As immigration fears rise, labor abuses likely to follow

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The Weekly Dispatch

Community-powered immigration news from the Bay Area.

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Welcome to El Tímpano’s Weekly Dispatch. I’m Erica Hellerstein, senior immigration, labor and economics reporter.

Last week, the Kaiser Family Foundation released findings from a series of focus groups conducted with Spanish-speaking immigrants who are either undocumented themselves or have undocumented family members.

For readers of this newsletter, the results may not be surprising. Participants reported heightened levels of fear, anxiety and uncertainty in the early days of the Trump presidency, fueled largely by the administration’s emphasis on mass deportations and high-profile immigration raids. The foundation also released a broader national survey of Asian and Latino immigrants’ experiences under the Trump administration, which found that 60% of Latino immigrants worry about deportation and detention. Forty-three percent said these concerns have led to negative health effects, including insomnia, feelings of sadness and stress and a worsening of existing health conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure.

These findings align with what I, and other members of the editorial team, have heard in numerous community conversations since Trump’s inauguration. People are fearful for themselves, their loved ones and their communities — and their bodies are keeping the score.

But another section in the report caught my eye. Participants told researchers that these immigration-related anxieties aren’t just manifesting at home. They’re also showing up in the workplace, a dynamic that has major implications for labor rights as well as California’s economy.

Spanish-speaking focus group participants said they are becoming increasingly afraid of going to work because of concerns about immigration enforcement, and noted that fewer of their colleagues are showing up to work. A Bakersfield-based farmworker reported lower attendance in the fields after a high-profile string of immigration raids in the city in January. An immigrant in Texas said half of her coworkers recently quit out of fear. Businesses that serve large numbers of immigrants have also reportedly struggled, they shared, as fewer people venture out of their homes to eat, shop and travel. One in five immigrants surveyed said they had seen or heard reports of ICE presence at a business employing migrant workers. Three percent said they had avoided going to work altogether to avoid drawing attention to their immigration status.

What’s at stake for California’s workforce and economy

In California, where immigrants are deeply embedded in the labor market, these findings carry serious weight. Immigrants make up 28% of the state population and more than 30% of California’s workforce, according to the California Budget & Policy Center. Undocumented workers are critical to sectors like agriculture, construction, health care and hospitality. They also contribute significantly to the state economy. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), undocumented workers paid $8.5 billion in state and local taxes in 2022 alone.

Even a small shift in worker behavior could carry outsize consequences. If just 3% of immigrant workers avoid the workplace, as workers surveyed by Kaiser Family Foundation reported, the ripple effects could be substantial for the industries that rely on immigrant labor and for the economic outlook of the state, which collects income and sales taxes from undocumented immigrants. ITEP estimated that a 10% drop in tax compliance from undocumented immigrants over the next decade could cost California $221.7 million in lost state and local revenue.

But it’s not just about economic output. There’s also a growing risk to workers’ rights.

When people are afraid to go to work, or to speak up at work, the conditions that enable labor abuse flourish. Undocumented workers who are afraid of being reported to authorities are less likely to report unsafe conditions, wage theft or harassment. In some cases, workers have been threatened outright with immigration enforcement after sounding the alarm about wage theft.

These aren’t just abstract concerns. Advocates who work closely with immigrant communities said they’re already happening. According to Yunuen Trujillo, the director of the workers’ rights and labor legal services department at the California-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), the organization has seen a noticeable drop in calls about workplace issues since Trump took office.

“That’s not because there’s less abuse now, but because people are more afraid to report,” she said. Thanks to the hostile national climate, Trujillo continued, “employers who are abusive are starting to get more emboldened.” 

She shared an example of a worker who called the department last week and reported an employer who threatened to re-verify the person’s immigration status after they requested an accommodation due to a workplace injury. “They’re being emboldened to use immigration status as a way to threaten their employees whom they either know or believe to be undocumented,” Trujillo explained.

