Street Roots • Nov. 10-16, 2017
News
Page 4
Margarita Reyes Pacheco, pictured in her Forest Grove home, is a farmworker from Mexico. She is in the U.S. on a special visa for victims of abuse. Her
youngest son, José Manuel, recently traveled with her to Mexico to meet his father - Reyes Pacheco’s husband - who was deported.
‘Hope is what I lean on’
Margarita Reyes Pacheco’s story is one o f immigration, hard work and a fam ily divided by deportation
BY THACHER SCHMID
S T A F F W R IT E R
f cranberries decorate your Thanksgiving
table or a Christmas wreath adorns your
home, you might have Margarita Reyes
Pacheco to thank.
She’s a Mexican immigrant farmworker who
spends 10-hour days picking berries and
weaving wreaths, which Spanish speakers call
coronas, until her hands ache so much they
wake her at night.
Reyes Pacheco came to the United States
without documentation as a 15-year-old,
brought by her first husband, whom she
eventually left because of domestic violence.
She first became a “Dreamer” under the
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
program and now has a “U visa” for domestic
abuse survivors. She has three children, all
U.S. citizens, and a second husband who was
deported.
His name is Alejandro. Even if you don’t eat
cranberries or buy wreaths but love guacamole,
you might have him to thank: He’s an avocado
farmer in Toluca.
Reyes Pacheco’s story offers a look under
the surface of our immigration problems,
revealing truths more complex than the
polemic narratives of political leaders. Hers is a
life framed by work and supported by
“sanctuary” communities willing to stand up to
government tactics one Latino leader compares
I
to the Gestapo.
Few issues have been more controversial
since President Donald Trump took office than
immigration. In Portland, the crackdown by
Immigration and Customs Enforcement led to a
Facebook video viewed a million times that
showed ICE agents trespassing while detaining
a suspect. In a separate incident that the
American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon
called “Nightmare at PDX,” a Spanish college
student was sent to the Northern Oregon
Regional Correctional Center, a jail in The
Dalles that regularly holds ICE detainees, for a
minor visa violation.
Ramón Ramírez, president of the largest
Latino union in Oregon, Pineros y Campesinos
Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), described ICE
raids as fascist.
“The psychological fabric of the community
is coming apart,” Ramirez said. “This is Nazi
Germany. We’re living in times of Nazi
Germany, where they’re going after people.
ICE is using Gestapo tactics, coming in the
middle of the night, separating families.”
Since 2015, when he announced his bid for
president, Trump has hammered on the theme
that Mexican immigrants are criminals.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not
sending their best,” Trump said then. “They’re
bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime.
They’re rapists.”
However, according to several studies,
immigrants are less likely to commit crimes
than non-immigrants.
The worst crime Margarita has committed,
she said, is driving without insurance. Asked
about Trump’s build-a-wall politics, she sighed
“I think (Trump) just
focuses on criminals and
doesn’t think about non
wohish works la the
criminals,” she said. “I
fields lik e a man d©esy and
know we’re not perfect.
But when Mexicans do
often a man is better paid,
things, it’s like the law is
We/re b a rd -w o rkin f people,
very hard for us.”
It*s not just the men who
are w orking
eyes Pacheco’s
USBECA VELAZQUEZ,
weekdays start before
M U JER ES L U C H A D O R A S
6 a.m. in a mobile home
P R O G R E S IS T A S
in Forest Grove. She
feeds Michael,
Christopher and José
Manuel breakfast, then they have a daily video
chat with her husband, Alejandro - father to
José Manuel - before she drops them off at
school and heads to work.
During the year, she shifts between planting
and picking vegetables and berries in
Washington County farm fields and working two
months making Christmas wreaths by hand for
an employer she declined to name. In years
past, she’s worked an evening job in a
restaurant in addition to her full-time day job to
make ends meet.
R
See IMMIGRATION, page 5