\u201cPeople are very scared to go out, even to get groceries,\u201d said Rosa Yanez, an outreach worker at Strangers No Longer, a Detroit-based Catholic organization that supports immigrants and refugees in Michigan with legal and health problems, including the bird flu. \u201cPeople are worried about losing their kids, or about their kids losing their parents.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI used to tell people about the bird flu, and workers were happy to have that information,\u201d Yanez said. \u201cBut now people just want to know their rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Outreach workers who teach farmworkers about the bird flu, provide protective gear, and connect them with tests say they noticed a dramatic shift \u2014 first in California, the state hit hardest by the bird flu \u2014 after immigration raids beginning on Jan. 7, the day after Congress certified President Donald Trump\u2019s election victory. That\u2019s when Border Patrol agents indiscriminately stopped about 200 Latino farmworkers and day laborers in California\u2019s Central Valley, according to local reports cited in a lawsuit<\/a> subsequently filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the United Farm Workers union and several people who were stopped and detained.<\/p>\n \u201cBorder Patrol agents went on a fishing expedition\u201d in a three-day raid called \u201cOperation Return to Sender\u201d that \u201ctore families apart and terrorized the community,\u201d the lawsuit alleges.<\/p>\n Among those stopped was Yolanda Aguilera Martinez, a farmworker and grandmother who lives legally in the U.S. and has no criminal record. She was driving at the speed limit on her way to a doctor\u2019s appointment when plainclothes agents in unmarked vehicles pulled her over, ordered her out of the car, pushed her to the ground, and handcuffed her, the lawsuit says. Agents eventually released Aguilera Martinez, but the lawsuit says others who faced deportation were detained for days in \u201ccold, windowless cells\u201d before they were transported to Mexico and abandoned.<\/p>\n They weren\u2019t told why they had been arrested, given an opportunity to defend themselves, or allowed to call a lawyer or their families, the lawsuit alleges. It says that the four children of one deported father, who had no criminal record, \u201chave become quiet and scared\u201d and that his epileptic son\u2019s \u201cseizures have worsened.\u201d<\/p>\n News of the raid spread quickly in California, where an estimated 880,000<\/a> mainly Latino farmworkers live. Dairies that employ immigrant labor produce nearly 80% of the U.S. milk supply, according to a 2014 survey.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cAfter Operation Return to Sender, dairy workers became even less willing to speak about the lack of protection on dairy farms and the lack of sick pay when they\u2019re infected \u2014 even anonymously,\u201d said Antonio De Loera-Brust, a spokesperson for the United Farm Workers.<\/p>\n Outreach workers in other states report a similar chilling effect from raids and immigration policies passed after Trump took office. He repeatedly degraded immigrants and pledged mass deportations on the campaign trail. \u201cThey\u2019re not humans, they\u2019re animals,\u201d he said of immigrants illegally in the U.S. last April<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s first legislative action was to sign the Laken Riley Act into law, mandating federal detention for immigrants accused of any crime, regardless of whether they\u2019re convicted. On Jan. 20, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded<\/a> the \u201cprotected areas\u201d policy, allowing agents to arrest people who don\u2019t have legal status while they\u2019re in schools, churches, or hospitals<\/a>. Last month, the Trump administration deported more than 100 Venezuelans and others without a hearing, ignoring a court order<\/a> to turn around planes flying the men to El Salvador.<\/p>\n The public health ramifications of farmworkers shrinking from view are potentially massive: Infectious disease scientists say that preventing people from getting bird flu and detecting cases are critical to warding off a bird flu pandemic. That\u2019s why the government has funded efforts to protect farmworkers and monitor them for signs of bird flu, like red eyes or flu-like symptoms.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time a worker gets sick, you\u2019re rolling the die, so it\u2019s in everyone\u2019s interest to protect them,\u201d De Loera-Brust said. \u201cThe virus doesn\u2019t care what your immigration papers say.\u201d<\/p>\n Pandemic Potential<\/strong><\/p>\n About 65 dairy and poultry workers<\/a> have tested positive for the bird flu since March 2024, but the true number of infections is higher. A KFF Health News investigation<\/a> found that patchy surveillance resulted in cases going undetected on farms last year, and studies have revealed<\/a> signs of prior infections in farmworkers who hadn\u2019t been tested.<\/p>\n State and local health departments were beginning to overcome last year\u2019s barriers to bird flu testing, said Salvador Sandoval, a doctor who retired recently from the Merced County health department in California. Now, he said, \u201cpeople see a mobile testing unit and think it\u2019s Border Patrol.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year, outreach organizations connected with farmworkers at places where they gathered, like at food distribution events, but those are no longer well attended, Sandoval and others said.<\/p>\n \u201cRegardless of immigration status, people who look like immigrants are feeling a lot of fear right now,\u201d said Hunter Knapp, the development director at Project Protect Food Systems Workers, a farmworker advocacy organization in Colorado that does bird flu outreach. He said some Latino community health workers have scaled back their outreach efforts because they worry about being harassed by the authorities or members of the public.<\/p>\n A Latina outreach worker in Michigan, speaking on the condition of anonymity because she\u2019s worried about retaliation against her family, said, \u201cMany people don\u2019t go to the doctor right now, because of the immigration situation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey prefer to stay at home and let the pain or redness in the eye or whatever it is go away,\u201d she said. \u201cThings have really intensified this year, and people are very, very scared.