It is estimated<\/a> that more than half of California\u2019s approximately 350,000 farmworkers lack papers.)<\/p>\nOn the farm, everyone has to fill out forms that require documents showing they\u2019re authorized to work. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey may come with somebody else\u2019s documents that are valid. To us, we\u2019re not going to dispute that, we\u2019re not going to say, \u2018This isn\u2019t yours.\u2019 We don\u2019t know,\u201d the owner said. \u201cThe worker themselves, of course he\u2019s not getting the benefit of everything. He can\u2019t get unemployment, he\u2019s not getting the Social Security benefits. But he\u2019s happy to do it, because he\u2019s happy to get his paycheck.\u201d<\/p>\n
Americans rarely show up looking for work, the owner said. The ones who do are usually children of immigrants.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not always steady work. After a field is picked clean, workers have to find their next job, sometimes hundreds of miles away or more.<\/p>\n
Some farmworkers, he said, may have \u201cfive different jobs in a year with five different farmers and maybe even five different crops.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAmericans, I think they would not like that, to go from one job to another to another,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The last time non-Latino white Americans had come to work there, the owner said, was around five years ago. They worked a week picking melons, got their $600 paycheck and never returned.<\/p>\n
::<\/p>\n
![\"Farmworkers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764501309_541_\")
<\/p>\n
Farmworkers heave watermelons onto a flatbed where other workers place them inside boxes. <\/p>\n
\u201cAre you going to bring la migra down on us?\u201d a farmworker charged with stacking the boxes joked from his position on a flatbed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re all good kids here,\u201d another said, prompting a laugh from the workers.<\/p>\n
It was not yet 7 a.m. on my first day in a field of mini watermelons, the green fruit stretched out as far as the eye could see. I wore a long-sleeved shirt, blue jeans and a gray hat I had purchased the night before. My skin was tinged white from SPF 70 sunscreen. <\/p>\n
The crew members, led by longtime foreman Raul, wore jeans, sneakers, steel-toed boots and bandannas. At the head of their operation was the tractor driver, who pulled a flatbed hitched to the harvest machine.<\/p>\n
Seeing I was confused and trying to find a place for myself in this operation, 62-year-old Esteban called me over to his row, \u201cso I could get some exercise.\u201d He warned me that just the other day a woman on a different crew had overheated from the sun, fainted and had to go to the hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if it\u2019s hot and you\u2019re not thirsty, you need to drink water so your body will stay hydrated,\u201d he said. \u201cThe sun is dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like the men on the line, I pulled on white cotton gloves and, as the machine inched forward, began lifting watermelons from the ground, up onto the table above me where the packers waited. The melons had already been freed from the vine by the cutters, farmworkers well-versed in when the fruit is ripe.<\/p>\n
That day, I was lucky for a lot of reasons. For one, they had already made passes of this field and so I went several feet without having to bend down to pick up fruit. And temperatures were in the low 80s, nothing like summer days. My biggest complaint for the first hour?<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is boring,\u201d I told Esteban.<\/p>\n
He burst out laughing.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re just not used to it,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you had no choice, you would be.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Like](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764501309_708_\")
<\/p>\n
Like the experienced farmworkers, Mejia wore white cotton gloves to harvest the fruit.<\/p>\n
Esteban had left his parents\u2019 farm in Sinaloa in northern Mexico at 17 and came here, like everyone else, searching for the fabled American dream. He worked the land, as he\u2019d done back home, earning enough to later support five children, but enduring the hardship that came with being undocumented.<\/p>\n
There were years, in the 1980s, when la migra was a familiar sight, chasing and tackling workers who had no criminal record but were in the country illegally. Esteban himself was caught and deported, although he said he escaped more times than he was captured. Back then, he said, the border was less secure and workers were often back in the fields by the next day.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until after President Reagan\u2019s amnesty came in 1986 \u2014 the last major comprehensive immigration reform \u2014 that Esteban had a pathway to legal status. The other men on the line, in their 50s and 60s, had similarly gotten amnesty after years toiling in the fields.<\/p>\n
But these men are part of an aging workforce, with a 64% increase in California farmworkers ages 55 to 64, between 2009 and 2019, according to a UC Merced Community and Labor Center report. In the following decade, the report warned, there\u2019d be \u201ca wave of retiring farmworkers unlike any other in the state\u2019s modern history.\u201d<\/p>\n
