By Jeanne Kuang. CalMatters via Bay City News.
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During his 30 years in the United States, Alejandro Gamez took any job he could as an undocumented worker: in fast food restaurants, factories, car washes and driving trucks, even when the conditions were poor.
“I had no status,” he said. “I had no options.”
But after speaking out in 2017 about unpaid wages at an Inglewood car wash, his luck changed. As part of a state investigation into that employer’s employment practices, Gamez this year became eligible for four years of protection from deportation — and a temporary work permit that seemed to open doors for him overnight.
The 51-year-old Hawthorne resident said he can apply for better, stable jobs that pay more and provide benefits. He now has a union-represented position in a college kitchen and a Social Security number to build his credit.
"It changed my life," she said. "It's giving me many opportunities to work, to be better off financially and to give my family a better life."
Their opportunities are due to a recent federal program that grants temporary legal status to workers involved in certain labor investigations. With some of the strictest labor laws in the country, but widespread concerns about retaliation by employers, California has issued more than 200 requests to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, asking it to grant legal status to workers who report violations.
But just months after Gamez secured his pardon, the program could be on the brink of elimination: President-elect Donald Trump and his advisers have promised mass deportations, the return of immigration raids on workplaces and the revocation of similar temporary protection programs.
Gamez’s attorney, Yvonne Medrano, said she expects the program to be terminated soon after Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Her firm, Los Angeles-based Bet Tzedek Legal Services, is no longer pursuing new cases under the program after representing workers seeking protection in 15 separate labor investigations.
“Removing this protection will return workers to a time when they fear being deported for asking for minimum wage, their paychecks or any other protection they have,” Medrano said.
Other immigration attorneys in California had already stopped filing new applications ahead of Election Day. They said they hope the Department of Homeland Security will honor the four-year extensions it has already granted, but they are unsure what will happen next.
“This is a discretionary program,” said Jessie Hahn, senior counsel for labor and employment policy at the National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy group. “We don’t anticipate that if Trump were elected, he would continue the program.”
A Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on his intentions for the program.
It has created another group of immigrants who have been granted temporary permission to stay in the United States as the prospects for federal immigration reform grow increasingly slim, making their prospects largely dependent on the swings of each presidential administration.
The program, one of several efforts by the Biden administration to boost enforcement of labor laws, is intended to give state investigators easier access to witnesses who might otherwise fear retaliation for filing workplace complaints.
It is similar to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which granted work permits and temporary protections from deportation to immigrants who had been brought to the United States illegally as children.
About 500,000 residents have that form of legal status, but the program has stopped granting new applications following challenges in federal courts. Trump tried to rescind the program in his last term; Stephen Miller, a close Trump adviser, said he would do so again, the New York Times reported.
Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement is much more limited: 7,700 workers have benefited from it since January 2023. Anyone who is not a U.S. citizen can apply for it if they can prove they worked for an employer under investigation. First, a state or federal labor agency must send a letter to the Department of Homeland Security stating that it needs the cooperation of worker witnesses in each investigation.
Those granted deferred action are protected from deportation and can work legally for four years, but there is no path to permanent residency. Some recipients see it as a way to earn money legally and get better-paying jobs outside the black economy. Others say it buys them time — and a much faster path to a work permit — while their other immigration-related cases wind through the federal bureaucracy.
Immigration attorneys and advocates say that while some applicants are seeking pardons in their active deportation cases, most have been living and working undocumented, undetected, meaning they have been presenting themselves to federal immigration authorities for the first time.
It is unclear how many of those workers are in California. A Homeland Security spokesman did not release state-by-state figures, citing “ongoing investigations.”
But California is enthusiastically participating in the program; Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration says it was the first state to submit a letter in support of worker protections. The state is home to nearly 1.5 million workers who are undocumented immigrants, representing more than 7 percent of the workforce.
These workers are a frequent focus of state labor investigations, and labor advocates say undocumented workers routinely fear losing their jobs and being reported to immigration authorities for complaining about workplace violations.
“This fear can prevent them from fully cooperating with labor law enforcement agencies to report and substantiate violations of the law,” Daniel Lopez, a spokesman for the state Labor Commissioner’s Office, said in a statement. “Ultimately, the lack of protections undermines workers and impacts responsible employers.”
Over the past two years, the office, which investigates wage theft, has sent letters supporting deportation protections in 136 workplace investigations potentially affecting hundreds of workers.
The Division of Occupational Safety and Health has sent at least 12 letters. The Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which oversees farmworker rights, has sent 10, and the Department of Civil Rights, which investigates complaints of workplace discrimination, has sent 60, spokespeople said.
