A 13-year-old was apprehended for allegedly targeting young girls in a string of home invasions in Michigan, authorities said. Oakland County Sheriff’s Office
(DETROIT) — A 13-year-old was apprehended for allegedly targeting young girls in a string of home invasions in Michigan, authorities said.
The teen was allegedly involved in nine break-ins in Pontiac and two in Detroit, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said.
On Feb. 4, the suspect — who was wearing a ski mask and was armed with a knife — choked a sleeping 10-year-old girl, according to the sheriff’s office. The girl screamed, and then her mom saw the suspect run down the stairs and out of the house, the sheriff’s office said.
“This is the worst nightmare for any parent — that somebody might be trying to climb in through a window to get after their kids, especially a young teenage girl,” Bouchard said at a news conference.
There were few physical injuries, but Bouchard stressed the immense “emotional trauma” of being targeted in bed.
The break-ins began two years ago, Bouchard said. The suspect allegedly looked for unlocked windows and had a knife during several incidents, he said.
Charges are not yet clear. The 13-year-old’s parent has been cooperative, Bouchard said.
(NEW YORK) — Two major winter storms are bearing down on the U.S. this week and are expected to bring some of the highest snow totals of the season for cities including Chicago and Washington, D.C.
The first storm, which spans from Colorado to Delaware, will hit Tuesday morning through Wednesday morning.
By 7 a.m. ET Tuesday, heavy rain is expected from Dallas to Nashville, Tennessee, while snow will be falling from Louisville, Kentucky, to Richmond, Virginia.
The snow will arrive in D.C. by noon on Tuesday and may last for over 12 hours. Some light snow may make it as far north as Philadelphia.
Four to 6 inches of snow is possible for the D.C. and Baltimore region.
Meanwhile, the heavy rain in the South may cause flash flooding.
By the time that first storm leaves the East Coast, the second storm will have already started in the Midwest.
At 7 a.m. ET Wednesday, widespread snow is expected from Colorado to Iowa to Missouri, while heavy rain will be falling from Houston to Louisiana.
In Chicago, the snow will begin around 9 a.m. Wednesday and may last for over 12 hours. Five to 9 inches of snow is possible in the Windy City.
Then, in the East, a mix of rain and freezing rain expected in D.C. and Philadelphia beginning after 5 p.m. Wednesday and continuing overnight.
In New York City and Boston, the snow is forecast to start Wednesday night and then change to rain overnight.
Both storms combined will result in hefty snow totals in the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic, and potentially flooding rain for a wide swath of the South.
(AUSTIN, Texas) — An American Airlines flight was delayed last week after the crew alerted authorities about suspicious activity on the plane “regarding the name of a WiFi hotspot involving the word ‘bomb.'”
American Airlines Flight 2863 was scheduled to travel from Austin, Texas, to Charlotte, North Carolina, with a planned departure time of 1:42 p.m.
Bruce Steen, 63 years old, of Charlotte, North Carolina, was one of the passengers aboard the flight amid the incident at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
Steen told ABC News that he was traveling home from a meeting in Austin on Feb. 7 when the incident occurred.
He said that he was seated toward the front of the plane and saw a young man walking up to a flight attendant with a tablet to show her something. The flight attendant immediately called the cockpit, Steen said, and soon the pilot announced that the flight would be returning to the gate due to an “administrative issue.”
In the meantime, the crew had reported the incident to the Austin Police Department and the Department of Aviation.
Steen said that after a few minutes, the pilot came back on and announced that “somebody renamed their hotspot.” Steen said the crew said the hotspot was called: “There is a bomb on the flight.”
A lieutenant from Austin PD then came onboard and told passengers the renaming was not funny, Steen told ABC News, recalling that the official said: “If this is a joke, please raise your hand now, because we can deal with the practical joke differently than if this, if we have to do a full blown investigation of what’s going on here.”
Steen said no one raised their hands — and everyone was escorted off the plane in groups by the Austin PD.
At one point, every passenger had to show their hotspot to police officers, Steen said.
The Transportation Security Administration said in a statement to ABC News that the agency and its partners in the transportation sector “take bomb threats very seriously.”
“All passengers and their checked baggage were rescreened,” the TSA confirmed.
A dog sniffed all the luggage and the police checked the baggage compartment on the plane, Steen told ABC News.
After the aircraft and luggage were swept for explosives, the aircraft was cleared by the Austin PD.