1 <\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764501309_769_\")
<\/p>\n
2 <\/p>\n
![\"Farmworkers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764501310_518_\")
<\/p>\n
1. The farm owner says few American-born people apply for harvesting jobs and those that do don\u2019t last long. 2. Farmworkers had picked most of the watermelons in a field days earlier, but returned to harvest the remaining fruit once it was ripe. <\/p>\n
Esteban kept working out of necessity. How long did he plan to keep going?<\/p>\n
\u201cHasta el cuerpo aguante,\u201d he said. Until his body gives out.<\/p>\n
::<\/p>\n
By the time we broke for lunch, around two hours after we started, we had already covered nearly 1,000 feet and filled 350 boxes. We\u2019d picked up 2,300 watermelons.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can put that you picked up 500,\u201d Raul told me. (It was probably closer to 100.)<\/p>\n
Inside a trailer, the farmworkers spread out on wooden benches. A couple of men flipped tortillas by hand on a small grill. Others chugged soda to give them energy.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuieres taquitos? \u00c1ndale,\u201d they said, offering food to one another, including me. <\/p>\n
Rosario, the foreman\u2019s wife, had woken up at 4:30 a.m., as she always does, to make the couple a lunch of homemade tortillas, green beans and refried beans. (That was nothing, she told me. She once made breakfast for 10 farmworkers before going to the hospital to have her youngest son.) <\/p>\n
The men watched videos on their phones and teased one another about their love lives. Even I was teased, with Raul saying I was already as red as the crew would get in the peak of summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo a lot of Americans come here to work?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore so Mexican Americans. American Americans, no,\u201d he said. He called out their two newest crew members, who sat quietly in a corner, asking if they were American-born.<\/p>\n
One was the child of Mexican immigrants but born here; the other, 23-year-old Angel, was born in Mexico, but his mom brought him over illegally when he was 12.<\/p>\n
They\u2019d been working with the crew for only three weeks, after answering a Facebook post seeking help with the harvest. That morning, the workers had teased them for not showing up early to help, but Angel had wanted to sleep in.<\/p>\n
![\"Farmworkers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764501310_77_\")
<\/p>\n
During the harvest season, workers spend six days on the job with only one day off.<\/p>\n
Angel has worked in the fields since the eighth grade, after his mom bought him a Social Security card and an identification card for $150. The ID has his picture on it, but the name of someone he doesn\u2019t know. That\u2019s the name that comes on his checks and whom he signs in as when he works.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s how mostly everybody in the field works,\u201d Angel said. \u201cEven if you work under a fake social, they still take the taxes away. It\u2019s not like you\u2019re not paying taxes for your stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
After half an hour, the workers packed up their food and headed into the field once more.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack to the American dream,\u201d a farmworker joked.<\/p>\n
\u201cEl sue\u00f1o Americano nos consume,\u201d Raul said. \u201cThe American dream eats us alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
::<\/p>\n
![\"Boxes](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764501310_935_\")
<\/p>\n
A tractor hauls a load of melons. During the peak of the season, one crew could harvest 12,000 watermelons in one day.<\/p>\n
This time, Raul directed me up onto the harvest machine to learn how to sort and pack the fruit. Each box they filled contained different sizes of watermelons, but the one stores wanted most was a six. <\/p>\n
As I lifted watermelons from the table, I tried to eyeball them and guess their size. Mirian, the Honduran woman teaching me, shot me down most of the time.<\/p>\n
She began working in the fields after arriving from Honduras six years ago, fleeing crime and gangs there. She\u2019s raising a 5-year-old son who often asks her to stay home with him instead of leaving him with a babysitter.<\/p>\n
\u201cLife is hard here,\u201d the 24-year-old said. \u201cBut it\u2019s good because you can make money. There are no jobs in Honduras.\u201d<\/p>\n
It took her only seconds to fill each box. If the watermelons were too tightly packed, she put pieces of cardboard between to keep them from bruising one another. If they were loose, she folded a carton in the shape of a heart to fill in the space. <\/p>\n
\u201c\u00c1nimo Brittny, \u00e1nimo,\u201d Raul shouted, encouragingly. Keep it up!<\/p>\n
I must have been looking worn out.<\/p>\n
During lulls, Rosario showed off the green, red and white shirts she ordered for her and Raul for the crew\u2019s Mexican Independence Day celebration the following week. One of the women joked that her mother-in-law wanted to kill her.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause you took away her son,\u201d Raul said with a smile.<\/p>\n
