Marlen, a 35-year-old mom from Mexico, is aware of what farmworkers like her are imagined to do in the event that they’re sexually harassed on the job: Inform the harasser to cease, doc it, then report it to firm management.
If none of that works, get authorized assist. This might imply submitting a grievance with the U.S. Equal Employment Alternative Fee, the federal government company answerable for imposing federal employment discrimination legal guidelines.
Marlen leads coaching periods in Spanish for different Latina farmworkers in Central Washington about sexual harassment, following steering drawn from the EEOC. In agricultural areas like Yakima County, the place greater than half the inhabitants is Hispanic or Latino, many victims are immigrants who communicate little English whereas many perpetrators are supervisors with the ability to punish those that report them or refuse their calls for.
So on the finish of 2023, when Marlen’s supervisor at a big fruit farm within the Yakima Valley began leering at her, making crude feedback about girls’s our bodies like “good camel legs,” and filming her as she stood on a ladder chopping tree branches, she reported it to a supervisor, she mentioned.
Then she was assigned to extra bodily demanding jobs, akin to digging holes in rocky floor and shifting heavy wood posts — work that sometimes solely males would do and that remoted her from co-workers, in response to her documentation of the incidents.
“It makes me really feel prefer it was flawed of me to report him,” Marlen mentioned in Spanish. She requested to go by her first title for this text as a result of she nonetheless works for the corporate. “Like I made a mistake, when the one who made the error was him.”
But when issues worsen for Marlen, she most likely wouldn’t report it to the EEOC, the fee that for almost three a long time has defended immigrant farmworkers like her towards office sexual harassment and abuse — regardless of their immigration standing.
“What are they going to do with the data we give them? Are they going to assist us or make issues worse for us?” she mentioned. “I really feel like — not simply in circumstances of harassment, however with something taking place with somebody proper now — folks gained’t report it due to concern.”
Because the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown reaches into agricultural communities throughout the nation and the EEOC shifts priorities to align with these of the president, it’s unclear to those farmworkers and their attorneys whether or not the company will proceed to guard them.
In one in all a number of actions contributing to a rising concern that the EEOC is being politicized by President Trump, the fee’s Trump-appointed performing chair, Andrea Lucas, introduced in February that the fee will assist deter unlawful migration by imposing employment antidiscrimination legal guidelines towards employers that “illegally favor non-American staff.” And within the title of defending girls from office sexual harassment, Lucas additionally vowed to roll again the Biden administration’s “gender id agenda.” The fee then moved to dismiss a number of lawsuits towards corporations alleging discrimination towards transgender and nonbinary staff.
The fee declined to remark when InvestigateWest requested if staff can proceed submitting complaints with out concern that their immigration standing can be used towards them.
“The EEOC was enjoying a really important position in having the ability to defend survivors of office sexual harassment, together with egregious rape. The sense that we’re getting is that they’re now not going to be that type of an company,” mentioned Blanca Rodriguez, deputy director of advocacy for Columbia Authorized Providers, a nonprofit authorized support program in Washington. “They’re going to be an company that immigrant communities are going to concern. And that’s not solely going to do hurt in the course of the Trump administration, however for years to return.”
Whereas it’s unclear whether or not the federal fee would the truth is share folks’s immigration info with different businesses like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the uncertainty alone is deterring farmworkers from reporting sexual harassment and abuse to authorities and authorized organizations, in response to attorneys and advocates within the area.
The Northwest Justice Venture, a nonprofit regulation agency that represents low-income folks in Washington, recorded 16 circumstances involving sexual harassment of a farmworker in 2024. It had 21 such circumstances in 2023 and 17 in 2022. To this point in 2025, as Trump returned to the White Home, the agency has recorded solely two circumstances (though the Northwest Justice Venture cautioned this might be an undercount as a result of the information will not be but absolutely entered in its system).
These circumstances may additionally take a again seat because the Washington Lawyer Normal’s Workplace, an alternative choice to the federal authorities for combating sexual violence towards farmworkers, spends extra of its restricted sources pushing again towards the Trump administration’s actions, leaving these staff with few — if any — choices for recourse. The state Lawyer Normal’s Workplace has sued the Trump administration greater than a dozen occasions over points like birthright citizenship, gender-affirming look after youth, schooling funding and well being funding.
“It’s a horrible end result if we have now to spend all of our vitality responding to the federal authorities, and thus leaving staff in Washington with none safety as a result of the EEOC could not do its job,” mentioned the workplace’s Civil Rights Division Chief Colleen Melody. “Sources are a serious concern, and burnout can be an enormous concern if we don’t get extra sources to assist do that work.”