The flight departed around 6:15 p.m. local time, according to airport officials.
Austin Airport said there were no significant impacts to airport or airline operations, other than the delayed flight that was involved in the incident.
The Austin Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(LONDON) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appealed to his U.S. and European partners not to “abandon” Kyiv in any revived peace talks with Russia, aimed at ending the war between the two nations now nearly 3 years old.
The return of President Donald Trump to the White House has raised the prospect of renewed negotiations, with the president telling reporters this weekend he had been “making progress” in contacts with Kyiv and with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In an interview with Britain’s ITV News published this weekend, Zelenskyy said he “would be ready for any format for talks” if there was “an understanding that America and Europe will not abandon us and they will support us and provide security guarantees.”
Russian officials have expressed openness to renewed talks, but have not indicated any willingness to downgrade Moscow’s longstanding war goals of annexing swaths of Ukraine and blocking Kyiv’s ambitions to join NATO. Putin has said he is not willing to negotiate directly with Zelenskyy, dismissing the Ukrainian leader as “illegitimate.”
On Monday, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin told RIA Novosti that Moscow has not yet received any suitable negotiating proposals.
The diplomatic maneuvering continues as White House officials prepare to travel to both Germany and Ukraine, with fresh high-level peace talk discussions expected.
Vice President JD Vance is expected to attend next weekend the Munich Security Conference in southern Germany, where Zelenskyy is expected to lead Kyiv’s delegation.
Trump’s Ukraine-Russia envoy, Keith Kellogg, is then expected to visit Ukraine on Feb. 20.
In his interview with ITV, Zelenskyy warned the White House against simply freezing the conflict along the current front line.
‘”A frozen conflict will lead to more aggression again and again,” the Ukrainian leader said. “Who then will win prizes and go down in history as the victor? No one. It will be an absolute defeat for everyone, both for us, as is important, and for Trump.”
While preparing for new talks, both Moscow and Kyiv continued their exchange of large-scale drone attacks on Sunday night.
Ukraine’s air force said on Telegram that it downed 61 of 83 Russian drones launched towards the country, with another 22 drones lost in flight.
Officials reported damage to a non-residential building in Kyiv after falling drone debris sparked a fire. One woman was injured in the city of Sumy after a drone detonated in a parking lot, officials said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said it shot down 17 Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea, Crimea and several Russian regions.
Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, said on Telegram that debris from a Ukrainian drone damaged a multi-storey building but caused no casualties.
Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation — which operates as part of the country’s National Security and Defense Council — said on Telegram that drones targeted the Afipsky oil refinery in Krasnodar region.
ABC News’ Will Gretsky and Max Uzol contributed to this report.
(BOSTON) — A federal judge in Boston Monday will consider whether to block President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk from carrying out their unprecedented plan to buy out tens of thousands of federal employees.
Three federal employee unions — with the support of 20 Democratic attorneys general — have argued that the Office of Personnel Management’s deferred resignation offer is an “unlawful ultimatum” to force the resignation of government workers under the “threat of mass termination.”
“OPM’s Fork Directive is a sweeping and stunningly arbitrary action to solicit blanket resignations of federal workers,” wrote lawyers for the American Federation of Government Employees, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the National Association of Government Employees. “Defendants have not even argued — nor could they — that the Fork Directive was the product of rational or considered decision-making.”
The buyout offer, part of Trump’s effort to trim the size of government through Musk’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, was sent out under the subject line “Fork in the Road” — the same language Musk used when he slashed jobs at Twitter after taking over that company in 2022.
In court, the Trump administration has described the buyout as one of the first steps in the president’s plan to “transform the federal workforce,” arguing that any further delay of the buyout would cause “remarkably disruptive and inequitable repercussions.”
Monday’s hearing comes less than two weeks after more than two million government employees received the “Fork in the Road” email from the Office of Personnel Management, offering full pay and benefits until September for any federal employee who accepted a deferred resignation by Feb. 6.
Just hours ahead of Thursday’s deadline for employees to accept the offer, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. — who was nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton — temporarily blocked the offer until Monday so he could consider issuing a temporary restraining offer pausing the order.
“I enjoined the defendants from taking any action to implement the so-called ‘Fork Directive’ pending the completion of briefing and oral argument on the issues,” Judge O’Toole said in his ruling. “I believe that’s as far as I want to go today.”
The Trump administration, in response, “extended” the deadline for the offer, which more than 65,000 federal employees have already taken.
