Unions Claim California Fruit Will Die on the Vine After ICE Raids

AFP Photo / GLYN KIRK
AFP Photo / GLYN KIRK

California unions claim that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigration raids across Northern California will destroy farmers by causing fruit to “die on the vine.”

President of the United Farm Workers of America Arturo Rodriguez has complained that last week’s ICE raids in Northern California, which led to widespread panic, is a threat to California’s agricultural industry.

His concerns were echoed by President of the Western Growers Association, Tom Nassif, who told Bloomberg that 75 percent of California’s 2 million farm workers are undocumented (illegal) aliens.

The union’s supposed outpouring concern for business came after it was reported that the Department of Justice is investigating Democrat Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf for tipping off illegal aliens through the media to suppress the effectiveness of ICE raids. ICE made 232 arrests, but the DOJ argued that Schaaf’s warning prevented up to 800 more criminal arrests.

National Sheriffs’ Association Executive Director and CEO Jonathan Thompson denounced Schaaf, saying her warning to illegal aliens put city residents and ICE officers in danger.

Despite liberals trying to paint ICE as victimizing harmless farm workers and their families, ICE claims that its focus in the arrest warrants was illegal aliens with criminal charges outstanding, mostly for failures to appear for court hearings.

U.S. immigration courts have the highest failure to appear rates of any courts in America. According to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), 37 percent of all aliens that were free pending trial failed to appear for their hearings over the last twenty years.

Of the 2,498,375 foreign nationals from 1996 to 2015 that were not in detention during U.S. court proceedings, courts ordered 1,219,959 removed. Over 75 percent, or 918,098, of the deportation orders were issued for failing to appear. As of 2015, the United States had at least 953,506 unexecuted immigration removal orders.

CIS highlighted that 3,095 of the illegal aliens that failed to appear and then disappeared were from 36 countries that the U.S. State Department listed as hot spots for terrorism. About 338 individuals that disappeared were from countries labeled as state sponsors of terrorism, including Iran, Sudan, and Syria.

Mayor Schaaf continues to claim that ICE and the Trump administration’s vigorous immigration policy is racist. But ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan blasted Schaaf’s intentional actions as the equivalent of serving as gang lookout yelling that police were coming.

 

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