Charles van Heck's Woodhull Journal

EXPECTATIONS, EXCEPTIONS & DEPORTATION

It happened quickly. He knew the risks, but what choice did he have? There was a family to feed. Maybe today, they wouldn’t notice him. He kept to the speed limit. Then, in the review mirror, he saw the flashing lights. He pulled over.  

The crops are all in, and the peaches are rotten

The oranges are packed in the creosote dumps

They’re flying us back to the Mexico border

To pay all our money to wade back again

Fear tightened his throat. Jumping out of the car, he began to run.

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita

Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria

You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane

No all they will call you will be Deportee

The two Ice officers sprinted after an immigrant in a strawberry field. Shirttails and open coats flapped. The immigrant, his arms pumping, ran in the hazy morning air. This was a cross-country run toward a predetermined finish line.

Now my father’s own father, he waded that river

They took all the money he made in his life

Six hundred miles to the Mexico border

They chased us like rustlers, like outlaws, like thieves

According to the Department of Homeland Security, approximately 142,000 migrants had been deported by the end of May. On 5 June, 51,026 people were being held in detention. Documents show that ICE holds people in 409 facilities, though the government acknowledges only 221 of these facilities.

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita

Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria

You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane

No all they will call you will be Deportee

Congress created the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO) in 2019. The OIDO was charged with investigating the conditions of the detention centers. The Trump Administration gutted the department and the Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which was responsible for investigating accusations of civil rights violations against both immigrants and U.S. citizens.  

The Vera Institute of Justice reports hunger, medical neglect, and overcrowding in the immigration detention centers. Children are separated from their parents. They further report: “Over 16 years, ICE has detained people across 1,357 facilities total—not only private detention facilities and local jails, but also unexpected places like hotels, hospitals, airports, and military bases that are excluded from public reporting.”

The immigrant kept running, desperate to elude the ICE arms. An agent jumped over a row of strawberries.

The sky-plane caught fire, over Los Gatos Canyon

A big ball of fire, it shook all the ground

Who are these friends, who are falling like dry leaves

The radio said they were just deportees

Who is the running man? He is nameless. Is he an insignificant person to us? He is one of thirty-one million immigrants (19% of the labor force) working in the United States who plant, nurture, and harvest crops and work in meat factories. He is an Every Person, man, woman, and child who made a dangerous journey in the hope of a better life⸺ fleeing poverty and repressive regimes. They clean our hotel/motel rooms, work in our restaurants and attends to our properties. They are shadows running through our lives, doing the jobs Americans don’t want. They are unseen. They are insignificant in the Trumpian worldview until Trump says otherwise.

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump said on social media.

Trump is concerned less with the human rights of the immigrants and more about not losing his constituencies. The immigrants are, in the words of  Tatum King, a senior ICE official, “targets.” Their significance is in numbers. “We acknowledge that by taking this off the table, that we are eliminating a significant # of potential targets,” King stated. “Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants, and operating hotels,” he wrote in the message.

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita

Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria

You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane

No all they will call you will be Deportee

The running immigrant slowed his pace and hesitated for a breath. Then he heard one of the agents chasing him shout, “Stop.” The running man felt a hand grab his arm. He bent over, taking a breath. He knew the race was fixed. Only those with five million dollars get the gold card with Trump’s picture. Only those deemed necessary will be exempt. The running man had lost his race.

But we died in your hills, we died in your valleys

We died in your orchards, we died on your plains

We died on your deserts, we died in your treetops

Both sides of the river we died just the same

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita

Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria

You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane

No all they will call you will be Deportee  

Song lyrics: Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos) by Woody Guthrie & Martin Hoffman© 1948

The Vera Institute of Justice, The Truth About Immigration Detention in the United States Nazish Dholakia Senior Writer, Jun 11, 2025

https://www.vera.org/news/the-truth-about-immigration-detention-in-the-united-states

Image: A group of immigrants attends a protest against an immigration bill in Immokalee, Florida, in 2023. Maria Alejandra Cardona/Reuters