Reporter Celia Jimenez does a deep dive into how people’s behavior and actions are changing as a result of fears of detention and family separation by ICE. Her cover story in Monterey County Weekly takes a comprehensive look at how immigrants are faring in an era of fear and mistrust driven by increased ICE raids in California communities.

Transcript:

Hello and welcome to talk of the Bay brought to you every weekday afternoon at five o’clock right here on Community Radio. I’m your host, Rachel Anne Goodman, and today we take a look at a major article. Is the cover story actually from Monterey County Weekly called Into the Shadows.

Immigration Raids have not yet come to Monterey County, but the fear that they could. Is changing people’s lives. Reporter Celia Jimenez is our guest for the first half of this program. I’m very pleased to bring her into the conversation. This is a very amazing article and I think you should be commended for all the work you did on it.

It’s quite something. Thank you, Rachel. Thank you very much. It was kinda like a last minute story. And then I think last minute in a sense that we normally plan our stories like three or four months in advance. And this one took less time than others, but we thought that it was time sensitive and it was something that we should we’re wondering, what was happening in the region.

And I actually was surprised with what I found out. You did a lot of research in a very short amount of time, and we’re gonna go through some of the information you managed to get from people who wanted to be anonymous for very obvious reasons, but they were willing to talk to you about how their lives have changed.

So I wanna spend some time on the individuals you talk. To, and then I wanna spend some time on the amazing amount of research you did to bring forward just what the profile is of the workforce in the agricultural and construction industry. So we’re gonna set the stage in a moment for. Exactly how many people are in Monterey, in San Benito counties.

Do we think? Of course, those numbers are quite hard to come by, but you managed to get a lot of information in a very short amount of time. So let’s just talk about what you saw when you talked to businesses who have seen a real drop in participation in commerce, basically. I walked down in, on, in Greenfield along, along with Camino, and I also visited several businesses in Seaside.

Actually, one of the people that I spoke with, Catalina, I spent two hours at her shop and only two people showed up in that amount of time. And what was her shop selling? They sell like Mexican goods. Yeah. And only two people. That’s quite down from what she’s used to.

Is that what you found out? Yes. And then especially because she, her business is like in the major street, so there’s a lot of traffic. Or, but you barely, no one showed up to the store. So places like Seaside Marina that cater to a lot of the immigrant community, Paro you’re, they’re seeing a real drop in business.

Yes. Like some of the people that I spoke with they couldn’t really quantify how much in Salinas there was this woman who has a, oh my God. I’m sorry. I need to think a little bit. English is not my first language, so sometimes I struggle a little bit. You’re doing great. But she has a nightclub and it’s a restaurant during the day and nightclub at night, and she also has a bar and she was saying that about 50% of attendance has dropped.

In her business. And this is like in a commercial area where the Cardinal store is in east and Sanborn. And then she mentioned that most of the businesses were seeing at least 50% drop in sales. That’s huge. Most businesses. Didn’t even have that during COVID. ’cause they managed to get food to go out to customers.

It wasn’t easy, but a lot of them survived it. It seems if this continues at 50% reduction, we’re gonna see a lot of these businesses have to close their doors. Is that what you found when you talk to, say the Salinas Business Association director? He, we didn’t talk in, in, in depth.

I was hoping to kinda like schedule a time to talk with him. But during the brief time that we had, he mentioned that there was a few businesses that was thinking in closing down. And when I was talking to Delia, the woman that I was talking before I asked her like, what are you gonna do? Because, in her case it’s also, it’s not just, you are not just talking about immigration, but also tariffs.

So there’s two things that are affecting her business and I asked her like, what are you gonna do if things continue the same way and. And then she mentioned that she either are gonna, is gonna find someone else to take over the business, or she could poten potentially. She thought that maybe she will close the business.

So let’s talk about why. All these people that are their customers are not all being deported. So what is going on? That people are not shopping or doing, going to nightclubs or doing the many things people did after COVID was safe. Everybody came out slowly and then a lot of these businesses were recovering.

So what’s keeping people away? They afraid of going out. I know that here in Monterey County we only, I mean in this region we only seen targeted detentions. Meaning they go, ICE has a list and they go and pick up very specific people that have criminal records or that have been deported before.

