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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 14, 2019)
OREGON Saturday, December 14, 2019 BRIEFLY Redmond man gets 3 months for choking dog BEND — A Redmond man received three months in jail for driving drunk to McDonald’s and choking a Chihuahua-type dog in the parking lot. Jonathan Thomas Bailey was sentenced Thursday in Deschutes County Circuit Court, fi ve months after he displayed such rage at the 15-pound animal it left wit- nesses in tears, according to court documents. Bailey, 36, pleaded no contest to driving under the infl uence of alcohol, attempt- ing to commit a felony and second-degree animal abuse. Man found guilty in shooting of Salem police offi cer SALEM — A Salem man was found guilty Thursday of shooting a veteran Salem police offi cer four times during a nighttime traffi c stop on April 14. The Statesman-Jour- nal reported that Jaime Lee Jimenez, 39, was found guilty of premeditated, attempted aggravated mur- der following a stipulated facts trial before Marion County Judge Thomas Hart. He also pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree assault, illegal possession of a fi rearm by a felon and dealing methamphetamine within 1,000 feet of a school. Offi cer Michelle Pratt was patrolling solo when she pulled over a minivan being driven by Jimenez. Jimenez, a convicted felon, had an active warrant out for his arrest for a domestic violence incident. Wyden, Merkley, introduce bill to ease water woes BEND — Legislation that could give Oregon tribes access to federal dollars for rebuilding outdated water infrastructure systems on reservations has been intro- duced to the U.S. Senate. The Western Tribal Water Infrastructure Act was intro- duced on Thursday by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., accord- ing to a news release. The legislation could be a boon for tribes, such as the Con- federated Tribes of Warm Springs, which suffered mul- tiple water failures this year. Warm Springs water infrastructure was installed in the mid-1900s by the Bureau of Indian Affairs but saw little maintenance over the years. The Tribe controls water infrastructure on the reservation, but an economic downturn has prevented nec- essary improvements and system upgrades. Portland Metro may seek $6.25B in taxes for projects PORTLAND — The Portland area’s regional gov- ernment released detailed information Wednesday about the potential taxes and fees it may ask Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas county voters to approve to pay for billions of dollars in transportation projects over the next two decades. Metro released a report from Portland-based consul- tants ECONorthwest detail- ing the potpourri of revenue options on the table in 2020 as the agency eyes a Novem- ber ballot measure. Panhandler who broke windows gets jail time PORTLAND — A Port- land panhandler who threw rocks through the windows of fi ve businesses because she said no one was giving her money was sentenced Wednesday to 20 days in jail and ordered to pay more than $9,000 for the damage. La Pine man arrested following home break-in BEND — A La Pine man was arrested by Deschutes County Sheriff’s Offi ce dep- uties after allegedly enter- ing a family’s home Thurs- day, being confronted by the occupants and running away. Dakota Daniel Willis, 23, was arrested at 1:07 p.m. a short distance from the home on suspicion of fi rst-de- gree burglary, fi rst-degree trespassing and attempted third-degree theft and taken to the Deschutes County jail, according to a press release from the sheriff’s offi ce — EO Media Group and wire services. A9 Oregon Christmas tree industry buoyed by bill following tragedy Three Guatemalan men died, others injured in crash By ANDREW SELSKY Associated Press GERVAIS — It was nighttime when Pedro Lucas came home, clutch- ing receipts showing he had paid a funeral home to have the bodies of three immi- grant laborers returned to Guatemala from Oregon. The three, including two of Lucas’ cousins, were killed when a pickup truck slammed into a van carry- ing them and 10 other Gua- temalans home from work at a Christmas tree farm. Lucas’ father, who arrived in America just seven months ago and sent part of his earnings to his wife in the village of Chacaj, was also in the van and remains in a coma, his back broken. “It’s unknown if he’ll walk again,” Lucas said in Spanish. The Nov. 29 crash was a blow to Oregon’s immigrant farm workers, the driv- ing force behind the state’s $121 million Christmas tree industry, the nation’s largest. On Wednesday, spirits were lifted for some when the U.S. House passed a bill that would loosen restric- tions on hiring foreign agri- cultural workers and cre- ate a path to citizenship for more than 1 million farm