An underground economy helps immigrants survive, sometimes with a little humanity. Can we learn from that to reform our immigration system so it recognizes reality?
By Melissa Castillo
Beacon Media
It’s Wednesday afternoon in Sampson County, and I watch as Juana’s adult son steers her aging passenger van down a long gravel road, stopping between a cluster of migrant barracks. Workers in sweat-stained shirts wait under the only patch of shade, here for one reason: to work long days doing backbreaking labor, harvesting crops. What they earn will support themselves here and their families in Durango, Mexico. They’re gathered like this waiting for something that reminds them why they endure one of the most dangerous jobs in the nation.
I’m visiting the camp as part of my work with NC FIELD, a nonprofit based in eastern North Carolina that supports the people who keep the state’s multibillion-dollar agricultural economy running. I’m there to connect workers with health care, food assistance, and other resources. But today, I’m not the reason they’ve gathered. They’re waiting for Juana. (I’m only using her first name to protect her identity.)
One of her sons opens the back hatch of the van, revealing several battered coolers. As the lids lift, the smell of warm tamales cuts through the heat. Wrapped in foil and corn husks and filled with spiced meats or cheese and peppers, each tamal costs $2, and all 100 will sell out. This food is a reminder of mothers, wives, faith and home, offering comfort and recognition in a place where little exists.
Juana is also from Durango. She came to North Carolina years ago with three children and a prayer. She crossed the border in fear for her life. A dispute over her dead husband’s ranch land dispute escalated into an attempted kidnapping. Juana came to the U.S. and asked for asylum, then lost contact with the U.S. immigration system that required court hearings, paperwork, and legal representation she couldn’t afford. Attorneys cost money. Juana had none. She had mouths to feed.
What followed were years moving with the migrant stream between Florida and Michigan—years marked by instability and experiences she’d rather forget. After years of constant movement and uncertainty, she became determined to create a different future for her children. Eventually, she found work in local fruit and vegetable harvests, then in the sweet potato packing facilities scattered across eastern North Carolina. The work was brutal: long hours, exposure to chemicals and bleach-like sprays that burned her eyes and lungs, pay that barely covered expenses. But it offered something she hadn’t had in years: stability.
Even that wasn’t enough. Rent, gas, food, and three growing children demanded more than packing plant wages could provide. That’s when the ministry began. A local Hispanic Baptist church they attended offered to supply tortilla flour, pork, foil, and spices so Juana could make tamales to sell at nearby labor camps. What started as an occasional side job grew into a seasonal operation, three evenings a week. The church provides ingredients as an act of gratitude for the workers. Juana charges two dollars per tamal. It’s donated labor and just enough earned to keep the lights on, pay for gas, and build a life.
Every Wednesday, this camp waits for Juana. Without her, these men wouldn’t have access to food like this at all. Their housing is remote. They lack time, transportation and ability. In a landscape where grocery stores are miles away, Juana’s tamales function as something larger than charity. They are informal infrastructure, keeping bodies nourished with familiar food, minds steadied through care and memory, and workers able to endure conditions that existing systems were never designed to support.
Policy briefs don’t capture this. They don’t list “ministry of tamales” under workforce retention or “faith-based tortilla economies” under food systems planning. What gets measured are outputs and compliance, not the quiet systems that actually keep people fed, working and human. Existing systems function exactly as designed, and they are not designed for communities like this, no matter how essential they are.
Juana’s story is about dignity, reciprocity and culture. It’s about what people build when they are excluded from formal systems, and how those systems often outperform the ones designed without them. Juana represents a theology of action, a theology of enough, where everyone involved benefits.
We hear words like resilience and reinvention tossed around in policy spaces. For Juana, they aren’t buzzwords. They’re muscle memory, practiced one tamal at a time. If we are serious about food systems, rural economies, and immigration reform, we must recognize people like Juana as architects of systems that work and resource those systems instead of criminalizing them. The question isn’t whether the Juanas of the world will find a way. It’s whether we will support what they’ve already built.
Melissa Castillo works on healthcare access for the nonprofit NC FIELD. She lives in Eastern North Carolina. This column is syndicated by Beacon Media and is available to republish for free on all platforms under Beacon Media’s guidelines.