Immigrant community bracing for unknown amidst crackdown
Isabella was two months pregnant when she and husband José made the treacherous trek through the desert and across the U.S. border from Mexico 17 years ago and made their way to rural Virginia where they’d heard there was farm work.
Today they are still successfully pursuing that American dream. He mows grass, makes hay and tends sheep and horses. She cleans houses. They own cars, have driver’s licenses and pay taxes. Their eldest, an honors high school student, and two younger children are U.S. citizens by birth.
But the parents remain here without legal permission and worry that newly inaugurated President Donald Trump’s plan to carry out mass deportations could reach into the rural countryside and ensnare them. Their offspring, too, would be affected by an executive order signed Jan. 20 scrapping birthright citizenship, one already challenged in the courts by at least 22 states.
Isabella and José — not their real names but changed to protect their anonymity — spoke to a reporter both in English and Spanish that their eldest interpreted.
“My mom says that she is scared because they don’t want to leave us behind,” said the teen. “If that happened, we would stay with one of my aunts.”
That anxiety is shared by other families living and working in Rappahannock, Culpeper and the wider region. The fear extends to their employers and those who help immigrants through community organizations. The immigrant community is small but visible in the region, especially in blue-collar jobs from agriculture and construction to maids, car washers and landscaping crews.
Concerns shared across country
Questions about what the new administration’s policies will mean in communities have been the focus of local news reporting around the country from Boston to Durango, Colo. In Durango, a woman without legal status told a Durango Herald reporter she was afraid to go to church. In Grand Rapids, Mich., the police chief said his department “is not in the business of immigration enforcement, period.” In an East Boston neighborhood, a barbershop owner told the Boston Globe, “Everyone here is panicked, everyone is scared.’’
New border security enforcer Tom Homan has said the administration will go after “the worst first” criminals among the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the country without legal permission, but no one knows how far the net will be thrown and whether it will eventually sweep up immigrants lacking legal status who are accused of such misdemeanors as shoplifting.
“People are fearful,” said Marilyn Dunphy, a community activist and liaison with Spanish-speaking mothers at UVA Health Culpeper Medical Center. “They are talking about how they are going to try to hunker down and just stay out of visibility …. But they [also] tend to say it’s in God’s hands. They don’t want to worry too much.”
Some are skeptical
Some immigrant advocates and business owners remain skeptical that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents will get to these parts anytime soon. Five percent of Rappahannock County’s population of 7,400 is Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Sixteen percent of Culpeper’s population of 55,000 and 13% of Fauquier’s 75,000 residents are Hispanic.
“It’s a lot of bluster, just to appeal to constituents,” said the owner of a small building company, who suspects that one of his best workers may be unauthorized. “I think there is a problem at the border, but I am a big fan of the Hispanics living and working here.”
Similarly, Oscar Warmerdam, the founder and CEO of Sempergreen USA in Culpeper, the largest green roof maker in the country, doesn’t believe the new administration will round up and deport every immigrant worker without legal status. Warmerdam said he employs authorized migrants from Mexico on a seasonal basis.
“I’m totally not worried that these people are going to be removed, because I don’t think that’s the target,” said Warmerdam, who emigrated himself from the Netherlands 35 years ago. “It would stop very, very quickly if they went after every [such] worker here. All the restaurants, all the bars, all the car dealers, car washes, nurseries, landscapers — I mean, we’d all be out of business.”
Another business owner who asked not to be identified believes the president will go after “the people who are doing murders and committing crimes in the cities. He’s not coming out to Rappahannock to pick up people who are picking apples or running a Weed Eater.”
Dunphy, a member of Culpeper County’s Human Services Board, believes Trump’s rhetoric alone is instilling fear.
“Some are updating passports for their children, because they want to make sure if they end up being deported, they will all be together. They are talking about how they are going to try to hunker down and just stay out of visibility,” she said.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Carl Stafford, the Virginia Cooperative Extension senior agent for Culpeper County. But talk of mass deportations “puts people in doubt. The people in the crosshairs are going to take steps to protect themselves. We’ll find out then how much we need them.”