“We are grateful to the judge for extending the deadline so more federal workers who refuse to show up to the office can take the Administration up on this very generous, once-in-a-lifetime offer,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week.
The unions who brought the lawsuit argued that Trump exceeded his authority as president with the offer, which they described as a “slapdash resignation program.”
According to the plaintiffs, Trump’s offer violates federal law, lacks congressionally appropriated funding, and does not offer employees reassurance that the president would follow through with the offer. Their claim in part relies on a federal law from the 1940s called the Administrative Procedure Act that governs how federal agencies create and enforce rules.
“In the tech universe, ‘move fast and break things’ is a fine motto in part because they’re not playing with the public’s money, and it’s expected that most initiatives are going to fail,” Loyola Marymount law professor Justin Leavitt told ABC News. “Congress knows that, so in 1946 they basically said, ‘When agencies do stuff … they have to be careful about it. They’ve got to consider all aspects of the problem.”
The plaintiffs also argued that the buyout is unlawful because it relies on funding that Congress has yet to appropriate, violating the Antideficiency Act.
“Defendants’ ultimatum divides federal workers into two groups: (1) those who submit their resignations to OPM for a promised period of pay without the requirement to work, and (2) those who have not and are therefore subject to threat of mass termination,” the lawsuit said.
Lawyers for the federal government have pushed back on those claims, arguing that Trump has the legal authority to provide the buyout for employees within the federal branch, and that any further delay would do more harm than good.
“Extending the deadline for the acceptance of deferred resignation on its very last day will markedly disrupt the expectations of the federal workforce, inject tremendous uncertainty into a program that scores of federal employees have already availed themselves of, and hinder the Administration’s efforts to reform the federal workforce,” DOJ attorney Joshua E. Gardner wrote in a filing last week.
Judge O’Toole will consider issuing a temporary restraining order that would block enforcement of the offer for as long as two weeks.
In an interview on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday, Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy warned of an “assault on the Constitution” under President Donald Trump.
“I think this is the most serious constitutional crisis the country has faced, certainly since Watergate,” Murphy said. “The president is attempting to seize control of power, and for corrupt purposes.”
Pointing to the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul the federal government, including by freezing foreign aid programs under the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Murphy said the country is in the midst of a “red-alert moment” and argued that Trump is ushering in “the billionaire takeover of government.”
Trump and Elon Musk, the billionaire leader of the new Department of Government Efficiency, have called for a shuttering of USAID, with Trump posting on social media, “CLOSE IT DOWN!”
“The president wants to be able to decide how and where money is spent so that he can reward his political friends, he can punish his political enemies,” Murphy said. “That is the evisceration of democracy.”
“You stand that next to the wholesale endorsement of political violence with the pardons given to every single Jan. 6 rioter — including the most violent, who beat police officers over the head with baseball bats — and you can see what he’s trying to do here,” Murphy continued. “He is trying to crush his opposition by making them afraid of losing federal funding, by making them afraid of physical violence.”
Murphy accused Musk of being motivated to shutter USAID in order to promote his own business interests.
“It makes America much less safe around the world, but it helps China. USAID is a thorn in the side of the Chinese government,” Murphy said. “Elon Musk has many major business interests at stake inside Beijing, and so making Beijing happy is going to accrue to the financial benefit of Elon Musk and many billionaires who outsource work to China.”
Murphy said it amounted to an “assault on the Constitution in order to serve the billionaire class” that will require “full scale opposition.”
“You can’t just rely on the courts,” he said. “Ultimately, you’ve got to bring the American public into this conversation, because we need our Republican colleagues in the House and in the Senate, ultimately, to put a stop to this. You cannot just rely on the court system when the challenge to the Constitution and the billionaire takeover is so acute and so urgent.”
Murphy also pushed back against Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, who said on the Puck podcast “Somebody’s Gotta Win” last week that Democrats need to tone down their rhetoric, saying Americans are “not going to pay attention” if Democrats “keep yelling” and using “the most severe kinds of language.”
“I don’t agree. I’m not going to calm down,” Murphy said. “This is a fundamental corruption, and democracies don’t last forever, and what those who are trying to destroy democracies want is for everyone to stay quiet, for everyone to believe that the moment isn’t urgent.”
President Donald Trump’s freeze of U.S. foreign humanitarian aid and shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development is having devastating consequences globally, several humanitarian nongovernmental organization leaders told ABC News.
