Investigate Midwest (https://investigatemidwest.org/tag/farmworkers/)
With a history of double-digit unemployment and poor health indicators, Imperial County was among the hardest hit in the state in the early months of COVID-19. Its farmworkers, the backbone of the county’s $4.5 billion agriculture industry, have continued their high-risk work during the pandemic.
A few states with large agricultural populations have, so far, left farmworkers out of their COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
In one of his first acts Wednesday, President Joe Biden ordered federal agencies to review Trump-era rules that advocacy groups said harmed public health and the environment.
The rollout of coronavirus vaccines provides hope that the end of the pandemic is near. But the virus is still spreading across the U.S. and efforts to expand access to testing and build trust with the farmworker community are still needed, Tellefson Torres says.
Nely Rodríguez stands in front of 43 farmworkers and supervisors who sit side by side at picnic tables wearing various protective workwear—hats, ski masks, bandanas, socks as sleeves.
Rodríguez, a member and worker-leader of the Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), points to a drawing of a female farmworker bent over picking tomatoes while a male supervisor stands over her saying, “¡Mamacita, qué rico te vez!” or “Hot momma, you look so sexy!”
Since June, there have been 21 COVID-19 cases linked to the hotel where an entire crew of migrant workers are living, according to the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District, which tracks COVID-19 cases across Champaign County. The hotel is tied for third largest outbreak in the county, based on internal statewide public health data from July through September obtained by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a new executive order targeting economic development in rural America.
Farmworkers laboring inside the United States are at risk for becoming victims of human trafficking thanks to a largely complex and opaque recruiting process, a new report has revealed.
The bed bug infestation at the Pine Creek migrant labor camp in Holland, Michigan, had become so bad by June that Tomas and Leonor Pizana turned their bedroom lights on before going to sleep.
Gabriel and Sara Ruiz, husband and wife, were neighbors who fell in love and moved from Michoacán, Mexico, to California in the early 1990s to work on farms with hopes of realizing the American Dream. They brought with them their two children, Gabriel Jr. and Maria.