Jul. 26—Athens resident Irving Hernandez can recall a time over a decade ago when he was almost detained under an Alabama law once considered among the harshest in the nation for undocumented immigrants.
Now, he said, Hispanic communities in Alabama and across the country are once again on edge due to the visible presence of ICE agents in their cities and neighborhoods — even those like him who have since obtained legal immigration status.
“My wife is telling me to bring my passport with me when I go to work,” Hernandez said. “If they deport me, I’ll be back next week and I’ll have a good lawsuit to deal with them.”
Hernandez, 30, immigrated to Decatur with his parents from Mexico when he was 2 years old. Now his parents own three businesses in Athens and Decatur, and Hernandez has owned Huntsville restaurant Hops N Guac, which he started, for the last six years.
In 2011, the Alabama Legislature passed House Bill 56, which required police to check the immigration status of anyone they suspected of being in the country illegally and penalized those who provided aid to undocumented immigrants. Much of the law was eventually struck down as being unconstitutional.
Hernandez recalled that a week after HB56 was passed, while he was a student at Austin High School, he was riding in a car with his then-girlfriend — now his wife — when a police officer pulled them over just after she had pulled out of his driveway in Southwest Decatur.
“This cop pulls up behind her and says, ‘Hey, you were speeding,'” Hernandez said. “He asked her what her Social Security number was, and she says maybe three or four numbers, and he cuts her off and points at me and goes, ‘What about yours?’ So I thought, ‘I see what this is about.'”
He said members of the Hispanic community today are beginning to keep a lower profile and are more cautious about going to stores, restaurants or simply being out in public for fear of being detained.
“It’s a free-for-all right now and people feel they can’t do anything,” Hernandez said. “They’re not going out. My family’s Latino clientele has probably dropped almost 50%, so we can tell people aren’t going out.”
Hernandez said his parents own an event venue in Athens, and when they host public Latino-themed parties like quinceañeras, all attendees usually leave by midnight.
“Whereas, normally our events run until 2 a.m.,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said that as far as north Alabama is concerned, he has heard of a recent immigration job raid in Hazel Green, a rural community north of Huntsville, but other than that, job raids have not been common in the area.
“That was like two months ago, which was really weird,” Hernandez said. “We’ve heard of a lot of activity in Foley, Mobile and Montgomery — a lot in Birmingham, Auburn and Opelika — and a lot of these places are getting hit two or three times in the last few months. But Huntsville is relatively untouched.”
Law enforcement officials are also concerned about undocumented immigrants being deported by immigration authorities despite having no criminal records and contributing significantly to the workforce, particularly in agriculture, according to Hoss Mack, director of the Alabama Sheriffs’ Association and former Baldwin County sheriff.
Mack said the state has been in contact with ICE leadership to express concerns about deportation priorities.
“We realize there are individuals who are here illegally,” Mack said, “but even though they’re here illegally, they haven’t committed any other crimes — here or in their country of origin. We’re trying to work through that, because while they are undocumented, they’re actually serving a purpose and they’re not breaking the law otherwise.”
He added that Alabama officials have voiced those concerns to acting ICE Director Tom Homan.
“I think the federal administration has been open to listening,” Mack said. “Our primary goal is to get the worst of the worst out of the country and then find a pathway for those who are here and working toward citizenship.”
The process of obtaining legal citizenship in the United States is no walk in the park — and it’s not cheap, either, according to Hernandez, who believes the American public should be more aware of that reality.
“It took my parents about 27 years and probably around $40,000 for them to finally become legal citizens,” Hernandez said. “The process is so slow, and now they are firing all these immigration judges which is going to hinder us even more. They are firing anyone who would have any compassion towards Latinos, you know. For me, I got mine about six years ago and it took me about 20 years and I spent about $20,000.”
Moulton farmer Larry LouAllen, who employs migrant farm workers from Mexico through the H-2A visa program, said there are migrant workers nationwide who have been working in the United States for 10 years or more who deserve a pathway to citizenship.
“The government is kind of sitting on their thumbs about it,” LouAllen said. “They’ll get in the room and then it turns into a political thing. In Washington, the Republicans are looking at it like the Democrats want to get them legalized so they’d be able to vote, because most of them would probably vote Democrat.”
LouAllen said the H-2A program is something farmers only turn to when they have no other options, noting that not a single American has applied to work on his farm.
“H-2A is a program of last resort,” he said. “Back when I was a young fellow, a lot of kids worked on a farm. The last year we had just young people picking, it was a disaster. They would show up or they wouldn’t show up, and they would pick terrible stuff.”
LouAllen said his 450-acre farm would struggle to survive without migrant labor. His workers arrive in the third week of March and stay through the first week of September. He currently employs three Mexican nationals.
“They are wonderful,” LouAllen said. “They come here every morning at 7 o’clock, they put in their time and get the job done and they go home. Without (H-2A), I think we’d struggle.”
Decatur-based immigration attorney Kimberly Fasking said mass deportations in Alabama will eventually begin impacting the state’s entire workforce. She also brought up HB56 and said it had detrimental effects on the agricultural industry in Alabama when it was signed into law.
“They would have news stories about it and show videos of tomatoes rotting in the fields because they had nobody to come back and work in those difficult jobs,” Fasking said.
Fasking said immigration enforcement could impact not only agriculture but also high-tech industries in Huntsville that rely on foreign workers.
“People think about the guy that’s replacing your roof or picking your tomatoes — well, what about the guy who is building your rockets, who’s here on a lawful work visa?” Fasking said.
— wesley.tomlinson@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2442.