But for example is specifically talking about the farm working community many of them have ties with the communities that are in Southern California. So the word travels about what happened there, which if people. Were not paying attention to the news. There was a raid on a farm, or was it a marijuana grow?

I can’t remember, but it was a big unannounced business raid. And after that I understand a lot of the farm saw a huge drop off in people showing up to work. That’s correct. It was Eria and Camarillo in Southern California. And then in the NAR area where I’m where Camarillo is there’s people who live here in Montreal County that have relatives, friends acquaintances.

So like for them, it really affect them deeply. And I think another thing that’s happening is the tensions have always happened. Before this administration and it’s been going for years, but now what’s happening is that we are more aware of it. A detention happens and then the solidarity network or the police will say there was a detention in, in, in the city.

And I think that’s keeping present in people’s minds the activity that as that ICE is, has been doing in the region. And I, and. Sometimes I feel that also people are not fully aware of it. Because when I was talking to Catalina the business owner from Seaside, she was like, no, I’m, she was very calm and she was just telling me, no, my life hasn’t changed at all.

It’s, it is the same. I do my regular, my everyday life is just I, I wake up, go to work, do this. But then we just kept talking. You know about it. And then she suddenly started telling me, oh, I don’t go and I don’t go shopping the same time, at the same time of the day or the same day, or like the time that when she mentioned that a uniform man came into the store and she got scared and she thought it was probably ice and it was just a teacher at Presidio of Monterey.

And those little things are the ones that tell you, okay she’s afraid, but she’s not. Fully conscious about it or she just keeping it like on the back of her mind. So you interviewed a woman named Isabel. That was her, the name she gave you. Who was 21? She was undocumented and she’s indigenous.

She’s from Greenfield and lives with her husband and two sons two and six for the past three years. And only the youngest one is a US citizen. So tell me her story and what it taught you when you listened to her story. I think we specifically, we talking about the framework community that are indigenous.

I really understand why many of them are moving to the states. And then and this is just from personal experience, I was just thinking about it when we were talking about her wanting a better life for her kids, I only met one person when I was going to university. That was an in that was indigenous or at least a person who said, who recognized himself as an indigenous person.

So like for them, like there is not a lot of opportunities down in Mexico. So I understand when they’re moving here and I think another part with them is with her story. Because, when I went and talked to her it was like a group of women. So I talked generally with all of them and how they’re feeling.

And then after that I went and talked specifically with Isabel. And then it is like the fear of the unknown of I don’t know what’s gonna happen, plus I need to put food on the table. And, having to go to work even though. They feel this fear or this an anxiety. And it’s a very specific fear.

It’s not just ending up in one of these awful detention centers. It’s the fact that your kids might not see you for months, years. That uncertainty when you have a family is amplified in these communities from what you report that. They’re keeping their kids inside in the summer. Now that school’s happening, that’s a whole different thing.

It used to be that schools were off limits to ice, and they have stripped that safety away. So you can under, I can understand reading your article, why parents would be keeping their children home, even home from school. So maybe they’re not even attending. I wonder what attendance is like now that people are back.

Have you heard anything about that? I haven’t heard anything about it. But it is something that I’m planning to dig into because, when I was doing this story there, there was like so many angles or so many like industries that you can look at. And I was actually interested in education.

And then I did ask like for very specific dates when there were like detentions. Or when the or when the rates in southern California happened, or even when the search warrant in North County in Paro happened because, people didn’t know what was going on. And people thought it was eyes, but it was, later on it was confirmed that it was a different type of operation.

But I asked has attendance dropped? And then a couple of districts that I asked that question, they were like, no, it’s attendance is normal. It hasn’t really changed. I’m not sure if it’s gonna change this time when but, I was talking to Isabel and she was saying that she was planning to take some time off to actually take her son to school.

She was gonna take time from work so she could make sure. He arrived and came back. Is that Yes. What you’re saying? Yes. If you just join me, I’m speaking with Celia Jimenez. She’s a reporter with Monterey County Weekly and did the cover story this week that just came out called Into the Shadows about how families, especially farm worker families, but also undocumented families are mixed.