“The United States Government provides about 70% of all funding for HIV and AIDS globally, and so pausing any of that is a big shock to the system,” said Christine Stegling, a deputy executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and an assistant secretary-general of the United Nations.
While Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week the State Department can offer waivers for some of the most critical aid efforts to continue, Stegling said there is confusion over how to implement the waivers and what programs qualify.
“Community clinics are closed because communities are not sure what the guidance is, and they’re not sure what costs can be covered, and they’re afraid that they will be asked to repay services that they have charged to U.S. government contracts,” Stegling told ABC News.
Stegling warned that if the Trump administration halts all funding to HIV and AIDS programs, more than six million people could die of AIDS-related causes by 2029.
“These are people’s lives that are really at risk here that we need to consider as we’re thinking about the future,” Stegling said.
Since the Russian invasion in 2022, Ukraine has been the top recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, according to USAID. Yuriy Boyechko, the founder and president of Hope for Ukraine, works with U.S.-funded organizations to provide firewood to Ukrainian civilians living on the front lines.
“Firewood is a lifeline right now for the people in Ukraine,” Boyechko told ABC News. “They don’t have electricity, they don’t have gas. They rely on firewood to keep them warm in freezing temperature[s], and they rely on their firewood to cook their meals.”
Boyechko said that unless other organizations can step in and distribute that wood, Ukrainians will be left in the freezing cold.
“It’s created a lot of distrust inside of the population inside of Ukraine because we [have] always been relying on [the] United States,” Boyechko said. “[The] United States got our back in the darkest period of time, and now, since USAID is pulling away, a lot of people [are] losing hope.”
Search for Common Ground, a global peace-building organization, receives about 40 percent of its funding from the U.S. CEO Shamil Idriss said the aid freeze has hurt their work in eastern Congo, where a war has reemerged.
“We had to freeze the mobilization in the east of the country that was intended to prevent recruitment into the rebel movement that is gaining ground there,” Idriss told ABC News. “Critically, we had to stop broadcasting on a network of radio stations in the east of the country that provide a lifeline for people. So literally, today, people are running in the wrong direction. They’re fleeing towards violence, rather than away from it.”
Idriss said his organization is making the case that its work aligns with the foreign policy priorities of the Trump administration and hopes to work with them, but the way in which the aid was immediately cut has caused concern.
“The stop work orders that we received across more than 30 programs and projects, no two were alike. Some of the information was inconsistent, ambiguous or even contradictory,” Idriss said. “Chaos has really ensued. We’re hopeful that, you know, cooler heads will prevail within the administration shortly.”
Noah Gottschalk, senior director for international advocacy at HIAS, said the Jewish refugee and immigrant aid organization has also experienced “total and complete chaos.”
“We’ve had to stop programs, for example, with survivors of violence against women in Latin America, in countries like Colombia, in countries like Ecuador, women who fled abusive partners, and the support that we provide them is often the difference between them being forced to maybe return to those abusive former partners, or becoming vulnerable to human trafficking,” Gottschalk told ABC News.
Gottschalk said he’s worried the freeze in humanitarian aid could have foreign policy implications.
“The U.S. abandoning some of the most desperate people in the world right now absolutely will create a vacuum, and I’m deeply concerned about who is going to fill that vacuum, whether it’s armed groups, whether it’s cartels, human traffickers,” Gottschalk said.
Republican Rep. Mike Turner on Sunday refuted claims that the massive overhaul of the federal government by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) constitutes a federal crisis.
“Elon Musk goes about his job, which is a very important job, I mean the fact that we have Elon Musk looking from the private sector into the public sector, advising the president in ways that we can find ways to to reduce overall spending, to get this curve down is incredibly important and an unbelievable opportunity for for our government,” Turner said in an exclusive interview with co-anchor Martha Raddatz on “This Week.”
President Donald Trump tasked Musk with cutting federal spending through DOGE. Since Trump took office, Musk’s controversial task force has encouraged federal workers to leave their jobs and slashed many programs and agencies.
“In this instance, we have Elon Musk and the president of the United States going over to the bureaucracy and saying, ‘We’re going to tame you. We’re going to pull you back under the executive branch. We’re going to look at ways in which we can find savings, and we’re going to bring this spending curve down,'” Turner said.
Turner said that DOGE’s drastic cuts to the federal government will assist in meeting spending goals. The federal government is currently operating under a continuing resolution that was negotiated in December. The resolution is set to expire in March and without a new deal, the government will shut down.
