyone’s temperature.
On the US side of the border, the situation is hardly any better. In
early December, several worker advocacy groups urged officials in
Arizona to mandate that employers promote basic Covid safety measures,
like social distancing and better ventilation in packing houses and on
the buses that carry workers to the fields. Yet as of April, neither
Yuma County nor the state had issued any guidelines, let alone mandates,
for protecting farmworkers. Instead, Yuma County officials said they
suggest that employers follow the guidelines from the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.
Despite the evident risks, there has been no serious attempt to monitor
the toll the virus has taken on the farmworker population. Arizona does
not track cases among farmworkers, and testing in Mexico is severely
limited. But what is known is troubling. Over the past year, outbreaks
of Covid-19 have closely followed the harvest of labor-intensive
crops—meaning anything that must be picked by hand. Yuma itself has been
hard-hit. In mid-January, Arizona had the highest rate of Covid-19
infections in the world, and Yuma County had some of the worst outbreaks
in the state. Even as infections have been trending down since the start
of the year, the county currently has the highest number of cases per
capita. Its only hospital has been overwhelmed, at times running out of
ICU beds.
Still, farmworkers have continued to make the commute, rising impossibly
early each day to cross the border. Like many others in line this
morning, Manuel, who is in his late 20s, is headed to work in the
lettuce fields. (This isn’t his real name. We’re protecting his identity
because he could lose his job for talking to a reporter.) He stands
eagerly with his thumbs tucked behind the straps of his backpack, a
black face mask concealing a wide smile. Each day, Manuel wakes up at
midnight after around four hours of sleep and slips out the door of his
small apartment with an empty stomach. He takes a taxi to the border—at
that hour there are no public buses, and walking is too dangerous—and
arrives at the line by 1 am, which gives him a good shot at making it
across in time to catch the bus to the fields. “It’s worth it,” he says
of his commute. “You can make pretty good money.”
Once Manuel and the others are in Arizona, a fleet of white school buses
will drive them to the day’s work site, which can be up to two hours
away. Group transportation has emerged as a potent vector for infection,
yet the safeguards provided by employers vary widely. Most buses have
limited the number of passengers to give each worker his or her own
seat; some have hung plastic sheets between rows. Some drivers enforce
the use of face masks; others do not. Without oversight from state or
county officials, the level of protection depends on the company.
The potential exposures workers face are compounded by the fact that
most lack easy access to medical care, and paid sick leave is almost
unheard of. A study last year by researchers at the University of
California, Berkeley, found that farmworkers in the Salinas Valley, one
of the nation’s leading agricultural regions, had more than twice the
rate of infection compared with the state population. This was due in
part to the fact that many people came to work while sick because they
felt pressured by their employers or because they couldn’t afford to
miss work. Instead of isolating, they were side by side with coworkers,
sharing rides to and from the fields, using the same tiny portable
bathroom, even sharing lunches.
Manuel, like many other younger workers in line, says he isn’t too
concerned about getting the virus. “I’m worried that my parents will
catch it,” he says. “But we just take care of ourselves.”
Still, the risks from the virus are real, and all farmworkers must weigh
them against the prospect of losing their jobs and not being able to
make rent or buy groceries. It’s a lose-lose choice forced on them by
the failure of the United States to develop a humane and realistic
immigration policy, one that acknowledges the essential role this
vulnerable workforce plays in keeping our food prices low and our
grocery stores well-stocked.
For guest workers like Manuel, whose visas are tied to their jobs, the
stakes are even higher. If he loses his job, he will likely lose his
visa and possibly his opportunity to get one next season. “No matter how
you’re doing—if you have a headache, your back or legs ache—you have to
get up,” he says.
Originally from the state of Sinaloa, Manuel and his family moved to San
Luis Río Colorado when he was 12. He spent his teenage years in this
border town surrounded by people who moved effortlessly across the
international boundary, working in Arizona fields, shopping in American
malls, and visiting family in the US. For most of Manuel’s life, the
border represented an enticing opportunity, but without money or family
on the other side, he had no legal means of accessing it.
After graduating from high school, Manuel became a locksmith. Then, in
2018, a friend recommended him to an employer in Arizona. That’s how
most H-2A visas happen: A farmer needs more guest workers and asks a
trusted employee for recommendations. Just like that, Manuel became one
of the thousands who cross the border each day. This is his second
season harvesting lettuce in Yuma County on an H-2A visa. He keeps the
small slip of paper folded into his passport and guards it as though it
were made of gold.
