Growers, farmworkers say immigration raids scaring away labor

Growers and farmworker unions said Tuesday that a federal immigration crackdown in rural towns is scaring away workers and forcing cutbacks in production of hand-harvested produce. “Wherever I go in California — I was just up in the wine industry — when I talk to dairy farmers, when I talk to small farmers in the Bay Area, even some in the Central Valley, they tell me they can’t find workers,” Feinstein said on a conference call with reporters. “That workers are scared, that they’re afraid they’re going to be picked up and deported, that they have disappeared.”