\u201d<\/p>\n The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported far fewer human cases since Trump took office. During the three months before Jan. 20, the agency confirmed two dozen cases. Since then, it\u2019s detected only three, including two people with cases severe enough to be hospitalized.<\/p>\n The CDC has said it continues to track the bird flu, but Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University, said the slowdown in cases might be due to a lack of testing. \u201cI am concerned that we are seeing a contraction in surveillance and not necessarily a contraction in the spread of the virus.\u201d<\/p>\n Undetected infections pose a threat to farmworkers and to the public at large. Because viruses evolve by mutating within bodies, each infection is like a pull of a slot machine lever. A person who died of the bird flu in Louisiana in December illustrates that point: Scientific evidence suggests<\/a> that bird flu viruses evolved inside the patient, gaining mutations that may make the viruses more capable of spreading between humans. However, because the patient was isolated in a hospital, the more dangerous viruses didn\u2019t transmit to others.<\/p>\n That might not happen if sick farmworkers don\u2019t receive treatment and live in crowded households or windowless detention centers where they might infect others, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. Although the bird flu doesn\u2019t yet have the ability to spread easily between people through the air, like the seasonal flu, it might occasionally spread when people are in close quarters \u2014 and evolve to do so more efficiently.<\/p>\n \u201cI worry that we might not figure out that this is happening until some people get severely sick,\u201d Rasmussen said. \u201cAt that point, the numbers would be so large it could go off the rails.\u201d<\/p>\n The virus might never evolve to spread easily, but it could. Rasmussen said that outcome would be \u201ccatastrophic.\u201d Based on what\u2019s known about human infections, she and her colleagues predict in a new report<\/a> that an H5N1 bird flu pandemic \u201cwould overwhelm healthcare systems\u201d and \u201ccause millions more deaths\u201d than the covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n Vaccinations Drop Off<\/strong><\/p>\n Late last year, the CDC rolled out a seasonal flu vaccine campaign targeted at more than 200,000 livestock workers. The hope was that flu vaccinations would lessen the chance of a farmworker being infected by seasonal flu and bird flu viruses simultaneously. Co-infection gives the two flu viruses a chance to swap genes, potentially creating a bird flu virus that spreads as easily as the seasonal variety.<\/p>\n Yet Sandoval said flu vaccine uptake dropped immediately after the January operation in California.<\/p>\n U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said in a statement<\/a> that they arrested 78 immigrants \u201cunlawfully present in the U.S.\u201d during the three-day operation. They included a convicted sex offender and others with criminal histories including vandalism and petty theft, the statement said. The agency did not name allegations against each person and did not say whether all had been charged.<\/p>\n Former officials with the Biden administration, which was in its waning days as the arrests occurred, distanced itself from the operation in interviews with the Los Angeles Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mayra Joachin, an attorney at the ACLU of Southern California, said the operation was unlike others under the Biden administration in that these were indiscriminate arrests by Border Patrol in the interior of the country. \u201cIt fits with the Trump administration\u2019s broader campaign of instilling fear in immigrant communities,\u201d she said, \u201cas seen in the election campaign and in subsequent actions attacking anyone perceived to be a noncitizen in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n In March, an assistant chief in the Border Patrol unit that conducted the operation, David Kim, called the operation a \u201cproof of concept.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe know we can push beyond that limit now as far as distance goes,\u201d he told the Southern California news outlet Inewsource<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment. In an email, White House spokesperson Kush Desai wrote, \u201cDespite what the \u2018experts\u2019 believe, combatting the Avian flu epidemic and enforcing our immigration laws are not mutually exclusive.\u201d<\/p>\n Anna Hill Galendez, a managing attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, which is involved in bird flu outreach, said unusually aggressive tactics by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deterred sick dairy workers in Michigan\u2019s Upper Peninsula from leaving their homes for care in late January. They contacted the center for help.<\/p>\n \u201cThey wanted medical care. They wanted flu vaccines. They wanted [personal protective equipment]. They wanted to get tested,\u201d Hill Galendez said. \u201cBut they were afraid to go anywhere because of immigration enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n Lynn Sutfin, a public information officer at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, responded to queries about the situation in the peninsula in an email to KFF Health News, saying, \u201cThe farmworkers did not take the local health department and MDHHS up on the testing offer.\u201d<\/p>\n The CDC declined to comment on the impact of immigration actions on farmworker outreach.<\/p>\n To adapt to the new reality, Yanez now draws attention to her advice on the bird flu in Michigan by pairing it with information on immigrant rights. Knapp, in Colorado, said his organization is shifting its approach away from bird flu outreach at events where farmworkers congregate, because that could be perceived as a setup \u2014 and could inadvertently become one if ICE agents targeted such an event.<\/p>\n Outreach workers who live among farmworkers are withdrawing a little, too. \u201cBeing Latinos, we are always identified,\u201d said the outreach worker who spoke on the condition of anonymity. \u201cI have a visa that protects me, but things are changing very quickly under the Trump administration, and the truth is, nothing is certain.\u201d<\/p>\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.walkwithremar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/El-Salvador-Prison-Brandvold-1-scaled.jpg\")
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