Chester County, PA mushroom farms and locals are being attacked by unwelcome outsiders

My town and the surrounding area is home to the mushroom capital of the world, producing over one million pounds of mushrooms per week at the many small farms that pepper the beautiful hills.  Mushroom farming is hard work and a lot of manual labor is required, so these farms provide countless jobs for the local population.  The spent mushroom soil that provides a distinct local “aroma” can be sold as topsoil but at a considerably cheaper price, which is beneficial to the everyone from the local homeowner growing a vegetable garden to farmers with expansive cornfields.

There’s also a vibrant culture that is helped along by this local economy.  The local shops, markets, and restaurants provide wonderful experiences and there are even a few annual festivals.  There certainly are wealthy people who live in the area, but they’re not necessarily the ones who do the work to create this environment for the culture to flourish.  It’s the local business owners and their employees who are the people who largely deserve the credit.

Unfortunately, there has been a sudden disruption to all of this.  A new group has decided to move in and we don’t want them here.  They take jobs away from the local people.  They’ll terrorize a local business with intimidation and will even resort to violence if they feel the desire to.

There have even been reports of kidnapping.

Many locals are now afraid.  Will they lose their jobs?  Will they get harassed while they walk down the street?  Will they be violently attacked?  This is no way to live.

So who is this new group of undesirables?

It is the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  And after about a 20-year hiatus, they’ve come to southeastern Chester County, PA to wreak their havoc.  Michael Matza of Philly.com has a piece on it following the raid of South Mill’s Kaolin Farms.

Matza writes:

Priscilla Aguilar Chun’s shift as a picker at South Mill’s Kaolin Farms branch in Avondale was just getting started at 7 a.m. when the 21-year-old saw eight U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in khaki slacks and protective vests entering the windowless room where she and a dozen other Latino immigrants labored.

The agents carried photographs of four men they said they were seeking. None of the targets was present, but that didn’t seem to matter, Chun said. The agents blocked the exits and interrogated the workers one by one. An hour later, 12 men, including her 26-year-old boyfriend, were arrested and handcuffed in pairs, one man’s right wrist to another’s left. Taken in a white van to ICE’s Philadelphia field office, they were booked and shipped to York County Prison, where they face deportation.

If the people they were arresting were violent criminals, that would be one thing.  If that were the case, it should be handled by local law enforcement.  In the case of the South Mill Kaolin Farms immigration raid, it is nothing more than federal thuggery and the enforcement of unethical laws.  Its result is the tearing apart of families and the ruining of lives.

The article continues:

Caitlin Barry, director of the Farmworker Legal Aid Clinic at Villanova University Law School, has twice visited the men in prison and is trying to get them legal representation. She said at least eight appear to have no criminal record, and no prior contact with ICE. The others are facing orders of expedited removal.

Barry, Read, and other lawyers have questioned the constitutionality of the raid because it is not clear under what circumstances the ICE agents were permitted to search on private property.

South Mill did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

However, a day after the arrests, company owner Michael Pia told NBC10, “I do not believe they had a warrant, or no one told me that there was one.” Pia said that the men arrested were not employees of South Mill but were hired through a subcontractor and assigned to the Avondale branch. The report did not name the subcontractor.

In a statement sent to the Inquirer and Daily News on Thursday, ICE said that it “does not conduct sweeps or raids that target aliens indiscriminately” and that the people swept up at Kaolin were arrested “in a targeted enforcement operation.”

Asked whether the agents had Kaolin’s consent, or a judicial warrant permitting them to search the private property, ICE spokesman in Philadelphia Adrian Smith said the agents had the permission of a supervisor, whom he did not identify.

So there are questions as to whether or not this raid was even legal.  Furthermore, should scarce resources really be spent on a problem that doesn’t even exist?  The vast majority of these immigrants came to this area to perform hard work to earn an honest living.  The fact that they may not have the correct paperwork is meaningless from an ethical standpoint.  Their “illegal” immigration does no harm to anyone.

The real harm comes when ICE agents storm into a private business and round up its employees like cattle.  ICE is ruining a good thing.  They are without a doubt the bad guys.

Stay out of our towns, ICE.