\u201cMother-in-laws shouldn\u2019t be like that,\u201d Rosario counseled. \u201cI\u2019d be happy they were taking care of my sons.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey haven\u2019t taken one from you yet,\u201d Raul teased.<\/p>\n
That afternoon, once they\u2019d packed up the machine, Angel and his friend got into their car. <\/p>\n
\u201cAre we done for the day?\u201d asked Angel, who already had his Crocs on.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d Raul said with a laugh.<\/p>\n
They still had to fan out in the fields to pick up the other varieties of watermelon, but this time without the machine, which is used only for the smaller fruit. It was like a fire bucket brigade, with workers passing the melons down the line to be placed into large boxes on a flatbed, a process the owner called \u201cpitching.\u201d<\/p>\n
As we worked, one of the farmworkers, Mimi, who wore two long-sleeved shirts and sunscreen to protect her skin, gave me a pink bandanna to shield my neck. Also from Sinaloa, she has been in the country illegally for 23 years. <\/p>\n
She showed me a photo of her three children. Her older son, whom she brought from Mexico when he was 2 years old, has DACA and recently graduated from college with a degree in mechanical engineering. Her middle son is studying to be a pharmacy technician and her daughter, the youngest, had just turned 16 that day.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re my motivation,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m so proud of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mimi follows the seasons to different crops around the state. Harvesting cherries, she said, is the hardest. She had to scale a ladder and carry the bucket around her neck.<\/p>\n
Another farmworker, who declined to give her name, confided that she and her sons had come here on tourist visas and weren\u2019t legally allowed to work. She used her niece\u2019s documents.<\/p>\n
Her family had come the last three years. They didn\u2019t want to live here; they just wanted to make money. Back home, she said a day\u2019s work in the fields would earn them only 250 pesos \u2014 about $14.<\/p>\n
By working here, her son had been able to build his house back in Mexico. The first year, he put in the floor. The next, the roof. Last year, he installed the windows and doors and added lights.<\/p>\n
Both Mimi and the woman on the tourist visa feared what raids could bring. Already, they\u2019d heard rumors of ICE activity nearby.<\/p>\n
\u201cSi nos llega agarrar la migra, perdemos todo,\u201d the woman with the tourist visa said. \u201cIf immigration gets us, we\u2019ll lose everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Raul spotted me at day\u2019s end, pink bandanna tied around my neck, he laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou look like one of us,\u201d he said. \u201cYa se fue la reportera.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, the reporter is gone.<\/p>\n
::<\/p>\n
![\"Farmworkers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764501311_929_\")
<\/p>\n
On Mexican Independence Day in September, farmworkers decorated with papel picado and flags.<\/p>\n
The next week, I returned to the fields for Mexican Independence Day. <\/p>\n
The sweet smell of cantaloupe hung in the air as the crew decorated the machine with a half-Mexican, half-American flag and red, green and white papel picado with the words \u201cViva Mexico.\u201d At lunch, they would celebrate with Sinaloa-style barbacoa.<\/p>\n
Angel and his friend hadn\u2019t returned.<\/p>\n
I told the farmworkers how after only two days of work last week, my lower back and my forearms ached. How after each day\u2019s end, I\u2019d collapsed into bed fully clothed, grimy and exhausted. How, even days later, I was still tired.<\/p>\n
They told me about heading straight from the field to pick up their children. Getting home and cooking dinner, bathing their children and cleaning. And then starting all over again the next day.<\/p>\n
![\"Farmworkers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764501311_537_\")
<\/p>\n
Temperatures rose into the 90s as the farmworkers continued their harvest.<\/p>\n
That day, temperatures rose into the 90s. As the crew worked, shirts soaked through with sweat, Rosario played \u201cInmigrantes Unidos,\u201d a song about the \u201cgringos\u2019\u201d desire to deport all the working people:<\/p>\n
If they knew what we have suffered to get ahead<\/p>\n
Day after day we go out to work.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think we\u2019re hurting anyone.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to see them working like this illegal does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The American squatted in the dirt, struggling to free the cantaloupe from its prickly stem, almost toppling over.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[43840,7,9,8,6947,217,24747,38680,6308,21059,30357,1555,43839,1831,20396,1519,4455,72],"class_list":["post-75448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-62-year-old-esteban","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-crew","tag-day","tag-farm","tag-farmworker","tag-field","tag-fruit","tag-harvest","tag-man","tag-mini-watermelon","tag-owner","tag-raid","tag-trump","tag-worker","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}