...The only unanswered question about such arrests, which target Hispanic-named people or anyone with brown skin, is whether the farm owners are deliberately calling ICE (the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency) to raid their facilities when union organizing starts…

It’s that last raid, near Albion, just west of Rochester, that’s the most suspicious. Farm worker justice groups say the corporate farm is in a years-long battle against United Farm Workers organizers…

… ICE agents had swooped down on a bus full of farm workers, including several pro-union advocates, near Albion, N.Y. They arrested 14 workers on their way to Lynn-Ette & Sons Farms, UFW Secretary-Treasurer Armando Elenes reported to Migrant Justice. The union and the bosses are in arbitration for a first contract at Lynn-Ette & Sons.

The union said ICE “agents had a list of names, including union leaders who had been organizing at the farm. Those were the workers detained.” They’re at a detention center in Batavia, N.Y., and UFW has been organizing protests there ever since…

Lynn-Ette, interestingly enough, bought ad time during a local newscast to express concern for the workers’ families and would help them. Lynn-Ette says it never called ICE, and ICE didn’t tip them off about the raid…