Photo Credit: Civil Eats
LNS Board member Edgar Franks is the political director of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, a farmworkers’ union in Skagit County, WA. He was recently interviewed on a Northwest Public Broadcasting feature on “Immigrant enforcement concerns farmers and farmworkers in Washington.”
Franks said, “There are people that are getting picked up by ICE on their way to work. Like, in the morning, when they get out of the house. They’re driving to work, they get pulled over and questioned, and that’s where they get detained.”
The state protections under the Keep Washington Working Act are good, according to Franks, but need to be reinforced. “Nobody really takes into consideration everything immigrants and farmworkers did during COVID to keep the food coming to our tables and the economy from collapsing. So farmworkers have done a lot.”
It’s time for farmers to “recognize that immigrants and farmworkers need to be protected.” Franks called for better wages, housing and rules to protect workers’ health and safety. “To be protected, we also need all these other things, like good wages, better housing, better rules to protect our health and safety.”
Listen to the program: https://www.nwpb.org/2025/02/
For how immigrant rights connect with climate protection, read “Immigration Justice Must Be a Climate Fight, Too” co-authored by a climate activist and an immigrant rights advocate: https://www.commondreams.org/