Fast food workers on the front lines

These risks are elevated in California’s fast food industry, where the workforce is predominantly made up of women and immigrants. Sixty percent of workers identify as Latino, and roughly two-thirds are women.

Maria Maldonado, an organizer with the state’s newly formed Fast Food Workers Union, told me last year that immigrant fast food workers are a “perfect” target for exploitation. “Because they’re a vulnerable community,” she said. “Many times workers don’t get paid overtime, they work off the clock, they don’t take breaks. And when the workers complain, they get retaliated against.”

Maldonado’s observations are consistent with a report released last week by the Fast Food Workers Union and CHIRLA. In a survey of more than 400 fast food workers across California, more than 80% of respondents said that immigration-related fears discourage workers from reporting employment issues and violations. Sixty-seven percent said workers who have concerns about their immigration status are at greater risk of wage theft or working in unsafe conditions.

To learn more, I called Beatriz, a 52-year-old fast food worker in Oakland who asked to be identified by her first name only. Beatriz has worked in the industry for over three decades, from Taco Bell to Burger King, and now Jack in the Box. This tenure has given her an up-close look at her colleagues’ concerns. These days, she said, her coworkers are far more anxious about immigration enforcement than in previous years. Rumors of ICE sightings in Alameda County — real or not — spread quickly through the workplace, deepening employees’ anxieties.

And those worries, Beatriz said, can lay the groundwork for abuse.

“Management doesn’t have to threaten to call immigration, because people are already scared,” she said in Spanish. “The fear is already there.”

I’ll continue reporting on how immigration fears are contributing to labor abuses in the Bay Area. If you have a tip, story, or experience to share, I’d love to hear from you. You can always reach me at ehellerstein@eltimpano.org.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading and see you next week.

Ear to the Ground

El Tímpano’s text messaging (SMS) service reaches 5,700 Spanish-speaking immigrants across the Bay Area. In the past eight months, many subscribers have shared questions and concerns about labor rights and workplace issues. Here are a few of their responses.

I think I was discriminated against for being older and not having papers. One day I heard one of the managers say they were no longer going to give jobs to those without papers.

Yo pienso que a mi me discriminaron por mayor de edad y no [tener] papeles. Un día escuche a uno de los mayordomos que ya no le iban a dar trabajo a los que no tenían papeles.

–Concord resident 

I believe that beyond the implementation of labor rights, it’s about educating our communities. Both about labor rights and identifying the normalization of “having” to work, even in extreme moments.

Creo que más allá de la implementación de los derechos laborales, es la educación a nuestras comunidades. Tanto de los derechos laborales, como identificar la normativa y la normalización de “tener” que trabajar, incluso en momentos extremos. 

– Sacramento resident 

I have a problem at work. I’m not getting paid overtime or lunch. I have a lot of questions. They pay me overtime as normal and sometimes I’m short hours.

Tengo un problema en mi trabajo. No me pagan overtime ni lonche. Tengo muchas preguntas. Overtime me lo pagan normal y hay veces que me faltan horas. 

-Oakland resident

My husband did a repair and painting job on a house and they made excuses that he didn’t do it right just because he didn’t bring a helper and now they don’t want to pay him what he asked for.

Mi esposo hizo un trabajo de reparación y pintura en una casa y pusieron excusas que no lo hizo bien solo porque no llevó un ayudante y ahora no le quieren pagar lo que pidió. 

-Oakland resident

• GOP House bill would penalize California for providing health coverage to undocumented immigrants. We’re also keeping an eye on House Republicans’ proposed budget bill, which aims to extend the Trump administration’s 2017 tax cuts while cutting more than $1.5 trillion in spending on Medicaid, food stamps and green energy programs. The proposal would also penalize states that provide coverage to undocumented residents, including California, by substantially reducing federal Medicaid funding unless those states eliminate their coverage programs for immigrants without legal status. In a statement, the California Immigrant Policy Center called the proposal “a blatant political attack on states that made their health care systems more equitable and a federal overreach trying to dictate how states spend their own state dollars providing care for their residents.”

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