The deportations happening in North Carolina are the continuation of a long line of broken promises to our migrant workforce.
By Melissa Castillo / Beacon Media
For 25 years, I assured farmworkers that filing taxes and completing federal forms was safe to do. Programs like the Migrant Education Program were created by the federal government to help the children of migrant workers succeed in school.
After all, these are the families that are here to make sure everyone has food to eat.
I believed those assurances were backed by the rule of law, a shared understanding of fairness, and a bipartisan consensus that children of farmworkers deserved access to public education and basic services. The education program, first authorized in 1966, was rooted in civil rights advocacy and reaffirmed in 2001 under the No Child Left Behind Act. It was never just paperwork; it was a promise of opportunity.
When I co-founded NC FIELD in 2009, a nonprofit to serve North Carolina’s migrant community that operates across the state but primarily Eastern North Carolina, I carried that promise forward. While federal programs for migrants focused on public school, enrollment access, and supplemental services delivery, our work has focused on finding resources in the community — from government agencies and churches, for example — to get these families the help they needed to survive and be able to work.
In many ways, we have seen the deportations happening now, in Los Angeles, Ca., and elsewhere under the Trump administration in a previous form.
At least so far in North Carolina, things were scarier in 2009 under President Obama, when it felt like anyone who was brown could be pulled over. Children were separated and there was a gleeful approach to immigration enforcement by local sheriffs and deputies.
I’m not seeing that in the North Carolina communities we serve — at least not yet. In fact, some small town police chiefs have gone out of their way to assure immigrants that they won’t simply be rounded up, at least not by them.
But today’s actions and rhetoric from state and federal authorities reflect willful ignorance and resistance to creating an immigration system that makes sense. NC FIELD seeks to meet the human reality of this system. We create pathways for youth to earn, learn, and lead. We believed the children of migrant farmworkers deserve more than survival; they deserve the future their labor makes possible.
What is changing is that despite decades of anti-immigrant rhetoric, I believed the line would be drawn at turning these services into weapons. That the government would not use school records, Medicaid applications, or tax forms to target the families that feed our nation.
Many people don’t know the government itself issues Social Security numbers for those with migrant worker visas; those who don’t have documented status are issued IRS tax IDs called Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) that ensure migrants pay taxes, despite their status in a gray area of American law and society. Yes, in some cases these workers entered “illegally.” But it has been the U.S. government over decades that has accepted their work while then, at times, and for political expediency, choosing to go after people and deport them.
We believed civic participation would be honored, not punished. We were wrong.
We should all be wary, for migrants and for non-migrants, regardless of our documentation status. Data collected under the guise of public service could be increasingly used for surveillance and potential unfair enforcement to anyone.
Farmworkers and their families are now haunted by a simple, devastating logic: don’t get noticed. Don’t fill out the forms. Don’t get help.
We promised farmworkers that if they followed the rules, they’d be safe. That their labor was valuable and their families mattered. But those promises have been broken. Trust, once broken, is hard to rebuild.
Today, I can no longer assure a farmworker by saying, “If you show up, if you apply for the program, you’ll be protected.” Because it’s not true. What I can do is tell them the truth. And walk beside them in that truth.
I still believe in service. I still believe in the power of community. And now, more than ever, I believe this: The only promises worth making are the ones we’re willing to fight to keep.
That includes the promise that the people who plant, pick, pack, and process our food will not be hunted or caged. That labor and dignity are inseparable. That no child should fear losing their parents over a school lunch form or a Medicaid card.
If we can’t protect the people who feed us, then we need to ask ourselves what kind of country we are. Because now that we are actively breaking all these promises, we’re not just failing farmworkers. We’re failing as a country.
And if we can’t keep our word, then we must stop pretending we ever believed our promises at all.
Melissa Castillo works on healthcare access for the nonprofit NC FIELD. She lives in Eastern North Carolina.