In Arizona, Manuel is paid close to $13 an hour, earning more in one day
than he can in a week as a locksmith in Mexico. Those wages have made it
possible for him to build a house and give his children a middle-class
quality of life. He is separated from their mother, but every Sunday,
his only day off each week, he takes his children to eat pizza, and
sometimes they go fishing at a nearby lake. “Being a dad is a lot of
responsibility,” he says. “You worry about [your kids’] needs: Are they
missing this, are they missing that?”
In the off-season, Manuel still works as a locksmith, and he hopes to
start his own business someday with the money saved from his H-2A job.
He says he can’t keep picking lettuce much longer, maybe just two more
years. “There are so many sleepless nights, hours of sleep that you’ll
never get back,” he says. “And the work wreaks havoc on your body.”
There have been guest workers like Manuel harvesting food in the United
States since World War I. The H-2A visa, the latest incarnation of this
country’s temporary worker program, was created in 1986, at the height
of the Reagan era, as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act.
While the law granted amnesty to 2.7 million undocumented people, it was
sold as a crackdown on undocumented immigrants. It mandated stricter
border security and penalties for hiring anyone without authorization to
work in the country. But to get the necessary votes in Congress, the
bill needed support from American farmers, who, just as today, relied
heavily on an undocumented workforce. The H-2A visa was offered as a
bargaining chip. It created a new category of guest workers specifically
for seasonal agriculture and gave growers an assurance that they’d have
a reliable source of labor, even as the government worked to curtail
undocumented immigration. This is also why it became the only guest
worker visa with no annual limit.
In the past two decades, reliance on the H-2A visa has increased
dramatically as the number of farmworkers who live in the United States,
of which about half are undocumented, has declined. Last year, there
were more than 213,000 H-2A workers, mostly from Mexico. Around 6,500
were sent to Yuma County, one of the main destinations for H-2A workers
in the US. That’s still just a sliver of the estimated 1.4 million
full-time farmworkers in the country, but in the past 14 years, the
number of jobs filled by H-2A visa holders has increased fivefold. Even
amid a pandemic and historic levels of unemployment, jobs filled by H-2A
workers increased 7 percent in 2020.
As president, Donald Trump embraced the visa, using it to bolster his
support in the agricultural industry even as he pushed anti-immigrant
policies. In a speech he gave in 2019 to the American Farm Bureau
Federation, the nation’s biggest farm lobbying group, he assured a
cheering crowd that he’d make H-2A visas easier to use so that farmers
could get the immigrant workers they needed, before adding, “We’re
keeping the wrong ones out, OK?” Last March, as the pandemic became
undeniable and Trump rushed to close America’s borders, routine visa
services were suspended worldwide. One of the only exceptions was the
H-2A, which was deemed “mission critical” and processed in droves by
partially shuttered consulates. Farmers pushed for the exemption,
claiming that the nation’s food system would collapse if their guest
workers were not allowed in.
Still, even as H-2A workers were being heralded as heroes for keeping
food on grocery store shelves, the Trump administration froze their
wages for two years. (H-2A workers are paid between $11.81 and $16.34 an
hour, depending on the state. On average, their wages are 57 percent
higher than state minimum wages.) The freeze, lobbied for by growers,
would have cost workers an estimated $1.6 billion over 10 years. But it
was challenged by labor groups and eventually struck down by a federal
judge.
Now President Biden has vowed to overhaul the immigration system. He is
backing the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would provide legal
status to more than 1 million undocumented farmworkers. Anyone who has
worked in agriculture for at least 180 days in the past two years would
be eligible for “certified agricultural worker” status, helping to bring
these undocumented workers out of the shadows. Those who have been
working for less than 10 years would also be eligible for a green card
after an additional eight years of agricultural work and payment of a
$1,000 fine for breaking immigration law. In an attempt to win
conservative backing, the bill would strengthen immigration enforcement
and expand the H-2A program, permitting an additional 20,000 workers
each year to fill year-round agricultural positions in industries, such
as dairy and meatpacking, that have until now been excluded. The
legislation passed the House with bipartisan support but faces an
uncertain fate in the Senate, where a similar proposal was defeated
three years ago.
By 2:30 AM, Manuel has been waiting for over an hour and is about a
block from the metal turnstiles that mark the entrance to the US Customs
and Border Protection (CBP) building. As the morning marches on, the
line grows longer. Masks casually slip below noses as people peer over
the shoulders in front of them. Those who have arrived late search for a
spot to cut in line. To ward them off, people squeeze even closer together.
At times, this restlessness can swell into a collective panic. Along the
line there’s a phenomenon known as an “avalanche,” in which people rush
the turnstiles in a last-ditch effort to get across the border and not
miss work. So far, Manuel has been in two avalanches. “I had to run when
I heard the people at the back start to scream ‘Avalanche!’” he says.