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5 comments

  1. The area around Kennett Square PA is interesting. People move into new neighborhoods then complain about the mushroom smell and do not want illegal immigrants in the community but have no problem using them for cheap lawn service. If you go to the local Walmart it is sometimes hard to find employees who speak english. Most of the Mexicans I speak with are very nice people. But please do not make it sound like the illegal immigrants are just here to pick mushrooms and shop at the local Mexican food stores. They send the money they make home to their families in Mexico. They use resources like hospitals and schools. Because of the large Spanish speaking population, they do not need to learn english and their children burden the school system. Everyone who owns property pays the school tax and they do not. They are able to take advantage of these services and get driver’s licenses. It is also easy for drug gangs to blend in. There was a very large drug bust a few years ago in the area. The mushroom farmers get away with using cheap labor and then keeping the extra income. Mushrooms are not cheap as it is and they could really afford to pay legal workers a decent rate. They subcontract out the hiring because they know exactly what is going on and should be accountable for who is working on and what is going on on their property. Maybe the mushroom farmers and landscape companies should pay extra taxes to help out the community with the school and medical expenses their workers are using. There is a right way to go about coming to America for work and our culture should also re respected. They should learn english, pay taxes, and become citizens like everyone else has to.
    ICE is doing their job. They should not need an excuse to be looking for certain people. And they should not just be looking for violent people. Maybe instead of targeting the mushroom farms they should go to every company and check all the employees and not single out one industry. It is unfair for them to single out that one mushroom farm.
    It would be nice to be open to everyone in the world and just let everyone who wants to be here come work and not pay taxes because it is humane and everyone should be free. But that is not reality and their are high costs associated with living in USA.

      • You guys are awesome. Thanks for the link. I listened to the whole thing and maybe will listen to it over again. It is a complex problem and a huge issue. First off the whole comparison with Germany is a bit extreme (or is it?). If you do not pay your taxes you go to jail, so this is not like you get to live here for free. And the whole human rights side of the arguement can apply to everywhere in the world. It is nice to live in a “free” country where we are “free” to do what we want (and pay taxes to be free). This is not hippie 1960s everyone deserves to be free world. I agree the school system should be overhauled big time. But people who come here should learn English and pay for the services they use. I have many friends who were born in Mexico and came here as illegal immigrants and then went through the long paperwork to be legal. I know what it like for them. I give them credit for doing that. I do not hate them for being here illegally when they first came here. It took them many years to be legal citizens. I am friends with many of them whose children are fluent in Spanish, Engish, and are learning a third language. I also know many of the mushroom farmers. They have a nice business. The community around Kennett is tight. They all know each other and have family connections back in Mexico. When people from Mexico decide to come to Kennett it is not by accident. And now they are not just working in those few jobs but expanding and working in health care and many other occupations.
        The mushroom farms are making a huge profeit on selling the mushrooms and can afford to pay the legal minimum wage to US citizens. Maybe they could hire teenagers for $10 an hour instead of illegals for a few dollars less. The money that the Mexican workers send back to Mexico does not come back. And the money the mushroom farms get stays in the family.
        But as far as ICE goes and showing your papers. That is what you have to do as a legal citizen ever year when you file a tax return. They want to know what you are doing and how much money you are making. That is part of life. This is not just walking down the road and being asked for ID, if you live in USA then be part of the community. Buy a house, support the local economy, and hire people to work for you who get paid a decent wage to support living in USA and not Mexico.
        But thanks guys I was thrilled to hear my whole text read. I keep thinking of more things. I really think if children are born in USA to illegal immigrants then they should also be illegal. It just does not seem logical that they should be US citizens if their parents are doing things illegally. I really am not taking a side. I am open for talking about this. It is important to me since I interact with both the high class white people and the Mexican community on a regular basis.

        • Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed it and thought we were fair, even if you disagreed. There’s a lot to respond to here. I hope you keep checking back in, we’ll address it

          • I really like this topic since it is close to home for me also and I like being able to respond with my personal experiences from living in this area. Disagreeing is important. Life would be meaningless if everyone thought the same exact thing. It would be nice if more people added comments. But the ICE raid does more symbolically to negatively impact people who want to be legal. It is 12 people being possibly deported, but the entire community is uneasy because of it. They are afraid to live here now, especially with the president’s policies. They are afraid to go out in public and even go to work and are always looking over their shoulder. That is no way to live. It is making it harder for them to trust the government to become citizens. But I think they should either work here seasonally and not have a family here or if they want to be here then become citizens and contribute. Even if someone is poor in this area and do not have to pay an income tax, the property tax is about $5,000 a year for an average size home to cover local government and schools. Now for people who do not have children, that money is going to (try to) educate all the children in the school system. Sorry to be all over the place, but this one topic involves about 10 issues I can think of without even starting to think much. As smart as humans are supposed to be, it seems like issues like this would be easy to work out.

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