The couple from Oaxaca sit side by side inside a small Mount Vernon apartment, blinds down and curtains drawn.

They have spent their entire adult lives planting, pruning and harvesting food and flowers in Washington’s fertile Skagit Valley. Like many people who come to the U.S. in search of a better life, they focus much of their energy and hope on their three children — ages 5, 9 and 12 — all of whom are U.S. citizens.

But during President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration, the couple — who KUOW has agreed not to name due to concerns surrounding their immigration status — fears providing their children with the lives they have come to expect.

Their kids beg them to leave their apartment — to walk to the nearby park and play on the playground, to go shopping for new shoes, or drive across town to get ice cream. These days, their mom and dad, who are undocumented, always say no.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who they call “la migra,” could be idling in unmarked black SUVs just outside their building, next to the Mexican grocery store, or in the Walmart parking lot.

The previous week, a single man on his way to work in the same fields where the couple pick daffodils was pulled over and detained by ICE. His car was left abandoned on the side of the road.

Several months ago, the couple witnessed a woman being confronted by ICE agents. When the woman’s husband tried to defend her, both were taken away.

“There is a lot of stress and a lot of fear whenever we leave the house,” the Oaxacan husband said in Spanish. “We do not know if we’re going to come back, if we’re going to see our children again.”

An estimated 344,000 undocumented people live in Washington state, more than half of whom were born in Mexico, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Almost 40% of those undocumented people have at least one child under the age of 18 who is a U.S. citizen.

As the Trump administration continues its immigration crackdown, an increasing number of parents live in fear, not only of being detained and deported, but of having their families torn apart in the process.

Paycheck to paycheck

Even before Trump returned to office last year and ramped up immigration enforcement efforts, the Oaxacan couple found it hard to make ends meet.

Under Washington state law, they are paid at least minimum wage, $17.13 per hour. They work a rotating schedule of crops — cutting and bunching daffodils in February and March, picking tulips in April, strawberries in June, followed by blueberries, then pruning plants and working in the warehouses through the winter.

It is work they consider their calling, but it is not for everyone. On a recent visit KUOW made to a prominent Skagit Valley farm, all 100 or so workers were migrants. The vast majority were from Mexico.

While the pay for farmwork stays the same, the cost of groceries, heat and rent continues to climb.

“We have to stretch every dollar we earn,” the husband said. “We live with the strain every day now.”

Adding to that financial strain is the very real possibility that the couple could be apprehended by ICE and deported to Oaxaca, where both were born but where neither of them has lived since they were children.

Their employer tells them they are protected from federal agents while they work. But that protection ends when they leave at the end of the day and before they arrive every morning.

ICE arrests increased steadily across Washington state last year, according to a report from the University of Washington Center for Human Rights. The report shows monthly arrests jumped from below 100 in January 2025 to more than 400 in October and November 2025. The report also suggests that more immigration arrests are being made while people are in their cars.

“ICE and CBP agents, working in combined teams, described traveling to specific locations and running the license plates of vehicles they encountered to determine the name of their registered owners, and subsequently checking those names against their own databases to determine that person’s ‘deportability,’” the UW report states. “This process enabled them to make an arrest within as little as ten minutes, including of many individuals for whom they had not previously obtained a warrant and about whom they made no individualized probable cause assessment of escape risk.”

After learning their friend and coworker had been detained on his way to work, the Oaxacan couple stayed away from the fields for several days.

The couple said their stress is starting to affect their children, who find it increasingly difficult to focus on school.

“It’s sad to see that because we’re supposed to be happy in this world, regardless of our immigration status,” the Oaxacan wife said. “We don’t know why the government is acting this way against human beings, who are all equal.”

One man’s mission

Bob Ekblad has been helping people in situations similar to that of the Oaxacan couple for more than 30 years. In 1994, he and his wife Gracie established their bilingual ministry, Tierra Nueva, in Burlington, Washington, after spending the 1980s working with subsistence farmers in Honduras.

In its early years, Tierra Nueva organized a “raids response network” that trained people to make videos of Border Patrol raids in the fields and educated migrant workers about their rights. The group started a bilingual paper, a family support center and offered Bible studies in Spanish.

But Ekblad said the first year of Trump’s second term has brought with it a new level of terror.

“Right now, it is far worse because the Trump administration has empowered the Department of Homeland Security to create this huge force of ICE agents that are not trained at the level of normal law enforcement, who are masked, who don’t have their names shown, and who are striking a lot of terror into the lives of people,” he said.

Having worked with the farmworker population for decades, Ekblad scoffs at the idea that undocumented people are, as Trump and his administration characterize them, “the worst of the worst.”