The state has even paid to help immigrants obtain work permits. Last year, Newsom announced $4.5 million to pay for free legal services to help farmworkers who are involved in labor investigations apply for deferred action. The money, allocated through mid-2026, has so far helped assess the eligibility of more than 500 workers, and 175 have applied for the program.
There are about 800,000 seasonal and permanent farmworkers in California, at least half of whom are believed to be undocumented.
“Agricultural regions have very limited access to immigration legal services,” said Jason Montiel, a spokesman for the Department of Social Services, which administers the grant to five legal aid groups across the state. “Providing farmworkers with direct access to immigration legal services when their labor rights are violated increases the likelihood that they will file employment claims and collaborate with labor agencies.”
Newsom's spokespeople did not respond to a question about what would happen to the state grant program if federal rules change.
Nicole Gorney, a supervising attorney at VIDAS Legal Services, which receives a state grant, said she has 12 farmworker clients waiting to be granted deferred action. She hoped the state would expand the program to include workers in other industries.
“There are still a lot of workers who could qualify, but they don’t really want to come out of the shadows,” he said the morning after the election.
Gamez’s deferred action was granted in connection with retaliation complaints he and his co-workers filed against Century Car Wash in 2018. That year, they had also filed wage theft complaints with the state Labor Commissioner’s Office. According to state records, they told the office that their managers forced them to come in early and leave late after business hours, but their timesheets did not match all the hours they worked. The car wash co-owners denied the allegations and told the state that the timesheets were accurate.
After demanding payment from his managers, Gamez said he was fired and told to leave in front of customers. According to state records, he and his coworkers won the wage claims in 2021; a state hearing officer ruled that Gamez was owed more than $20,000. But the state is still investigating allegations that workers were fired and questioned about their immigration status in retaliation for speaking out. Last year, at the request of Gamez’s attorney, the Labor Commissioner’s Office sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security requesting protection from deportation for the workers.
“The ongoing investigation… is being conducted by our Retaliation Complaint Investigation Unit and requires the cooperation and testimony of workers,” Labor Commissioner Lilia Garcia-Brower wrote in the letter.
When reached by phone, one of the owners of Century Car Wash referred the matter to the co-owner, who did not respond to a request for comment.
Gamez said his deferred action status kept him calm last week as many immigrants feared for their future under a second Trump administration.
Others who received protection remain afraid.
Alejandra Montoya came to the United States five years ago fleeing “family problems,” she said, and found work in the fields of the Central Valley. She studied business administration in her native Mexico and said she never intended to be an undocumented immigrant. But she had a son and stayed to raise him in Bakersfield.
Montoya said he enjoys farm work, despite the hard days he spends on his knees picking and stacking carrots for $3.05 a box. On a good day, when field conditions are forgiving, he can take home $150 or more, he said.
Montoya, who worked for a contractor hired by Grimmway Farms, said she kept her head down until one day last September when a co-worker, Rosa Sanchez, was hit by a truck and killed in the field next to hers. Montoya said workers had expressed concern for that driver and that she believed the accident could have been prevented. Some of the workers were told to continue working near Sanchez’s body, she said. Stunned, and now knowing what else to do, she did.
It was “traumatic,” he said through a translator. “Inhumane.”
In March, the state’s workplace safety agency issued more than $65,000 in fines against Grimmway, contractor Esparza Enterprises and another contractor that employed the driver, alleging serious safety violations for allowing employees to work “in close proximity to a commercial truck that was being driven in an unsafe manner,” according to records obtained through a public records request. Federal and state records show the driver was backing up when the truck struck Sanchez.
The company and its contractors have contested the citations. Esparza did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, Grimmway spokeswoman Dana Brennan wrote that the company has strict policies prohibiting retaliation against employees or employees of contractors who report problems at work.
“We maintain a confidential, anonymous, bilingual hotline where employees can report ethical concerns,” Brennan wrote. “As we have done since we learned of this tragic accident, we are committed to working with law enforcement throughout the investigation and extend our deepest condolences to Ms. Sanchez’s family and her coworkers for this painful loss.”
As a possible witness to the accident, Montoya applied for deferred action with the help of the United Farm Workers, and has since become more active with the organization, encouraging coworkers to apply and speaking at a union convention in September.
The day after the election, she said she was relieved to have gotten her work permit this year and fearful that she had given her information to federal immigration authorities. In the fields, most workers were talking about Trump’s victory, “about what will happen to us now.”
“It protects us from deportation,” she said of the program. “Still, the fear exists… Whenever he wants, he can take it away from us.”
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