A second Trump presidency has raised concerns of migrant workers’ rights

Former US President Donald Trump has said if re-elected, there would be a return of ICE raids as during his first term.

On September 20, 2023, Rosa Sanchez went to work picking carrots at Grimmway Farms, one of the largest producers of carrots in the world, located in the Bakersfield, California, area of the United States. Unfortunately, she would not last the day. She was fatally struck by a truck in the field. She was 58 years old.

Fellow farm worker Alejandra Montoya saw the accident happen. Montoya said she was told to keep picking carrots as her colleague Sanchez’s lifeless body lay there. For her, that was a reckoning moment.

“I felt a very profound lack of respect for Rosa Sanchez, who had just been killed. They had everyone else literally work around the body. That really emphasised how they really care more about the product than about the workers,” Montoya told Al Jazeera via a translator.

Originally, Montoya was afraid to speak up. She told Al Jazeera that her supervisors would often subtly threaten to turn them into immigration officials if they tried to push for better working conditions.

“They really instil fear in anyone who speaks up. Anyone who doesn’t agree with the way things are, who says things to be better, they’ll tell them like, ‘Hey, you know, you’re undocumented, you shouldn’t say anything’. They’ll just straight up fire them, or people will quit on their own accord because they don’t want any trouble,” she continued.