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The original was posted on /r/antiwork by /u/Naurgul on 2025-05-06 02:31:50+00:00.

An immigration raid in western New York on Friday targeted a group of immigrants involved in a landmark statewide effort by farm workers to unionize.

On Friday morning at around 9:30 a.m., federal agents in unmarked cars and bearing no agency insignia pulled over a bus in Albion, New York, about 35 miles west of Rochester, and took 14 people of Lynn-Ette & Sons Farms into custody. All of the detainees, who hailed from Mexico and Guatemala, were year-round employees of Lynn-Ette & Sons Farms, a family-owned business in nearby Kent, New York, which has been locked in a multiyear battle to prevent workers from unionizing.

The company is one of five agricultural businesses that, together with a state growers’ association, have tried for years to overturn or chip away at New York’s 2019 farm labor law. The law enshrined protections for the right of farmworkers — whether seasonal or year-round — to seek union representation. 

Several of the workers taken into custody on Friday have been active in efforts to unionize year-round employees, including at least one who has spoken publicly in favor of joining the United Farm Workers of America, according to Elizabeth Strater, director of strategic campaigns for UFW, the storied labor union. 

“We are concerned at the appearance of targeting publicly pro-union worker leaders,” said Strater. 

The raid did not appear to be a broad sweep but rather a targeted enforcement aimed at specific people