‘There isn’t a belief’
In 1991, a federal court docket case in California formed the way forward for undocumented staff’ rights.
In a victory for immigrant rights, the choose dominated that undocumented staff are coated underneath Title VII, a bit of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits discrimination towards staff based mostly on nationwide origin, race, intercourse and extra. The ruling opened the door for thousands and thousands of immigrant staff to file discrimination costs with the EEOC.
For William Tamayo, a now retired lawyer who represented the plaintiff, a lady from Mexico, it was only the start of a trailblazing profession defending immigrants from sex-based discrimination. When Tamayo joined the EEOC as a regional lawyer in 1995, the company had by no means earlier than sued an agricultural firm over sexual harassment of a farmworker.
“Largely, the presence of the federal authorities was the immigration service. So I had to determine, ‘How would they belief me and belief the EEOC?’” Tamayo mentioned. “It was actually exhausting work.”
His first main breakthrough got here in 1999. One of many nation’s largest lettuce growers, Tanimura & Antle, settled a case with the EEOC involving a single mom from El Salvador who mentioned {that a} hiring official pressured her to have intercourse to get a seasonal job selecting crops.
Since then, the EEOC has introduced greater than 50 agricultural corporations to court docket over such allegations, primarily underneath Tamayo’s management, resulting in improved sexual harassment trainings and over $35 million awarded to farmworkers all through the nation. This doesn’t embrace the various circumstances resolved via mediation and settlements earlier than a lawsuit was filed.
Allegations vary from pervasive verbal harassment to violent assaults: A girl whose supervisor held pruning shears to her throat and repeatedly raped her at a tree farm in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Managers and staff at a California raisin firm who, for over a decade, groped and demanded intercourse from feminine staff. A pregnant lady whose supervisor, after she rejected his virtually every day sexual advances at a fruit packing warehouse in Central Washington, fired her husband and assigned her to raise 40-pound containers with out assist. Typically, the ladies who reported sexual violence additionally reported penalties for doing so — they misplaced their jobs, have been demoted, remoted from co-workers.
Sexual harassment and retaliation are unlawful underneath federal and state regulation. But research estimate that 65% to 80% of farmworker girls within the U.S. agricultural trade expertise office sexual harassment. The nationwide difficulty, spotlighted by a 2013 PBS Frontline documentary, “Rape within the Fields,” has been particularly scrutinized in California, Washington and Oregon, which have among the many highest employment ranges in agricultural industries of all states, in response to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The fee’s dedication to defending folks’s immigration info is vital to farmworkers’ capacity to talk out about sexual abuse and harassment, in response to Tamayo, who retired from the EEOC in 2021 after 20 years as a regional lawyer and one other six years as district director overseeing investigations throughout the western United States.
“Definitely, if the EEOC began asking about immigration standing, that might be the tip of those farmworker circumstances,” he mentioned. “It has nothing to do with whether or not she was raped or not.”
Attorneys like Rodriguez and Michael Meuter, vice chairman of authorized affairs and basic counsel at California Rural Authorized Help, say their farmworker shoppers in Washington and California at the moment are deciding to not file sexual harassment costs with the fee. The extent of concern amongst immigrant shoppers is unmatched even in comparison with the primary Trump administration when anti-immigrant rhetoric escalated, they are saying.
“I feel over the past administration, it was more durable to get circumstances accredited for litigation. However I feel partly as a result of Invoice Tamayo — individuals who care about immigrant staff like him — have been nonetheless on the EEOC, I nonetheless noticed the EEOC conduct investigations,” Rodriguez mentioned. “Issues are utterly completely different now. There isn’t a belief in any respect within the EEOC.”
Shrinking choices
Regardless of the successes that the EEOC had underneath Tamayo’s management, submitting complaints with the fee has by no means been a silver bullet. Strict submitting deadlines, language limitations and concern of reporting have lengthy stood in the best way of farmworkers going through sexual harassment on the job, attorneys say.
Of 8,191 sexual harassment costs resolved via the EEOC in fiscal yr 2024, 26.7% have been closed for administrative causes like untimeliness, in response to the fee’s enforcement and litigation statistics. Almost half (47%) have been dismissed as a result of the fee didn’t discover cheap trigger to assist the discrimination declare. In Oregon, the EEOC hasn’t litigated a farmworker sexual harassment case since 2013, court docket information present. Reporting to the fee, nevertheless, can nonetheless show helpful as a result of it preserves staff’ Title VII rights — they obtain a “Proper to Sue” discover when the company closes its investigation, enabling them to file their very own Title VII lawsuits.
