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In Trump’s America, Bosses Are Accused of Weaponizing the ICE Crackdown

Immigrant workers say rising panic over deportation forces them to endure abuses in jobs Americans don’t want.

By

Kartikay Mehrotra,

Peter Waldman and

December 18, 2018, 10:00 AM UTC

Oscar Ivan Contreras, working construction in Nayarit state, on Dec. 14. — Oscar Ivan Contreras, working construction in Nayarit state, on Dec. 14.
Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

The hours would be long, the sun blazing, the food terrible—Oscar Ivan Contreras knew what to expect as the bus rumbled toward America.

He’d been on this bus before, bound for California and a season’s work picking blueberries. It was partly math that pulled him back now: Six hours’ pay as a legal, temporary worker for Munger Brothers LLC, North America’s largest blueberry grower, equals a week’s wages back home in the Mexican state of Nayarit.

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