Nearly two-thirds of all milk production in New England comes from Vermont, where more than half the state’s farmland is dedicated to dairy and dairy crops.
After six 12-hour shifts milking cows, José Molina-Aguilar’s lone day off was hardly relaxing.
On April 21, he and seven co-workers were arrested on a Vermont dairy farm in what advocates say was one of the state’s largest-ever immigration raids.
“I saw through the window of the house that immigration were already there, inside the farm, and that’s when they detained us,” he said in a recent interview. “I was in the process of asylum, and even with that, they didn’t respect the document that I was still holding in my hands.”
Four of the workers were swiftly deported to Mexico. Molina-Aguilar, released after a month in a Texas detention center with his asylum case still pending, is now working at a different farm and speaking out.
“We must fight as a community