“The most dangerous thing in that moment is to fall over and be trampled."
Workers told me the experience can be especially traumatic for women,
who are sometimes groped by men exploiting the situation. The elderly
and children are often injured, their heads busted open or ribs bruised
from falls or trampling. When there’s an avalanche, CBP shuts down the
portal for up to an hour and calls in the Mexican Army to restore order.
Almost everyone in line misses work.
Juan Carlos Palacios, a mayordomo, or supervisor, who recruits workers
for the lettuce fields, says the problem of avalanches wouldn’t exist if
the border facility were better managed. “They’re harming agriculture
here in the valley with their slowness and their insufficient staffing,”
he told me.
John Schwamm, the CBP area port director who oversees the San Luis,
Ariz., facility, doesn’t dispute that processing moves too slowly here.
But he says the problem this year isn’t staffing or even funding—rather,
it’s Covid-19. Social distancing requirements limit the number of agents
who can work in the building at one time, he explained. As a result,
only five of the 10 processing lanes are currently staffed. Farmworkers
told me it’s often fewer.
Schwamm says that congestion was an issue long before the arrival of the
coronavirus. This is the only port of entry in the area that processes
pedestrians, and on the Mexican side, there’s just a single narrow
sidewalk leading into the CBP facility. Even now, as travel restrictions
to the US have cut traffic by around 30 percent, San Luis is still the
busiest port in Arizona, processing 1.8 million pedestrians and 2.2
million noncommercial vehicles in 2020. This is a direct result of the
region’s booming agricultural industry, Schwamm says.
During the growing season, he estimates, farmworkers add about 30
percent to total daily crossings. As Yuma County’s agricultural industry
has grown, the demand for labor has grown too—a trend that is expected
to continue, further straining an already congested system.
In the past 13 years, the building at San Luis that processes foot
traffic has been expanded three times to accommodate the growing number
of pedestrians. Most recently, in 2018, a new $6 million building was
built with the intention of reducing wait times. A modern single-story
structure, it has floor-to-ceiling windows and an airy, zigzagging roof
inspired by the grooved crop rows in the nearby fields. But according to
Schwamm, demand has already outpaced the new capacity.
“I understand the issue; it’s crystal clear to me, and I do everything
in my power that I can,” he says. “But the problem is infrastructure.”
Schwamm has lived in Arizona all his life and has spent the past 36
years working for the CBP. He’s seen the line here grow exponentially
over the last decade. He’s seen the avalanches. And he knows about the
fights that break out almost daily over people cutting in line. But he
says his agents can’t intervene. As a US agency, he says, there’s little
the CBP can do to control the chaos in the line, because it’s on the
Mexican side of the border.
One reason so much strain has fallen on San Luis is that the H-2A visa
works a bit differently here than in the rest of the country.
Technically, the visa allows for a single entry, meaning a guest worker
is permitted to cross into the US before continuing on to a farm in
Washington state or Florida, where they would remain for the duration of
the contract. But along the border, according to Schwamm, the CBP has a
special agreement with local employers that allows their H-2A workers to
enter the US and return to Mexico daily. It’s an added benefit for the
employers, who don’t have to pay for worker housing, one of the
costliest requirements of the visa. But it also ensures that throngs of
people will continue passing through Schwamm’s overmatched facility.
Many H-2A workers I spoke to, including Manuel, say they prefer this
setup, because it allows them to see their family at night and eat a
home-cooked meal. There’s also a lot of skepticism about the
employer-provided housing, which H-2A workers commonly complain is
overcrowded and unsanitary. Four years ago, an employer in Phoenix, G
Farms LLC, was found to have 69 guest workers living in an encampment
consisting of old school buses, truck trailers, and a shed. With daytime
temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the “housing” lacked
proper ventilation and had exposed electrical wires and gas lines that
investigators deemed “life threatening.” Still, G Farms LLC, which was
tied to several prior cases of abuse and fraud within the guest worker
program, received no fine, just an order to comply with regulations.
Employers have also been known to impose curfews, prohibit guests, and
limit how often workers can leave the premises. Manuel says he’d hate to
give up access to his truck and the ability to do what he pleases once
he’s off the clock. “The truth is that I prefer to be here [in Mexico]
because I feel freer,” he says. “Over there, you just have work. Here,
you have family and friends.”
It is nearly 4:30 AM when Manuel has finally passed through customs into
the tiny border town of San Luis. The main street resembles a bustling
night market, with hundreds of farmworkers milling about. Lines radiate
from food trucks blaring brassy banda music and selling a cheap
breakfast of tamales and instant coffee.
