Delmiro Trevino was waiting for his breakfast at the Hi Ho Restaurant in the small Oregon town of Independence when a local police officer and three Polk County sheriff’s deputies abruptly confronted him, demanding he produce documents to prove he is a U.S. citizen.
One of the deputies grabbed Trevino by the arm and forced him to his feet, telling him they were acting on behalf of federal immigration agents.
They let him go when the police officer recognized Trevino, who was born in Texas, as a long-standing Independence resident. Even so, another deputy accosted him later.
It sounds like just another terrifying moment in the flawed normalcy of 2025. Except for one thing: it was almost 50 years ago, in 1977.
Trevino sued the officers and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The federal government settled the lawsuit a year later, with INS officials promising not to make arrests on immigration violations.
Those promises were quickly broken. Immigration raids continued. But so did resistance — with two significant (and lasting) consequences. The 1983 Oregon Legislature passed House Bill 2450, making Oregon a sanctuary state.
That made it illegal for state and local law enforcement or public agencies to participate in immigration enforcement without a judicial warrant.
One other major thing happened.
‘Very courageous and very resilient’
The Willamette Valley Immigration Project was formed in May 1977 in Woodburn to provide legal advice and representation to farmworkers without immigration documents and to champion general amnesty for all workers.
Founders Cipriano Ferrel, Ramon Ramirez and Larry Kleinman transformed the project in April 1985 into Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), Oregon’s first farmworkers union.
Today, the union’s leaders continue to champion the rights of Oregon farmworkers.
NEWS: What to do if you spot ICE in your community
PCUN Deputy Director Maria Cecilia Hinojos Pressey said times are undeniably scary with hundreds of people being rounded up by Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents.
“There were more than 300 detentions in October,” she told Street Roots. “The majority of them were in Washington County. It wasn’t until Oct. 30 that we saw more than 30 detentions in Woodburn.”
However, Pressey said it’s important to remember that immigrant farmworkers have always lived under the shadow of fear, bigotry and oppression.
“While there is fear in the farmworker community, farmworkers are very courageous and very resilient,” she said. “They want to fight for their families and communities. We know that the farmworkers and PCUN are not backing down. We’re there to have our farmworkers’ backs.”
‘The most important timeline is 24 hours’
Much of what PCUN does is educate members of the farmworker community about their rights — rights Trevino and others had to fight for.
“Our job is to make sure we can go out into the community, visit those job sites, visit those places where people are congregating and make sure they have the information they need about their rights in the workplace, as well as their rights interacting with any federal agents,” Pressey said.
For Pressey, the founding of PCUN and its early struggles are the stuff of legend. She started with the union in 2019 as the operations manager and later became its deputy director.
Yet those early challenges help shape the union today, she said.
“There’s a lot of knowledge that we’re able to build off of because we do have quite a few folks who were around when PCUN was first founded,” Pressey said. “We’re definitely seeing a lot of previous tactics from previous years. Still, it has been some time since we’ve seen this kind of specific attack on the farmworker community.”
Much of the union’s advice has become increasingly useful in the age of Trump 2.0, not only for immigrants, but also for protesters and others who find themselves approached by federal agents.
“When someone is confronted by ICE, we advise them to absolutely remain silent,” Pressey said. “That’s even a thing that people have to practice. If someone asks you even your name, don’t respond. Stay as calm as possible. If you have the ability to record the interaction, I recommend that folks keep their phones in their front pockets so there’s no confusion about what might be happening if you’re reaching for your back pocket.”
She also reminds people they do not have to open their doors, and their workplaces can limit access to federal agents.
Union leaders strongly encourage people to participate in trainings that the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition has been holding around its ICE Watch program.
Pressey said people should keep the coalition’s hotline number (1-888-622-1510) saved on their cell phones so when they see ICE activity, they’re not scrambling for the number when the time comes.
“If people are concerned about a potential detention, pre-register with the Equity Corps of Oregon because they are the ones who are dispatching those legal resources,” she said. “The most important timeline is 24 hours. As long as the legal advocates and lawyers are able to intercede within 24 hours, it’s a lot easier to intervene and get people access to legal counsel.”
‘The biggest thing is to not comply in advance’
Cipriano Ferrel, the president of PCUN at its founding, waged a hunger strike on the steps of the Oregon State Capitol Building in June 1989 to push for Senate Bill 553. The bill would have granted collective bargaining rights to farmworkers.
Local leaders mocked Ferrel, who died in 1995.
“If he meant to sway crucial Senate votes, he should have eaten a well-balanced meal and energetically lobbied the Legislature,” an editorial in the Woodburn Independent opined.
Few question PCUN’s political energy these days. It has since successfully lobbied the Legislature to secure more rights for farmworkers, including overtime compensation as well as the right to refuse hazardous work.
Union leaders have also brought powerful agricultural interests like NORPAC Foods to the bargaining table.
“The biggest thing for us is to not comply in advance,” Pressey said. “We have our rights and our protections always. We’re not going to give those up. We’re not going to give a single inch of that.”
‘It’s a great source of pride’
Another hard-fought victory for the union and other farmworker advocates is the shift from farmworkers living in labor camps to community-based housing.
PCUN co-founded Farmworker Housing Development Corporation with Salud Medical Center and other organizations in 1994 to build and manage affordable housing for farmworkers.
Despite intense backlash from Woodburn’s white residents, the first housing units opened in 1994 along Oregon Highway 214. Christened Nuevo Amanecer, it provided homes for 50 families.
Farmworker Housing Development Corporation now has 13 sites in the Willamette Valley in communities such as Silverton, Independence, Lebanon and Albany, as well as Woodburn.
“It’s a great source of pride,” Pressey said. “It’s great to be able to see that work and have the farmworker community in community with people rather than the labor camps at farms. The camps are isolating, and the conditions are not ideal. FHDC gives people the opportunity to live with dignity and respect.”
‘But we do have friends’
Although the farmworker community may be resilient, farmworkers themselves are still scared. None approached by Street Roots wanted to talk about their experiences. Service providers other than PCUN also declined to be interviewed.
People’s fear is understandable, Pressey said. Some things remain unchanged since Trevino was grabbed by the arm at the Hi Ho in 1977.
“Detentions happen regardless of your status and who you are,” she said. “They’re not checking. They’re just casting a wide net, hoping to pick up folks where they can.”
Pressey said a lot of people — especially in the press — have questions she just can’t answer.
“I’ve gotten a lot of questions trying to drill down into specifics about what’s happening,” she said. “For privacy reasons, we’re trying not to give specifics. I’ve been asked if ICE is lying in wait for people, the tactics that they use and things like that.”
All she can say is that raids generally come in the morning when people are on their way to work, she said. She doesn’t want to say anything specific about detainees themselves.
“The people who have been detained still deserve their dignity, their respect and their humanity,” Pressey said. “These are family members who have been detained. These are friends, neighbors, coworkers. There’s a lot of information they would prefer to be able to keep private instead of people getting into the really personal details.”
Pressey, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, said she felt safer during her own childhood. It’s one of the reasons she went to work for PCUN.
“I’ll be damned if my daughter doesn’t get to grow up in the same kind of country that I got to grow up in,” she said.
In the world where Pressey grew up, her union was in its early stages, and PCUNistas (as they called themselves) like Ferrel were taking to the streets.
“The opposition has money and clout and will not hesitate to use it,” said Ferrel during a march in Woodburn in 1989. “All we have is a cause that’s just and demands that are only fair. We don’t have money. We don’t have clout. But we do have friends.”
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This article appears in November 19, 2025.
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