workers estimated to be in the country illegally. The bill’s fate in the Senate is unclear, and the White House hasn’t said if Presi- dent Donald Trump would sign it. But the 260-165 vote was a rare stroke of biparti- sanship on immigration. The administration has expressed support for grow- ers who say they are des- perate for immigrants to fi ll jobs, even though Trump pinned his 2016 campaign and his domestic agenda to building a border wall with Mexico and intro- duced policies that make it far more diffi cult for immi- grants to win asylum. Both growers and Latino workers in Oregon say native-born Americans Hearing loss can sometimes make the holidays feel isolating or stressful. Make the most of your time with family and friends this holiday season. Contact us and let us help you hear what you are missing. Renata Anderson, MA East Oregonian Pam Wagenaar, Administrative Assistant 2237 SW Court, Pendleton • 541-276-5053 www.renataanderson.com AP Photo/Andrew Selsky Flowers, candles, and other objects are shown at a memo- rial on Thursday at the scene where three Christmas tree farm workers from Guatemala were killed and others were injured in a van crash in Salem. Immigrant and worker ad- vocates say the crash shed light on “invisible work” by im- migrant workers that takes place in Oregon, which has the U.S.’s largest Christmas tree industry. won’t take these arduous fi eld jobs. “The person who works in an offi ce, he doesn’t know what it’s like to work out there, how much one suffers out there,” Lucas said as he sat at his dining room table, the funeral home documents in front of him. “In this sea- son — here we’re warm inside — but outside, in the morning when it’s cold and there’s ice, you suffer a lot.” The deadly crash shed light on an “invisible work” happening in Oregon, said Reyna Lopez, executive director of a farm worker union called PCUN, an acronym in Spanish for Pine Workers and Farmers United of the Northwest. The labor takes place mostly out of public view, in Christmas tree farms that blanket parts of Oregon’s foothills and the Willamette Valley, an area renowned for its moist climate and fertile soil. “People don’t realize that the majority of this indus- try is immigrant labor,” said Lopez, whose own father, a Mexican immigrant, was a Christmas tree planter. Christmas tree farmers in Oregon, facing a tight labor market this year, used farm labor contractors who found migrant workers in Califor- nia to help with the tree har- vest, according to Oregon Employment Department offi cials. The victims of the crash spent their last day loading Christmas trees onto trucks at Holiday Tree Farms, one of the world’s largest Christmas tree farms. They received paychecks from a contractor that Friday night in Salem and were headed home when the pickup truck crumpled their van. The Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Division is investigating, though a spokesman declined to pro- vide details. In 2017, 4.7 million Christmas trees were har- vested in Oregon, 4 mil- lion in North Carolina and 1.5 million in Michigan, the country’s three largest pro- ducers, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Oregon doesn’t com- pile records on the percent- age of immigrants in the Christmas tree industry, but it clearly relies on them. So do North Carolina and Michigan. As the sun burned through fog one recent morning at Hupp Farms, nestled in the foothills of the Cascade Range near Sil- verton, Jan Hupp surveyed stacks of bound Noble and Nordmann fi rs about to be loaded onto trucks. They were the last among the 30,000 trees that employ- ees and contractors downed with chain saws during this year’s harvest. “Without immigrants, we couldn’t have done this,” Hupp, a trucker cap pushed back on his head, his blue jeans stained brown and green from soil and trees, told The Associated Press. “People born here don’t want to do this work.” His farm has 20 employ- ees, 15 of them from Mex- ico and the rest U.S.-born. Members of contract crews that helped with the harvest were from Mexico or Cen- tral America. Asked Thursday about passage of the U.S. House bill, Hupp replied: “If it’s a pathway to get more people who are willing to work, I’m all for that.” Harvesting is the hard- est part of the job, requir- ing the cutter to bend over with a heavy chain saw to sever the trunk 1 inch or less above the ground, said Dan- iel Garibay, a Hupp Farms employee. He originally is from Zarquillas, a town in Michoacán, Mexico, that he said is plagued by shootouts between rival drug gangs. If the chain saw touches the ground, the chain is immediately dulled and must be replaced, said the bearded 41-year-old. Asked what was the big- gest number of trees he has felled in one day, Garibay responded matter-of-factly: “One thousand.”