In states with stronger employee protections like Washington, California and Oregon, farmworkers can as an alternative take complaints to their state governments, an possibility which may really feel safer for immigrants who mistrust the present federal administration. However these routes have limitations as properly.
In Washington, for instance, the Washington State Human Rights Fee enforces state regulation prohibiting sexual harassment. Whereas the state fee itself doesn’t deliver circumstances to court docket, it may possibly negotiate agreements with corporations and refer circumstances to the state Lawyer Normal’s Workplace.
“We wish each farmworker — no matter immigration standing, job sort, or background — to know that they’ve the precise to reside and work free from sexual harassment and discrimination,” mentioned Washington State Human Rights Fee Government Director Andreta Armstrong in an e-mail assertion to InvestigateWest.
However staff have only a six-month window from the date of the hurt to file a grievance with the state fee, and a backlog of circumstances implies that complaints can take years to be investigated. Of 44 sexual harassment complaints towards agricultural corporations acquired by the Washington fee since 2015, simply eight led to resolutions via settlements or agreements with their employers, in response to InvestigateWest’s evaluate of information offered by the company. Almost 70% of circumstances have been closed for administrative causes or after the fee discovered “no cheap trigger.”
One other avenue that has confirmed dedicated to combating sexual violence towards farmworkers — the Washington Lawyer Normal’s Workplace — can also be narrowing underneath the Trump administration. Since launching its civil rights unit in 2015, the workplace has sued 5 completely different agricultural corporations on behalf of farmworkers who alleged sexual harassment or sexual abuse on the job.
Though state regulation protects everybody from sexual harassment, no matter immigration or citizenship standing, many farmworkers nonetheless concern that coming ahead could put them in danger for consideration by immigration officers, mentioned Melody, the workplace’s civil rights division chief. This concern has been “noticeably true” because the 2024 election, Melody added.
“Witnesses inform us that they’ve a narrative to inform, however they’re afraid and unwilling to return ahead and inform it,” she mentioned. “They might have members of the family who’re impacted. They might have colleagues who’re impacted, they usually concern that coming ahead could expose any of these folks to retribution.”
For immigrant farmworkers who’re weighing the dangers of talking out, Melody recommends they ask questions like: Will my immigration standing be needed for this investigation? Will or not it’s shared? With whom will or not it’s shared?
“Within the Washington State Lawyer Normal’s Workplace, the reply is, ‘We virtually at all times don’t must know, and we don’t share it with anybody,’” she mentioned. “I’m unsure what the reply is on the EEOC proper now.”
‘Farmworker girls’s voices are key’
On a Saturday morning in Might, Marlen gathered with seven different girls in a classroom in Sunnyside, a small metropolis within the coronary heart of the Yakima Valley. Over a desk of tamales and low, they painted bandanas for the BASTA Coalition of Washington, which offers sexual harassment trainings for farmworkers within the state. They stuffed the white material with messages in Spanish and English like, “Farmworker girls’s voices are key!”
The ladies, who every discovered agricultural work in Central Washington after leaving Mexico, spoke about tips on how to weigh the significance of reporting sexual harassment towards folks’s concern of shedding their jobs or being deported for doing so.
Marlen mentioned the harassment she skilled within the apple orchards has improved lately, after she took a while off from work for a household matter. A number of months in the past, when she was being remoted from her co-workers in what she believes was retaliation for reporting her supervisor, she would’ve mentioned she regretted reporting the harassment. However now, regardless of the dangers, she stands by her choice.
“There comes a time once you get overwhelmed and say, ‘Why did I report it? I ought to’ve simply saved quiet,’” Marlen mentioned. “But when tomorrow it occurs to my daughter, I really feel like no — somebody has to make the change.”
That call, nevertheless, will not be proper for everybody. BASTA, which implies “sufficient” in Spanish, presently lists the EEOC as a useful resource for staff going through sexual harassment. The coalition’s director, Isabel Reyes-Paz, mentioned they could must rethink that suggestion, or at the very least present a caveat: “We don’t know what’s going to occur with the present administration. We will’t assure that your authorized standing info is protected or not,” Reyes-Paz mentioned.
The coalition can also be grappling with federal funding cuts, as grants that it had relied on to develop — like these administered by the Division of Labor to assist girls’s employment — are being slashed.
“What are we going to do?” one lady mentioned in Spanish on the assembly in Might. “How are we going to encourage them to hunt assist if we’re additionally pondering the identical factor? We’re all afraid.”
This story was initially printed by InvestigateWest, a nonprofit newsroom devoted to change-making investigative journalism. Join their Watchdog Weekly e-newsletter to obtain tales like this one in your inbox.
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