The immigration/deportation issue was discussed at the Jan. 15 Rappahannock Roundtable meeting, which brings together area nonprofits and social service agencies. Rappahannock County Schools Superintendent Shannon Grimsley said she and her staff have discussed the possibility of ICE officers coming to Rappahannock’s public schools, but expressed doubt that that would actually happen. Jim LaGraffe, executive director of Northern Piedmont Community Foundation, said that ICE agents would need a court order to gain access, not just an ICE order.
Rule of law
If arrested for a minor crime, immigrants without legal status can be deported, although some cities and counties do not cooperate with federal ICE agents. The common practice of local authorities is to run fingerprint checks with the FBI to determine if someone has a criminal record and outstanding warrants.
ICE has access to those fingerprints and says it prioritizes “the removal of individuals who present the most significant threats to public safety as determined by the severity of their crime, their criminal history, and risk to public safety.” The Biden administration issued guidance in 2021 that said its three priorities for civil immigration enforcement were to apprehend and remove those who pose threats to national security, public safety, and border security, although it added that those priorities did not prohibit taking enforcement against “any individual noncitizen.”
In the Biden administration, attorneys in the field were told they could consider mitigating factors including “the impact of removal on families in the United States, such as loss of provider or caregiver.” It is not clear whether Trump officials have already revoked that guidance.
ICE regularly reports on how many of thecountry’s 4,150 jails cooperate with it and keep noncitizens in custody for up to 48 hours before release if ICE has a so-called immigration detainer for them. It is then up to ICE to decide whether to come to the jail and take them into custody.
ICE reported that the RSW Regional Jail in Front Royal that serves Rappahannock, Shenandoah and Warren counties is one of 27 in Virginia that provides only limited cooperation with the enforcement agency. But the jail’s superintendent, Russ Gilkison, said it does cooperate with ICE. “We currently have six inmates with ICE detainers — five with felony charges and one with a misdemeanor charge,” he said earlier this month.
The inmate population is, like the counties it serves, largely white.
Gilkison said they run fingerprints on everyone arrested and ICE is notified if anyone has a warrant or detainer from the agency. The jail also lets ICE know before that person is released, “and it’s up to ICE whether or not they want to come here …. and take custody of them.”
Local enforcement policies
Asked how Rappahannock County handles individuals lacking legal status it arrests, Sheriff Connie Compton said by email, “We are a member of a Regional Jail. When we make an arrest, the person(s) are taken to the Regional Jail. I believe it will be up to the jail to notify ICE.”
Jeffrey Long, public information officer for the Fauquier County Sheriff’s Office, said it complies with Virginia law when processing individuals lacking legal status in custody on felony charges. That requires asking them about citizenship and country, and their responses are coded into a system to which ICE has access. “When any agency provides a proper warrant and/or detainer, we hold that inmate,” he said.
Culpeper County Sheriff Timothy Chilton and his office spokesman, Lt. Cody Banks, did not respond to questions. Chilton’s predecessor, Scott Jenkins, who was convicted in December on federal fraud and bribery charges, cooperated closely with ICE. The Virginia Supreme Court in 2020 upheld a lower court ruling rejecting a challenge to the arrangement by the ACLU of Virginia.
Culpeper’s Dunphy believes the president’s tough words alone will be enough to convince some immigrants to return to their home countries “even if he never does get around to these mass deportations he’s talking about.”
Meanwhile, “people are nervous,” said Dominique Poirier, director of legal services for Just Neighbors, an affiliate of the Immigration Law & Justice Network. “You’re looking at families that may be torn apart. Children are worried about their parents.”
That is obviously the case for Isabella and Jose´ but they have no regrets about restarting their lives in America all those years ago. “There’s a lot of nice people here,” he said. “Whatever happens, happens.”
“My mom agrees,” their college-bound child translated. “She says she also works with very fine people and that they’re very grateful.”
Christopher Connell reported this story for Foothills Forum, a nonprofit organization that supports local news in Rappahannock County. Foothills Forum’s Randy Rieland also contributed to this report.