Status families are experiencing the fear that’s being created by ice. And some people say that’s the point. Today was a particular example of that in the news. Gavin Newsom was announcing a redistricting referendum that’s going to be on the ballot in November and 15 or 20 armed ice people showed up at the press conference just to mill around outside and.

That if that’s not intimidation, I don’t know what is. It was very creepy to watch how this was a press conference about something completely unrelated to immigration. It was about redistricting. And there they were with their masks on. So you can imagine the fear, if you’re the target of that.

I would say even as a. If you are like a US citizen or if you are any kind, kinda like legal documentation to be in the states, I think there is something to be concerned about because for example, like I don’t carry sometimes my ID and then some of the people I talk with is oh, I’m carrying my.

Work permit or my passport with me in case someone detains me. And to me it’s like mind blowing. Like you are like in your own country. Why do you need to carry that type of documents with you? Why should you have to prove that you are rightfully here? If you are rightfully here? And that’s a really.

Fundamental freedom that most of us have perhaps up until recently taken for granted. I don’t think many people of color have taken that for granted. But the fact that you have to prove your residency, your legal status at a traffic stop is fairly new for the whole country and the, that citizens are carrying their passports in their own country is a huge.

Line that’s been crossed. I hope people recognize that is a big line, a big red line toward authoritarianism if you have to prove that you have a right when you already do. Now, some of the people you talk to have been here forever, right? They’ve been here 30, 40 years. You also have some statistics about how many people are actually criminals, and it’s a very small proportion of the people being detained.

And then we also look at the places that normally, this rate had happened. It’s places of work of worship. There is, like places where people congregate, but it’s not, a crime specifically happening. And I think it was really shocking to find out like that, se about 70% of them are people with non-criminal record, which it completely contradicts with.

You know what the Trump administration is talking about? Yeah. They’re definitely not telling the truth when it comes to the amount and ISIS budget tripled to 29 billion. Is that, that the figure I read 29.9 billion. That’s that’s just for one year. And so I guess you have to ask even if you think there’s a real problem with people being in this country without documents.

Are you willing to spend that much of the taxpayer dollars that could be spent on other things? On this particular activity, which. Is scooping people who have never done anything except cross the border, perhaps. And that’s not even a felony. It’s a misdemeanor. It’s a civic issue, like a traffic ticket.

So to lump together people who have crossed illegally with actual criminals is a very blurry kind of a narrative. It doesn’t make sense factually at all. And then I’m just gonna talk a little bit about the amount of money that you mentioned. The 29, that almost $30 billion that is, is specifically for enforcement.

I don’t remember the amount on the top of my head, but it was humongous. I think it was $45 billion. Yes. And this part is just for enforcement. And then when soy luck friend announced, their bill for a path to citizenship. She may also mentioned that now ICE is the entity military, I mean within the DHS is the, they have the most amount of money right now, which is mind blowing.

They have more than most countries. Military, yes. Yeah. And now they’re in DC and so is the National Guard. Patrolling the streets and. Arresting homeless people. Is this what we want our tax dollars to spend on, as opposed to social programs and getting people off the street who are homeless and other things that are very needed, like healthcare when they promise to help working people.

I, I can’t quite imagine that this job’s program of people being hired by ICE is what most people had in mind. And the amount. You write about in your article how much tax dollars are contributed. A lot of people don’t know that. Even undocumented immigrants pay a lot in taxes, and I think you have some figures there.

I don’t know if you have ’em handy, but they, it said, that. Let’s see, in Monterey County, nearly 128,000 immigrant residents paid $850 million in taxes, and that must be in just one year and have 2.5 billion in spending power. So all these businesses you’re talking about, they’re not getting that money anymore, or some of it’s being saved?

I don’t know, by the people who are not going to shop. I think normally like. When I write these type of stories, I always like to add how it will impact us in in different ways. Because, immigration is a very, it is a controversial topic and we can agree or disagree on it.

And I just think it’s very important how even something that you are pro. Happening. It is gonna, it’s gonna impact your life. And I think what’s happening right now is that they are enforcing, immigration without having a plan, be, without having a plan on how are we gonna continue, with the everyday life of everyone and everything.

S so I, I think people also need to think about, what’s gonna happen afterwards? And I’m sorry. I feel like I, I got lost a little bit on, on what you asked me. No I appreciate it. And one of the things you point out in your article is how large, a percentage of two different industries that our area relies on are people who are undocumented and should they all be deported?

