New York fruit growers are alleging that their workers have been unfairly pulled over and harassed by border patrol agents in Wayne County. Farm Bureau president Phil Wagner says it has reached the point where some seasonal employees have stopped going to work, www.whec.com reports. Wagner says four of his friend Brian Doyle’s Mexican workers were pulled over last week, and when Doyle offered to show his employees’ paperwork to the agent, the agent said he didn’t need to see anything and that they were illegal.
According to a border patrol spokesperson, the car was stopped on the side of the road already, and the agents treated it as a routine traffic stop. The spokesperson also alleges that the workers said they were illegal. Once the workers’ fingerprints were run through the system, they were found to be illegal. The four workers will be forced to return to Mexico.
Farmers are planning to file a complaint with the U.S. Attorney’s office over the treatment of the workers.