An ICE agent holds a list of photos during a 2008 raid on Sun Valley Floral Group’s Arcata floral farm.. | Photo by Bob Doran, courtesy the North Coast Journal.

Note: This is the fifth and final installment in a series of stories about seven people fighting to remain in the United States, and Humboldt County, eight years after a federal immigration raid at Sun Valley Group’s Arcata floral farm.

PREVIOUSLY:

Mexican natives Gabby and Omar met in 2003 while working at Sun Valley Group’s floral farm in the Arcata Bottoms. Not much later they got married, and in early 2014 they had a baby daughter. Two months later Omar was seized by immigration officials and deported to Mexico. He hasn’t seen his wife or daughter since, except through the screen of a cell phone.

Here, at least in part, is what led to his deportation: Gabby and Omar had been employed at Sun Valley for about five years when, in June 2008, the company let go of 283 employees. Management was acting on information from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that the workers, including Gabby, were suspected of being in the country illegally. 

Sun Valley CEO Lane DeVries told the North Coast Journal at the time that the mass-firing was devastating. “The heart and the soul of our team is getting ripped out,” he said. Yet the company still had numerous undocumented workers in its employ, including Omar. 

According to Gabby, Sun Valley management told Omar that in order to keep working there he needed to show a valid U.S. identification. So he traveled to Washington state, where citizenship was not a requirement to obtain a driver’s license. He passed the test, came back and presented his ID, and he kept his job.

But ICE wasn’t done. On the morning of Sept. 3, 2008, more than 100 federal agents swarmed the floral compound, armed with rifles and arrest warrants. They arrested 23 suspected undocumented workers and took them to a makeshift processing center at the U.S. Coast Guard station in McKinleyville.

Gabby was at home that morning. Around 9 a.m., one of Omar’s brothers came by and told here there was a rumor that La Migra was at Sun Valley.

“I was experiencing a lot of anxiety because I didn’t know what was going on until I got a phone call from one of his coworkers,” Gabby said via a translator during a recent interview at a Eureka Starbucks. “He told me, ‘Gabby, I’m going to give you some bad news. Your husband was taken by immigration.’ And I became mute.”

Omar was processed and, hours later, released. Like others arrested that day, Omar wasn’t immediately deported, and with help from local nonprofits and a legal aid organization he appealed his deportation order in court. He had to appear in court numerous times, and he had to be home for hours at a time one day every week to receive a phone call from immigration agents checking up on him.

“And that’s the process he was in for six years,” Gabby said. “Until March 10, 2014, when he went to his last court date. And that’s when they got him.”

As recounted previously, Omar had gone with a former Sun Valley coworker to the ICE office in San Francisco, as he’d been doing every six months since his arrest. There, with no warning or explanation, federal agents whisked him away, and within 24 hours he was deported back to Mexico. He and Gabby had spent somewhere around $11,000 in attorney fees, and his case had not yet been decided. To this day it’s still under review in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but he was deported regardless.  

“It had been two months since my daughter was born,” Gabby said. “It was very difficult for me.” Her voice broke at the memory and she stopped talking to collect herself. A Starbucks employee came over with a vanilla Frappuccino, which Gabby took and handed to her daughter. Now close to two-and-a-half years old, the child was climbing across some chairs. She took the frosty drink in both hands and sucked happily on the green straw.

Gabby was now crying quietly. She said Omar’s former colleague called her and explained that her husband had been taken away. 

“I tried to call the lawyer so they could go get him, but the lawyer said that if [Omar] was already in immigration’s hands there was nothing he could do,” Gabby said. The lawyer told her he’d always been aware that deportation was a possibility. Gabby’s voice quavered as she continued. “I asked why hadn’t he told us if he knew they were going to deport [Omar]? My husband had the right to decide whether he would present himself or not. But the lawyer never told us anything.”

Gabby was devastated. With a newborn daughter, she was depending on her husband’s presence not only as a father and but as the family’s lone breadwinner. “I had just given birth,” she said. “I had to leave my daughter so I could start working. At a very young age I had to leave her.”

She broke into muffled sobs, her back heaving and tears streaming down her face. She said she found part-time work as a housekeeper at a local motel. Thankfully, she said, she also had some extended family here. Her sister cared for her daughter during the day while Gabby worked, and Gabby cared for her in the evenings while her sister worked. 

Omar is now back in Oaxaca. He and Gabby talk on the phone daily, but their daughter doesn’t know him. The last time Gabby contacted their lawyer he offered to help her and her daughter return to Mexico, which made Gabby angry. He had never offered to help her stay. She too is fighting a deportation order in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Gabby grew up in poverty as one of 13 children, and now she hears from Omar how difficult things still are in Mexico. “I think my daughter’s future is here,” she said.

Gabby now works at a fast food restaurant. (She didn’t want to say which one, and she asked that we not use her last name.) To this day she doesn’t know why her husband was taken while she and others have been allowed to remain living in Humboldt County while they fight their deportation orders in court. 

“My husband was not a criminal,” she said. “He simply was a hard-working man who also helped support this community, this country. He paid his taxes. Work, work, work — that’s simply what he did.”

Gabby has united with six other former Sun Valley workers to advocate for comprehensive immigration reform. Together they’ve come to be known as the Sun Valley Seven. They’ve received support locally from the nonprofit True North Organizing Network, which has helped arrange legal services and community outreach on their behalf. 

PICO National Network, a coalition of faith-based community groups across the country, is preparing a new campaign for comprehensive immigration reform using the Sun Valley Seven as a focus.

Congressman Jared Huffman has expressed support for immigration reform generally and the Sun Valley Seven specifically. “Individuals who are law-abiding, hardworking members of the community for over 10 years should not be deported,” he said in a statement to the Outpost.

President Barack Obama’s attempt at immigration reform, called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), was recently stymied by a deadlocked Supreme Court, though he has asked the court to re-hear the case. But many immigrants are unhappy with the Commander in Chief.

“President Obama has deported more people than any U.S. president before him, and almost more than every other president combined from the 20th century,” Fusion noted earlier this year. Much hangs on the outcome of the upcoming presidential election.

For Gabby the issue is very personal. “What hurts me the most is the separation of families,” she said. “It’s not the children’s fault.” They shouldn’t be made “to suffer, to be separated from their parents. That has to end.”