Here are the morning’s top stories on Monday, September 1, 2025…
- On this Labor Day, we’re taking a closer look at the labor force here in California. With increased immigration enforcement from the Trump administration, the state of the immigrant workforce has perhaps never been more in flux.
Longtime Labor Advocate Dolores Huerta Says Immigration Enforcement Taking Toll On Workforce
The Trump administration’s stepped-up immigration enforcement in California has rattled the immigrant community as a whole. But perhaps the biggest effect has been on immigrant workers in the state, many of whom are scared about the possibility of deportation.
Dolores Huerta is co-founder of the United Farm Workers and founder and president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation. “People are afraid to go to work, people are afraid go to school, people are afraid to go shopping,” she said. “It’s just a kind of reign of terror that has come upon the community. Kern County, we were the first place that was hit here, in Bakersfield. They arrested 90 people. Of the 90 people that they arrested, only one person had any kind of a criminal record.”
A longtime labor advocate, Huerta said the Trump administration has already taken steps when it comes to protections for labor unions. “So you have a situation today where labor unions – they organize the workers. Then they win the election, workers are voted for representation, and then the employers just refuse to bargain,” she said.
Huerta said that particularly when it come to farmworkers, there’s little understanding of how much pride immigrants take in the work they’re doing. “There’s an awful lot of pride,” she said. “This whole perception that the employers themselves have put out there that somehow a farm worker is below someone’s level of competence or someone’s level of pride that they have kind of created that mentality. And unfortunately that still sits there. ”
