Central California’s economy relies on immigrant labor, not criminals | Opinion

Central California runs on the labor, culture and resilience of immigrants, especially the Latino community.

They work the fields that feed our families. They raise children, run small businesses, care for our elders and bring vibrancy to a region too often overlooked. If you have ever eaten a salad in January or driven past miles of orchards, you’ve benefited from what immigrants bring to this place.

They are essential. That is not up for debate.

And yet, this country continues to treat them as disposable, criminal and invisible.

What happened to Kilmar Abrego García should outrage us all.

Abrego García was 29 years old when he was taken into ICE custody on March 12 in Maryland. Three days later, he was deported to El Salvador. He had no criminal record and he had lived in the United States since age 16. In 2019, he began actively pursuing legal protection and a judge granted him “withholding of removal” status that would block his deportation to El Salvador. He was also granted a work permit that same year.

ICE later described it as “an administrative error.” But this was not just a clerical mistake. It was a violation of federal legal precedent.

In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Santos-Zacaria v. Garland that immigrants have the right to seek judicial review of their deportation orders, even if they have not completed every step of the administrative appeals process. The decision made clear that deporting someone while their appeal is still active is unlawful, unless that person knowingly gives up that right.

Kilmar did not. His appeal was ongoing. He should have been protected. ICE deported him anyway.

Upon arrival in El Salvador, he was detained by local authorities. After that, he vanished. For weeks, his family, legal team, and community had no idea where he was. No answers. No accountability.

This is not how justice works. This is how authoritarian systems function, quietly, violently, and without consequence.

If this can happen to him, who’s next?

Kilmar had no criminal record. He was protected by law. Still, he was deported in silence. The Supreme Court spoke clearly, and was ignored. How long do we stay quiet before we say enough is enough?

Even Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in her concurring opinion on the Supreme Court’s 9–0 ruling, pointed to a painful precedent. Korematsu v. United States, the 1944 case that allowed this country to place its own citizens in internment camps during World War II. She warned what can happen when fear is given more power than the Constitution.

In his dissent of the 1944 case, Justice Robert Jackson stated: “But once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens.

“The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. Every repetition imbeds that principle more deeply in our law and thinking and expands it to new purposes.”

Immigrants are not a burden

In Central California, immigrants are not just part of the economy. They are the economy. Our agricultural industry is worth billions. More than half of that workforce is made up of immigrants, many undocumented. The food on our tables comes from their hands.

And still, we call them “illegal.” We criminalize survival. We erase their humanity while relying on their labor.

The weight they carry

Latino immigrants in the Valley do not just carry the work of the day. They carry the weight of generations.

They carry the stories of relatives who picked fruit in silence, who worked through pain because they could not risk being seen. They carry the memory of classrooms they left early to help in the fields, of laws that never included them, of dreams passed down with caution.

They hold pride in their culture and their families like it is sacred, because it is. But they hold it quietly, not out of shame, but because they have learned that visibility often comes with a cost.

Still, they show up. They work hard. They raise children, build communities, and carry the weight of being treated like they don’t belong.

Culture, faith, family, work: This Is California

Latino immigrants bring far more than labor. They bring life. Traditions, languages, celebrations, faith, joy. They are caretakers, culture bearers, and the people who keep our communities whole. Go to any small town in the Valley and you’ll see it: families gathering after work, kids playing in front yards, taquerías full of neighbors, quinceañeras lighting up community centers.

This is California. This is America.

The community is fighting back

Organizations like 50501, Faith in the Valley, and countless residents are demanding justice for Kilmar and others like him. The are writing letters, making calls, and showing up, because they know this is not just about one man. It is about all of us.

I did not always understand what it meant to be treated as “less than” in your own country. Not until I fell in love with someone whose family had lived it. Not until I sat with my father-in-law and heard, piece by piece, how his family was treated growing up.

Both of my in-laws were born and raised in Corcoran. Their families worked the fields for years. They never crossed a border, but like so many Latinos in this country, they were still treated like they did not belong.

Over time, I began to understand that having citizenship does not always mean you are treated like you belong.

That is why I write. That is why I show up. That is why I will not stay quiet. Because when I look at my family, my husband and my children, I know exactly whose side I am on.

Choose dignity over deportation

We cannot call ourselves a nation of laws if our government ignores the Supreme Court. We cannot claim to value families while tearing them apart. We cannot rely on immigrant labor while treating those workers as disposable.

We do not get to have it both ways.

And if this administration is already talking about deporting even American citizens, we have to ask, who is next?

Immigrants are the heart of this country. Without them, America stops beating.

This story was originally published April 22, 2025 at 11:00 AM.