Turner said: “This administration is taking an immediate assessment of where are we spending our funds and where do we need to spend them? And in order to do so, they need to take a stop, they need to take a critical view and let the American public know that their monies are being spent around the world, and they need to determine how they need to be spent in the way that advances U.S. interests and do so in a way that we can balance the budget.”
DOGE’s purge of the federal government resulted in the shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Trump administration placed all USAID direct-hire employees on administrative leave effective Friday, but a federal judge late Friday blocked the move and reinstated some 500 USAID workers who had already been put on administrative leave and ordered that no USAID employees should be evacuated from their host countries before Feb. 14 at 11:59 p.m.
Turner said federal agencies needed fiscal and policy reviews.
“We’ve had USAID that has been separate from, really, the ambassador structure and our embassy structure. Commerce has been separate. DOD has been separate. You know, taking a view where we, how do we merge these back so we have one voice in foreign policy.”
But while Musk has made baseless claims of fraud within USAID, Turner emphasized the importance of the agency’s work.
“USAID is not a criminal enterprise, and people who work for the government have an important job to do, and they need to be honored,” he said.
Current and former officials warn that dismantling USAID could create a global vacuum that could be filled by U.S. adversaries like China. However, Turner, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said that he does not believe China will act.
“They’re not going to come in and start providing aid of this nature. They don’t have the heart for it,” he said. “They don’t have the goals and objectives for it. This is not what they do.”
Additionally, on Tuesday Trump announced in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. “will take over” the Gaza Strip. Trump outlined a scenario in which Palestinians would be relocated and the U.S. would own and rebuild Gaza. Experts warn that rhetoric like this could rattle the fragile ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
Turner said Trump’s language does not worry him, but it might be distracting.
“I think it does pose the challenge of focusing on the fact that Hamas and the Palestinians and the terrorist structure that’s there needs to be dismantled, that Israel does deserve and need a peaceful structure.” Turner said.
More than 15 million people across a large portion of the nation were under winter storm alerts on Super Bowl Sunday morning, with many digging out from snow left by the first of three storms forecast to slam the U.S. through Thursday.
Snow was continuing to fall in upper New England on Sunday morning, with Boston expecting to get a total of 6 to 8 inches of snow from the weekend storm. Residents of northern Massachusetts are bracing for 8 to 12 inches before the snow tapers off around midday.
Many of the winter alerts are expected to expire by midmorning Sunday, while others will linger into the early afternoon.
Preliminary overnight snow totals showed Medford, Wisconsin, receiving 13 inches of snow, while 8 inches fell in Andover, Minnesota, and Cadillac, Michigan. New York City’s Central Park recorded 3 inches of snow and Minneapolis got 3.3 inches.
Sunday’s Super Bowl between defending NFL champs the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles will be played inside New Orleans’ climate-controlled Caesars Superdome and will not be affected by a chance of passing rain around the 6:30 p.m. ET kickoff.
On Saturday, New Orleans hit 85 degrees, tying a daily high-temperature record. Sunday is expected to bring a mix of sun and clouds to the Big Easy and temperatures are expected to reach near 77.
Elsewhere, people were digging out on Sunday from the snowstorm that socked the Midwest and the Northeast on Saturday night into Sunday morning.
But a reprieve from the snow will be short-lived for many people across the country as two more storms are lining up and threatening to bring heavy rain and possible flash flooding to the South and more snow to the Midwest and Northeast.
Lake-effect snow warnings for Fair Haven and Oswego, New York, go into effect at 4 p.m. ET Sunday and are expected to last into Tuesday. Up to 16 inches of snow is forecast for the upstate New York area.
The next storm is expected to develop on Monday over Texas and Oklahoma before pushing into the Midwest on Tuesday with rain south of the Ohio River and snow generally north of it. In the areas that see rain, there is a chance for flash flooding on Tuesday from north Louisiana to southeastern Tennessee — or from Shreveport to Atlanta. The rain is expected to last for hours before the atmospheric faucet shuts off.
By Tuesday night, the storm is forecast to bring snow to the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. The storm will likely dump the heaviest snow on Washington, D.C., which is expected to get around 6 inches possibly by sunrise Wednesday. Philadelphia could also get 3 to 6 inches of snow, and an inch to 3 inches is forecast from New York City to Boston.
