Not a raid – workers arrested because they ran when told to stop

Border Patrol won’t raid farms, schools, churches, agents reportedly said

Too many migrant workers for too few plum jobs?

By Guy Page

As Franklin resident and self-employed Spanish translator Joceyln Reighley was taking a box of tortillas out of her car trunk and handing it to a migrant worker Monday afternoon,  a Border Patrol cruiser drove by. 

A second drive-by followed moments later. ‘Will you look at that, there’s another one,” the migrant worker – one of about 50 employed at the 3,000 cow Pleasant Valley Farm – said. 

After the third drive-by, she started hearing a rush of footsteps, as workers heading for their trailers ASAP. That was the beginning of an incident that quickly became front-page news in Vermont and beyond: federal authorities at the largest dairy farm in Vermont arrested eight migrant workers, who are now detained at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in Swanton.

One Border Patrol cruiser? Business as usual. Several of them, disgorging uniformed officers? That got everyone’s attention.

“We see a bunch of men running, yelling, ‘Migra, Migra,’” which Reighley said is worker shorthand for immigration police. “They’re yelling, they’re trying to get into their trailers.”

Then she saw Border Patrol agents converging on the farm from all four directions. An agent asked her for her car keys and directed her to stay put. She complied. Then all the action shifted to a barn a distance away. 

A little while later, the agents gave her back her keys and apologized.

“I spoke to four different guys,” Reighley said. “They apologized: ‘We’re sorry about this.’ They were almost sheepish. They said, ‘We got a call from a concerned citizen on the tip line that said we saw men with backpacks emerging from woods.’” 

This much was clear to Reighley: “This was not a raid, a coordinated effort, it was very much investigative.” 

She was told by the sheepish federal agents, “You’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. We assumed that people had crossed the border. You clearly don’t work here…. We thought you might be the getaway driver.”

VDC asked Reighley why, if it was all a matter of mistaken identification, BP arrested eight workers. 

Reighley said it’s probably because the eight ran from the agents. 

“The guys emerging into the field, Border Patrol had seen them. Had told them  to stop. They started to run. To flee from the Border Patrol. They ran through one of the barns. Border Patrol chased them through the barn.”

In short, Reighley said, “they got picked up because they ran….tt was not Border Patrol doing anything beyond what the normal protocol.”

In the moment, “running from Border Patrol kind of implies that you’ve done something, it implies guilt” – whether that inference is right or wrong, she said. 

If so, that explanation seems to support the Pleasant Valley Farm owners’ contention that their workers had legal documentation.

Just to make it crystal clear, the Border Patrol agents told Reighley that Border Patrol is not on the prowl to detain farm workers. “They specifically said… they looked so sheepish…. ‘We are not trying to raid farms, schools or churches.’”

Reighley is a Vermont native who finished her nursing education in Florida because “it’s so much cheaper.” Working in the greater Miami area, 90% of her patients were Spanish-speaking. She learned the language. When she returned to Vermont, she developed a small side-business providing translation services and running occasional errands for the farm workers. 

She’s been doing it for over a decade. She’s not political. When she started, “conventional wisdom among all of the border farm workers was as long as the BP didn’t see you off the farm, you were let alone. ‘As long as we can’t see you, we won’t bother you.’ That was the unspoken message.”

“It changed a lot during the Biden administration. When Biden came along, that got a little loose.” Whoever’s president, migrant workers working in the U.S. illegally have a realistic, even fatalistic view of federal immigration authorities, she added. 

“In a general sense, anyone who is here illegally, they know that when their ticket is up, their ticket is up. They are fully aware that it is the luck of the draw. You could get picked up at Walmart. You could be here 20 years, you could be here 20 days. It’s part of the deal,” Reighley said. 

Reighley was told that some Vermont media and officials are concerned about losing milk production if workers leave their jobs en masse due to fear of apprehension.

In a statement that may surprise many Vermonters, Reighley claimed there are currently too many Mexican workers for too few dairy farm positions. That could change, of course, if workers leave or are taken en masse. But right now, there are more than enough migrant workers.

“There is a surplus of Mexican workers and a shortage of farm jobs,” she said. “They’re making about $750-1000 week. Take home. Cash.” 

The farmers cash their checks and put cash in envelopes for the workers, who have no bank accounts, no direct deposit. In many of these jobs, the workers don’t pay rent, get free heat, electricity, water, garbage removal, and wi-fi. They even receive a free latino channel via dish satellite. 

For these highly coveted jobs among migrants, right now there’s no lack of nearby workers, because when borders were more open, men brought their wives and families – many of whom are simply waiting around for a job to open up. Some of these people are waiting for months.

“You’ve got 50 guys on your payroll. You lose eight, I’m sure there’s 10-15 waiting. It’s not a crisis. It’s not going to be a crisis,” Reighley said. 

It hasn’t always been this way. Sometimes there are too few workers, sometimes there’s a balance. But “Right now there’s big families that have been here a long time,” and they plug family members into farm jobs.

Contacted Thursday afternoon, Secretary of Agriculture, Food & Markets Anson Tebbetts said he’s unaware of any worker surplus, legal or illegal.

“Had not heard this,” Tebbetts said in response to VDC inquiry about Reighley’s claim. “Also, farmers have repeatedly asked for local help with ads and get little or no response, so they are turning to migrant labor.

“It’s across all sizes and scale of farming. Some farms may have one migrant employee, or they may have several.”