No sanctuary, fewer farmhands: Coping with the Trump agenda in Americas Dairyland

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No sanctuary, fewer farmhands: Coping with the Trump agenda in America’s Dairyland
http://wisconsinwatch.org/2017/08/no-sanctuary-fewer-farmhands-coping-with-the-trump-agenda-in-americas-dairyland/


In Milwaukee County, the debate over ‘sanctuary cities’ continues, while in rural Wisconsin, informal networks form to help immigrants avoid deportation



By Andrew Becker and Patrick Michels / Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting August 9, 2017

Manuel Estrada, a farmworker from Mexico, speaks with his boss, Abby Driscoll, at her family's dairy farm outside Manitowoc, Wis. Estrada is in the United States illegally and faces heightened anxiety around detainment and deportation under President Donald Trump.

This story was collaboratively produced by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, Wisconsin Public Radio and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. You can read and listen to Reveal’s version of this story at revealnews.org






Along a desolate country road in northeastern Wisconsin, Manuel Estrada speeds toward work in his rumbling silver Ford SUV. He’s running late for his predawn shift. And he’s worried.





His boss is counting on him; she’s been down a worker for a month. More than 400 Holstein cows stand blinking, waiting to be milked. His family needs the paycheck from his $11.50-per-hour job.

And Estrada, 30, hopes the police aren’t waiting for him too.

It’s a risk he runs regularly during his 15-minute commute from his home in Manitowoc, about 80 miles north of Milwaukee, to the 150-year-old family dairy farm where he’s worked for two years. While he hasn’t been a perfect driver since he entered the country illegally 13 years ago, he has avoided any real trouble with police. From past traffic stops, he said, cops do know he shouldn’t be driving a car.

Estrada is an unlicensed driver, and the route passing through one of the top dairy-producing counties in the nation is his pressure point because, if he’s picked up by police, he could have an even bigger worry than a traffic ticket.

“What I am afraid of is the separation of family and being separated from my kids,” he said in Spanish. “I don’t worry specifically about Trump, because I know that I’m not a criminal.”

But he is in the country illegally, and that’s what matters under President Donald Trump’s agenda to ramp up deportations. Estrada’s boss, Abby Driscoll, said she can’t imagine the dread that Estrada and other employees face each day not knowing whether they’ll make it to or from work.



Abby Driscoll tends two of more than 400 dairy cows at her northeastern Wisconsin dairy farm outside Manitowoc, Wis. on July 25, 2017. Driscoll, who voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election, said she wasn't expecting his immigration policies to go as far as they have.





Even as she celebrated Trump’s win as “the lesser of two evils,” Driscoll tried to reassure anxious employees after the election, telling them to just stay out of trouble. In her mind, immigration and border security should be back-burner issues for Trump.

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