One employer’s perspective on immigrant workers
Sempergreen USA, the nation’s leading supplier of so-called green roofs — vegetation that reduces wastewater runoff in storm drains and improves air quality — employs 10 Mexican workers it flies in each year to do much of the work at its nursery in Culpeper.
They enter legally on H-2A Temporary Agricultural Worker visas for nine months, live communally in two houses at a trailer camp built by owner Oscar Warmerdam, 54, of Haymarket, and return to Mexico when their time is up.
It’s hard, dirty work, but they do it well, said Warmerdam, founder of the business. It’s now a franchise of a Dutch company that is a global leader in the field. “They’d work 80 hours a week if we let them,” said Warmerdam, who limits them to 45 hours a week.
“We supply uniforms, but every day, at the end of the day, the uniform is cold, wet and full of clay and dirt. There are just no Americans that want to have that job,” he said.
Warmerdam is himself an immigrant who first came to the United States from the Netherlands as a 19-year-old for an unpaid summer job at a flower bulb company in Georgia owned by a neighbor back home. His parents grew tulips, too, and he had training in agriculture.
“I swept the floors, unloaded trucks, and did all the bottom-of-the-barrel work,” he said. The company brought him back and put him on the payroll in 1990 and 12 years later he was in top management.
In 2003, with backing from another Dutch businessman, he started his own aquatic plants business, Moerings, selling water lilies and eventually became a leading supplier of environmentally friendly green roofs, which are increasingly common atop buildings in cities across America.
He grows succulent plants in weed-free soil that is eventually rolled up like turf and shipped to customers. He used U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) loans to become sole owner of Sempergreen USA and ride out a rough patch during the pandemic. The SBA featured him on its website as one of its success stories.
Warmerdam, a naturalized U.S. citizen, travels frequently to Europe for business and draws a contrast between the immigrant workforce attracted by the generous welfare systems there and those who come to the United States.
“Nobody tries to cross a desert to America to take (advantage) of a welfare system that isn’t very generous. They come to America because they want to work hard and better themselves,” said Warmerdam. “This country couldn’t do without the Latino immigration.”
— Christopher Connell
By the numbers: immigrants without legal status
While debates swirl about immigrants in the United States without legal status, this remains a country of immigrants. Forty-six million people in America and 1.1 million in Virginia are foreign born, according to the Census Bureau. Most are naturalized citizens.
They make key contributions to the economy and their communities. In Virginia, one in eight nurses and nearly a quarter of entrepreneurs and those in science, technology and engineering fields are foreign born, according to the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit that supports immigration.
The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, a think tank, estimates that Virginia has a quarter-million immigrants without legal status, with the largest numbers from El Salvador (68,000), Mexico (31,000), Guatemala and Honduras (each 27,000), and India (18,000). A majority have lived in Virginia or elsewhere in the United States for 10 years or more.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates that 11 million such immigrants were living in the United States on Jan. 1, 2022. DHS reported that 44% of these immigrants in 2022 were from Mexico, and 79% entered the country prior to 2010. President Donald Trump has claimed in the past without producing evidence that there are as many as 20 million after an upsurge of border crossings in the Biden administration.
According to an analysis of the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey from 2022 by the Pew Research Center, 8.3 million of those 11 million immigrants without legal status were in the workforce. They pay federal and state taxes, including payroll taxes, but cannot draw Social Security benefits when they retire or are disabled.
Other facts about these 11 million immigrants:
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They live in households with 11 million relatives and others who are U.S.-born citizens or lawful immigrants.
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In 86% of these households, either the householder or their spouse is an immigrant without legal permission.
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Nationally, more than 4.4 million U.S.-born children under 18 live with an immigrant parent who is without legal permission and 850,000 other children were born outside the country and are themselves immigrants without legal permission.
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Mexico’s share of immigrants lacking legal status in the United States has dropped to 37% while other countries’ share has increased. Most still come from Latin America. After Mexico (4 million), the largest were: El Salvador (750,000); India (725,000); Guatemala (675,000) and Honduras (525,000).
— Christopher Connell
Editor’s note: While Foothills Forum and the Rappahannock News generally avoid using anonymous quotes, we did so because of the sensitive nature of this story.