People sit together and talk as they wait for the buses to arrive around
5:30 am. They gather on the curb in front of the 24-hour gas station or
beneath the golden arches of the local McDonald’s. The chatter includes
a healthy dose of conspiracy theories about the coronavirus—that planes
fly over cities at night to spray people with the virus, for instance,
or that it was invented by the Mexican government so it wouldn’t have to
pay senior citizens their pensions. “They’re weeding them out,” one
worker tells me. “My grandmother walked into a hospital and she left in
a box."
Others choose to catch up on sleep, stretching out on a park bench or on
a sliver of sidewalk beneath a lit awning. Some farms send their buses
early so workers can climb aboard and sleep.
Many, like 71-year-old José Luna, come prepared with their own blanket.
“This is the time when I should be laying down to get a bit of rest. But
look at where I am,” he says, gesturing at the buses and trucks rattling
past, spewing exhaust. “This is bad for you.”
Luna, sporting a long gray mustache and brown leather boots, sits on a
bench, his blanket draped across his shoulders. He had crossed over at
10 pm, nearly eight hours before work, when the wait in line was only 30
minutes. He says he does this because his joints can’t handle standing
for long hours. Once across, he finds a spot to sleep.
Luna is emblematic of the aging domestic agricultural workforce. Like
him, many are foreign-born but have green cards or citizenship,
recipients of Reagan’s 1986 amnesty. In their younger years, they
followed the harvests across the country, traveling from state to state.
Now they’ve settled down, working in Yuma County and living in Mexico,
where their US wages afford them more.
This work is all Luna has ever known. Born to a family of subsistence
farmers, his formal education ended after the first grade, when he was
pulled out of school to help his family grow corn. He likely entered the
US without permission in 1969, when he was 19, “in search of food” and
to find work in agriculture.
These older farmworkers face a significantly higher risk from the
coronavirus, yet they continue going to the fields out of economic
necessity. Most everyone knows at least one person who has died from
Covid-19. As 66-year-old Víctor Manuel Hernández told me, “It’s not
strange anymore when they tell you what’s-his-name is dead. It’s normal.”
What scares Luna is that many of his younger coworkers seem unconcerned
about the virus. They assume that even if they get sick, they’ll
recover. So while Luna avoids large gatherings, he knows other workers
are still going to parties or bars on the weekends. He says that thought
crosses his mind every morning as he climbs into the work bus. “With the
colder weather, all the bus windows are closed, and the virus is
inside,” he says.
Over the years, this work has twisted Luna’s bones and worn out his
joints. But he’s convinced that the hard labor is good for him. He says
he can’t stand sitting around at home and repeats a popular saying in
Spanish: “En la cama, uno se acaba.” In the bed, one ends.
By 7 AM, Manuel has finally arrived at the field. The bright green rows
of lettuce are striking against the dry desert landscape. Banda music
belts from a portable radio as Manuel and the other workers walk the
rows, using short, flat knives to slice the heads of romaine from their
stalks. Loose leaves are discarded and the heads tossed into plastic
bags. The bags are then passed to a line of workers standing on a long,
elevated platform that’s pulled slowly behind a tractor as they wedge
the bags into cardboard boxes.
Once Manuel and his crew have cut and packaged some 11,500 heads of
lettuce, typically between 9 and 10 am, they’re allowed a 15-minute
break for breakfast, which they take together on the bus. Then it’s back
to work.
As the sun rises higher in the sky, temperatures quickly climb into the
80s. Before the pandemic, most of the workers wore beard nets to protect
the produce from stray hairs. Now they wear face masks to protect one
another from the virus. Manuel says the masks get soaked with sweat and
stick to your face. Sometimes it feels like he can’t catch his breath,
but the supervisor yells at anyone who removes their mask.
In the lettuce fields, no one knows exactly when the workday will end.
It can be anytime between 3 and 6 PM, depending on the size and the
number of orders the crew is required to fill that day. Once the field
is sufficiently cleared, Manuel and the other workers are allowed back
onto the bus. His hands aching and his boots caked in dark soil, he
checks his phone to see if his kids have messaged him. As the bus pulls
away, he stares out the window, which is open to let in the breeze, and
starts to plan dinner in his head.
Back in San Luis, the air is cooling as evening sets in. The workers don
sweaters and jackets as they walk down the main street toward the
border. The line to cross back into Mexico is never quite as long.
Esther Honig is an independent journalist who reports from Mexico and
from her home in Colorado. She works in print and audio to tell stories
about agriculture, US immigration policy and rural issues. She is a 2021
fellow for the UC Berkeley–11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship.
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