Aug 28
2025
WNY farm targeted again by ICE
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Lynn-Ette & Sons Farm in Orleans County.
This story was originally published by Documented, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to reporting on immigration in New York state.
During the early hours of August 14, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents launched a raid on the Lynn-Ette & Sons Farms, a sprawling 8,000-acre farm in Orleans County that specializes in growing snap beans, cabbage, and squash. ICE agents detained four Mexican workers and three Guatemalan workers.
The recent arrests at Lynn-Ette are the farm’s second ICE raid in the past three months. In May, a similar raid saw federal agents detain 14 workers.
“Once again, workers at Lynn-Ette farms were targeted,” said Armando Elenes, United Farm Workers secretary treasurer, in a statement shared with Documented. “Once again, multiple workers were taken. And once again, business as usual continues for Lynn-Ette’s owners and management.”
In the May case, at about 6:30 a.m. on May 2, ICE agents boarded a bus transporting workers to the farm. Officers were alleged to be carrying a list of workers’ names. The detained workers were then held at the ICE detention center in Batavia, a facility with a history of solitary confinement and forced labor.
Ultimately, 10 workers from the May raid were deported, while the UFW was able to secure the release of four workers on bond. Four of the people who were deported were a family of Guatemalan workers who were leading the effort to unionize Lynn-Ette farms. With the arrest and deportation of active labor leaders, the UFW believes there is a connection between the raids and the farm’s efforts to unionize.
Lynn-Ette has been the center of an ongoing labor struggle between the farm’s owner and the UFW, the union organizing workers at four upstate farms. Since New York’s landmark 2019 agricultural labor law, which ended the exclusion of farm workers in the state from the right to collectively bargain, the UFW has launched a vigorous campaign to organize farms across the Empire State.
Despite workers gaining the right to organize, the road to union recognition has not been smooth. In 2023, Darren Roberts, owner of Lynn-Ette, was accused by the union of surveilling and threatening union organizers and workers. Then, on July 1, 20 full-time workers at Lynn-Ette won a contract that included higher wages, health care benefits and a retirement plan, but the farm owners have refused to recognize the contract.
“A legally-binding union contract has already been awarded at Lynn-Ette by a NY State-appointed arbitrator, yet Lynn Ette is defying the law and refusing to implement this union contract,” said Elenes.
To permanently block the ability of farm workers to organize, in 2023, Lynn-Ette and several other farms filed a lawsuit in federal court to overturn the 2019 state law. The suit aims to exclude H-2A visa workers, a federal program that allows employers to temporarily hire foreign agricultural workers, from the right to organize a union.
Now, the UFW alleges that the anti-union effort at Lynn-Ette has gained renewed momentum in the wake of Trump’s anti-immigrant crackdown. The union alleges that some of the farm workers who were targeted by ICE in the May raid were union leaders.
Lynn-Ette owners did not respond to Documented’s request for comment, but in a statement published by a local news outlet, the owners denied having any contact with ICE or knowledge of the raid in May.
“We are deeply troubled by the manner in which this enforcement action was carried out and the impact it has had on our team and their families,” they wrote. “Lynn-Ette & Sons had no prior knowledge of the raid and had no contact with ICE beforehand.”
ICE also did not respond to Documented’s request for comment.
“With yet more worker families shattered, the UFW demands an end to federal raids targeting agricultural workers, an end to what we see as shameful employer complicity in the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate legal protections and lower wages for farm workers, and the immediate implementation of the lawful union contract at Lynn-Ette,” said Elenes.
The UFW also alleges that 11 of the workers who were detained during the May raid are owed unpaid wages. According to the union, they have reached out to the New York State Department of Labor on multiple occasions and have not heard back from the agency. The labor department did not respond to Documented’s inquiry about the UFW complaint.
Fear of deportations has spread among the immigrant workers still at Lynn-Ette, potentially paralyzing the union effort the UFW members have built.
“It’s a problem, working the way things are, it’s too difficult because of the fear of leaving home and the uncertainty of whether we’ll return, the constant fear of being arrested, or the fear and panic caused by what we hear from around us,” said one worker who spoke to Documented on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Another worker who also spoke to Documented on the condition of anonymity echoed the same sentiment.
“Working as an immigrant in this country under this president, with the mass deportation law, has become chaotic for people like us who run the risk every day of being detained by agents of the customs control institutions,” they said. “The fear of going to work and not being able to return to our families, and going out and thinking that a raid awaits us outside, is something that has us living in fear.”