25% of agricultural workers and 26% of construction workers are undocumented. So with the housing crisis already looming, it seems. Like a bad time to deport the people who build things and the people who grow our food. Those are two essential housing and food, right? Those are basic needs.

But I think, I wanna end we got about six or seven more minutes. I wanna end with some of the legislative remedies. Good people are putting forth and some of them are bipartisan. You might recall there was a bill that almost, you know, passed except Trump killed it at the last minute when he was campaigning.

’cause he wanted, to be campaigning on this problem. But it was bipartisan. People might forget that. But you cover a number of things. There’s something called the Dignity Act is bipartisan. It’s by representative Maria Salazar, who is a Republican in Florida of all places. What are the chances of these bipartisan bills if Trump is so hard line, like he would veto it even if it passed, or you think that there’s some movement.

On the part of Congress to address the problem in a more comprehensive way, rather than just focusing on imprisonment and deportation. Oh my God. I think that’s like a difficult question to answer. I think the interest has always been there. And now I know for a fact that, representatives, regardless if they’re Democrats or Republicans, their cons, constituents have been like pushing them to, to bring an immigration reform. I think I, I’m gonna be honest, I’m, I don’t know if it’s gonna happen soon. I’m probably, I’m very I’m probably being a Debbie Downer, but it has happened so many times and it has failed so many times.

That, I don’t know, maybe something drastic needs to happen, like a wake up call in order to move this bill forward. I think there’s like a lot of misconceptions about. What it is to come here legally and what it is to come here the right way. I hear a lot of people talking about that or saying, oh, my family came the right way and I don’t know.

It happened a hundred years ago. And every talks, everybody talks about a line, but there’s not a line. And I see, and they’ve cut a lot of the immigration judges. There are something like 3 million backlog. It’s a very large, that’s so many people and there’s fewer and fewer judges being hired partly because they don’t wanna work under this situation and a backlog. But it’s also, because they’re having a hard time confirming them. So there’s a real, there’s a real. Deficit of people who, even if there was a orderly system of getting these backlogs these judges are very slow to be hired. And even if they got hired, they’d have so much workload.

I can understand how maybe they don’t want the job. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. I, it just it’s very difficult. I do hope that they come into an agreement soon. I think there is a lot of like education that needs to happen. And informing the public of, what the issues are.

And you’ve done a great job in this article, I think, because you’ve really looked at the personal cost to these families of just trying to go to work or just taking their kids to school under this cloud of, will I ever see my kids? Am I gonna just get grabbed off the street? And I’m hoping that the deep unpopularity of this process, if you look at.

Even in deep red states, this immigration. Action by ICE and by Trump are deeply unpopular among the American people because they might have been in favor of a stricter border controls, but they didn’t sign up, to have concentration camps built and people to be in horrible conditions, tortured and grabbed off the street by masked people.

So I think even in deep red Nebraska, there was a town hall a couple days ago when this legislator had to face. Angry voters and they were all Republicans. So you know, maybe this kind of extreme thing that’s happening will result in a pendulum swing ’cause people just can’t live with what’s happening to their country.

We can only hope, right? That some solution, yes. It was Ronald Reagan by the way. Someone who republicans admire very much who was the last person to do major reforms and to grant yes, amnesty and citizenship to a large group of people who were here without documents. So maybe some sort of flip flop will happen again.

There was a promise to shield agricultural workers and hotel workers, but it was quickly reversed. We’ll have to see. It’s very even the fairly conservative director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau is angry and does not like the way the Republicans are handling this. So maybe if these farm Bureau people and the farm work owners speak up loudly along with unions, there will be some action on this issue.

I am just about outta time. I have another interview, but I wanna thank you for your article and all of your good work. It’s great to have local reporting on issues that affect our lives and the lives of our neighbors. So keep up the good work and my best to your editors and you for getting this out so quickly in such a timely topic.

Okay. Thank you, Rachel. Thank you very much. Thank you. And thank you for inviting me. Thank you for being here. That was Celia Jimenez, a reporter with Monterey County Weekly, A great weekly newspaper that’s always been right there. Covering the news when we need it. Lots is going on in our community.