“All this propaganda about insane asylums being vacated and all the people from Central America who are in mental health institutions being sent up here and people from the prisons, that’s a complete lie,” he said. “It’s just typical scapegoating that’s being used for political benefit.”

He also pushed back against the idea that anyone in the U.S. illegally is a criminal. Ekblad said it is virtually impossible for people without money to obtain a work or student visa to enter the country legally.

“You have to have proof of income, proof of money in the bank,” he said. “When people come, they’re coming because they’re being driven by poverty.”

Immigrants applying for a visa have to pay a $235 processing fee per person. Applicants often need a financial sponsor to sign an affidavit of support to prove they will not become a “public charge.”

DHS is reviewing changes that would make it easier to deny visas or green cards to applicants who the department deems could become dependent on government support.

Once they enter the country illegally, undocumented farmworkers are generally not eligible for either student or work visas. They can only apply for a temporary guest worker visa (H-2A) after returning to their home country. But doing so puts them at risk of a 10-year bar on legal re-entry.

Legal roadblocks

One group that tries to help migrants navigate the legal system before they get charged with crimes is Skagit Legal Aid, a nonprofit group of lawyers and legal aides based in Mount Vernon.

Andy Dugan, the group’s executive director, said his team focuses on identifying and eliminating barriers that perpetuate poverty, injustice, and racism.

In the current environment, Dugan said the biggest demand is for “know your rights” presentations. He estimates 6,000 people attended one of the group’s talks about how to protect and defend themselves from federal agents in 2025. He has also seen an influx of questions about families with mixed immigration status.

“One of the biggest fears we see is people being separated from their children,” Dugan said.

Undocumented parents do have options in Washington state. They can complete either a parental power of attorney form or a parents’ intention form to designate someone as the caregiver for their children for up to two years.

Parents also have the right to have their children accompany them if they are deported. Dugan also said U.S.-born children could be eligible for dual citizenship, even if they are deported with their parents.

Farmworkers in Skagit and Whatcom counties and their supporters made extensive preparations in anticipation of Trump’s return to the White House in 2025, Dugan said.

“Could we anticipate everything the federal government would do? Absolutely not. But we did our best to try to be in place to meet the community needs,” he said. “And this time around, folks knew they had to get prepared quick.”

Choosing to leave

Faced with the prospect of being detained by ICE and held in a prison-like setting while they fight to stay in the U.S., many undocumented people are opting to leave the U.S. voluntarily.

Starting Jan. 21, the Department of Homeland Security increased the incentive for “eligible illegal aliens” to “self-deport” through the agency’s app. The department upped the amount it offered each person from $1,000 to $2,600, plus a “free flight home.”

DHS estimates that 2.2 million undocumented immigrants decided to leave in the first year of the second Trump administration. But that process is not always a smooth one.

A woman who lives outside of Burlington, whose name KUOW agreed not to publish due to her immigration status, came to Skagit County two years ago with the idea that she and her husband would work in the fields, save enough money to build a house in their hometown in Guerrero, and then return to Mexico.

But everything in the U.S. was more expensive than they anticipated. Then she got pregnant. Now, the woman and her husband are surviving on a single income, while she stays home and cares for their three children. Her baby is a U.S. citizen, but her 6-year-old and 4-year-old are not.

She said she went to Border Patrol in January to start the process of leaving the U.S. voluntarily. She was told she needed passports for all of her children — Mexican passports for her two older children and a U.S. passport for her youngest.

But she said she could not get an appointment with the Mexican consulate and U.S. officials told her she didn’t have the proper documents to obtain the baby’s passport.

Now, much like the Oaxacan couple, the woman from Guerrero spends most days inside her mobile home, taking care of her two youngest children while the third is at school, and praying “la migra” doesn’t show up in her dirt driveway.

“Right now, I’m driving around feeling frightened all the time,” she said in Spanish. “Besides not having papers, I don’t have a license, and I have to take my kids to school in fear every single day.”

Back in Mexico, her younger sister has been diagnosed with cancer and needs surgery her family cannot afford.

On top of everything, she feels pressure to help pay for her sister’s treatment because her family in Mexico doesn’t understand how much she is struggling in the U.S. It’s the one thing that brings tears to her eyes.

“It feels awful, finding out a member of your family is sick, and you are unable to help,” she said. “It’s a very sad moment.”

While her 4-year-old son kicks a rubber ball and chases after it across the living room, Ekblad takes a knee, bows his head, holds her hand in his, and offers a prayer.

“Lord, we ask that you touch her sister and that the tumor be destroyed in Jesus’ name,” he said. “Help her sister a lot, Lord, and help her not to feel guilty, not to feel pressured to send money that she doesn’t have.”

Stephen Howie is a reporter with KUOW. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/03/24/washington-farmworkers-deportation-family-separation-ice/