Yet another storm is expected to arrive on Wednesday across the Great Plains and bring heavy snow to Nebraska, Colorado and Kansas. The storm is expected to spread east on Wednesday to Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan and Indiana. Chicago could see snow for about 20 hours from Wednesday morning into early Thursday.
The storm will likely just bring rain to the mid-Atlantic states as the snow line will be farther north, where snow is expected again for Boston and upstate New York on Thursday morning.
Roughly half of California’s farm workers are undocumented immigrants. Via ABC News
(LOS ANGELES) — California’s Central Valley is considered “America’s bread basket,” supplying a quarter of the nation’s food and producing 40% of its fruits, nuts and other table foods.
However, roughly half of California’s farm workers are undocumented immigrants, so President Donald Trump’s plan to fast track mass deportation and the images of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids across the country have spread fear on these farms.
It started shortly before Trump returned to office on Jan. 20. The U.S. Border Patrol raids in Central Valley’s southern Kern County — dubbed “Operation Return to Sender” — hit close to home for people in the region.
“Op Return to Sender brought 78 undocumented noncitizens, many w/criminal records, out of the shadows,” USBP Chief Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino wrote in a Jan. 16 post on X.
The people arrested didn’t all have criminal records, and immigrant rights groups say fear is trickling through undocumented workers.
“You have families that are being ripped apart. You have community members that are living in fear,” immigration attorney Ana Alicia Huerta told ABC News. “They’re scared to go outside. They’re asking neighbors and friends who have status to drive them back and forth because they’re concerned that they may be targeted.”
Advocacy groups say the raids have prompted some farmworkers to stay home, which could reduce the harvesting of produce and other goods.
“It’s not easy to live in fear, when we are the ones putting food on your table,” farmworker Xochilt Nuñez told ABC News in Spanish. “Since the beginning I’ve said, do not bite the hand that feeds you.”
Nuñez has worked in the fields of Central Valley for 16 years, and said she loves the feeling of the soil, the smell and “la libertad” — the freedom of the fields.
“We are glad to be at work at 6 a.m. and have an hour commute,” she said. “We do it happily, from the bottom of our hearts. Because we love this soil.”
She noted that immigrants are “living in terror” because they’re concerned immigration officials will come to the fields. She also expressed concern that farm workers staying home for fear of deportation or actually getting deported may result in produce prices increasing due to a labor shortage.
“Can you believe there are people who have been here for more than 35 years, working, paying taxes and do not have the right to a work permit?” Nuñez said. “We need to be empathetic with those people. Because they do not rest — and the economy lays on their backs.”
The United Farm Workers Foundation, the largest union representing America’s farmworkers, held a virtual press briefing in January after Border Patrol detained at least two of their union members.
“Both members had lived and worked in the United States for over 15 years,” they said. “One leaves behind two children under the age of 10, and the other leaves behind four children between the ages of four and 10.”
Elizabeth Strater, national vice president and director of strategic campaigns for the UFW, said that a report claiming 75% of farm workers were staying home from work is not accurate. She noted that the workers can’t afford to miss work, especially since it is peak harvest season for citrus.
“Farm workers are enduring great anxiety after the chaotic immigration sweeps targeting farmworker communities earlier this month. They still have to provide for their families,” she said. “Regardless of status, they all deserve better than to be profiled and terrorized for simply doing the work it takes to feed this country.”
Some immigrant families are too afraid to leave home to even get groceries, prompting groups like Latino nonprofit Celebration Nation to set up food drives. Its founder, Flor Martinez Zaragoza, told ABC News the group will be feeding farm workers every day for the next six weeks.
“It’s very ironic that we’re feeding those that feed the nation because they’re very food insecure,” she said during a food drive in Fresno.
In Kern County, rapid response groups are teaming up with immigration attorneys like Huerta — she emphasized that people have rights regardless of their status.
“If you’re arrested, don’t sign anything,” she said. “Ask to speak to an attorney.”
Huerta said this isn’t the first time her community has had to fight for their humanity. Central Valley is home to famed labor organizers and civil rights leaders like her grandmother Dolores Huerta, along with César Chávez.
Three generations later, their grandchildren are carrying on that legacy. Andrés Chávez does so as the executive director of the National Chavez Center.
“If there’s anything that the last week has taught us, it’s that it’s going to be a long four years. And so folks like myself and groups like ourselves are having to prepare for this long-term fight,” he told ABC News. “And I think back to my tata César’s words — he would always say, ‘You only lose when you give up.'”
