The fight by labor unions and defenders of the rights of immigrants to win the release of Alfredo Juárez Zeferino, a farmworker union militant detained by the immigration police March 25, continues to win support.
“The Sugarcane Workers Union (UTC) of the Dominican Republic adds its voice to the demand for Juárez’s release and in support of his right to remain in the United States,” reads a letter sent May 12 by Jesús Núñez, the UTC’s national coordinator, to Juárez’s union, Familias Unidas por la Justicia.
Juárez, better known as Lelo by his co-workers and community, was arrested while driving his companion to the tulip fields where she works. At a May 8 hearing Judge Teresa Scala denied him bail, forcing him to remain in lockup for a deportation hearing set for November.
“The May 8 denial of a request for bond for brother Juárez undermines his right to prepare his defense and is intended to cast doubt about his character,” the UTC’s letter says. Claiming they intend to deport millions of workers, the U.S. government is denying due process rights to immigrants and smearing them as criminals.
Since he was a teenager, Juárez has been involved in the fight led by Familias Unidas in Washington state for union recognition and better wages and conditions. The demand for his right to remain in the country has won broad support from the AFL-CIO and other unions and organizations in the region.
“The conditions in which Lelo and his brothers and sisters work in the fields are not alien to the lives of sugarcane workers in the Dominican Republic. Nor are the deportations that the government and the bosses use to instill fear among immigrant workers,” says Núñez. “The deportations are intended to silence the voices that refuse to accept these conditions of exploitation.” The letter calls for Juárez’s immediate release, and urges others to join the fight.
The UTC is currently involved in a fight against the deportation of one of its leaders, Robert Vicent, a retired sugarcane worker of Haitian descent. Vicent came to the Dominican Republic in 1970, one of the tens of thousands of workers from Haiti contracted by the Dominican government to work in the cane fields. He was arrested May 12 in Santo Domingo, despite having a passport and work papers.
Since late October, the Dominican government has pushed to deport thousands of Haitian immigrants, demagogically claiming its goal is to defend “Dominican people” from the threat of Haitian immigration.
‘An attack on rights of all workers’
The capitalist rulers’ anti-immigrant campaign — in the U.S., Dominican Republic and elsewhere — seeks to divide workers and prevent common actions against low wages, onerous working conditions and other hardships imposed on working people. As workers of different nationalities fight shoulder to shoulder, however, it becomes harder for the bosses to pit us against each other and easier to see that our class interests are counterposed to those of “our” bosses and “our” government.
The United Farm Workers held a rally May 19 at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, New York, to demand the release of 14 farmworkers from Mexico and Guatemala detained May 2 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Orleans County in upstate New York. ICE agents stopped and boarded the company bus taking them to work at Lynn-Ette & Sons Inc.
“Some of the workers who were detained were actively involved in organizing their workplace,” the UFW said in an earlier statement. Targeting workers for deportation because of their involvement in union organizing is “a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, the right to freedom of association, including with your union,” it said. “An attack on the rights of any worker is an attack on the rights of every worker.”
“I get that people get in trouble, and maybe there are bad immigrants,” a neighbor who filmed the arrest and sent the video to 13WHAM-ABC in Rochester, New York, told the station.
“But there are bad Americans,” he said. “There are bad people everywhere. But they’re just going to work. That’s all they were doing, going to work!”
The government is “denying due process” to the detained workers, SEIU 1199 organizer Cheryl John told the Brooklyn rally. “These are workers who came here looking for a better life.”
“The ICE agents did not have a warrant when they entered the bus,” UFW organizer Gabriella Szpunt told the rally. “They had a SWAT team wearing military vests and weapons. They shackled people who were just going to work.”
“It’s not just in New York, this is happening across the country,” Szpunt said, including nine farmworkers in Vermont last month, and “Lelo in Washington. We’re here today to demand the release of all these workers.”
Seth Galinsky contributed to this article.