In October 2025, more than 30 farmworkers were arrested outside Woodburn, Oregon, in a raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It was one of ICE’s most aggressive enforcement actions that year in Oregon. But it was also one of the moments that led the state’s largest farmworker union to launch a series of monthly boycotts in protest.
Why? Immigrant labor fuels the state’s economic engine, and so do their dollars: 2023 data show immigrants in Oregon hold about $14 billion in spending power and contribute more than $5 billion in taxes. The boycotts, which kicked off in December, urge immigrants to refrain from economic activity, including working, shopping and going to school.
Reyna Lopez is the president and executive director of Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, also known as PCUN. She joins us to talk about the first day of boycotts, as well as the goals they hope to achieve.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. More than 30 farmworkers outside Woodburn were arrested in a raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in October. It was one of ICE’s most aggressive enforcement actions in Oregon in 2025. It was one of the moments that led the state’s largest farmworkers’ union to launch a series of monthly boycotts. They kicked off last month. They urge immigrants to refrain from economic and civic activities like working, shopping and going to school.
Reyna Lopez is the president and executive director of the union, which is known as PCUN. She joins us now. It’s great to have you back on the show.
Reyna Lopez: Great to be here with everybody today. Thank you.
Miller: I just want to start with the big picture. What has the last year been like for you personally?
Lopez: It’s been really difficult. It’s been a year of stress. It’s been a year of having to do a lot more with less and with more stress in our communities. There’s a lot of fear out there. There’s a lot of anger. And this is really what has led us to this day of organizing the Day Without an Immigrant. We’ve needed a place to really put our energy and that anger, and I think that this is a really positive way to do that.
Miller: What specifically set these particular boycotts in motion?
Lopez: Well, you already said it. That October 30 event really changed everything. And Day Without an Immigrant is really a statewide call to action. It’s led by immigrant workers. PCUN saw that escalated presence of ICE on October 30, and people were heading to work at the crack of dawn. A lot of these folks were the main breadwinners of their families and it really sent a chilling effect. We started to get phone calls at PCUN from our members saying they were too afraid to leave their house. They didn’t want to go to work. The kids didn’t want to go to school because they were afraid their parents wouldn’t be there when they got back. And the families were cutting expenses. They weren’t going shopping. They were just doing the minimum when it came to that. And I even started getting calls from employers, from growers, telling me that people weren’t showing up.
So, this is why we kicked off a Day Without an Immigrant. It was after a week of relentless ICE presence in our community and it was really us trying to find a way to turn this fear into something positive. And that’s why we kicked off a Day Without an Immigrant, one day a month, so that we could send a message around who we are, so that people could recognize the tremendous economic impacts of immigrants. Without us, this economy doesn’t work. We’re asking immigrants but also allies, other sectors, to stand with us against these cruel and violent tactics that the administration and the ICE is perpetuating upon us.
Miller: What exactly are you asking people to refrain from doing once a month, from last month through this coming May?
Lopez: Well, it really is an economic boycott. We’re asking people to skip work. We’re asking folks to close their business. We are asking folks to support the student-led walkouts and to avoid shopping on the identified days of the Day Without an Immigrant. The very next day that we have is actually on Monday, MLK Jr. Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 19, and we are preparing for another big day. It keeps building up momentum where people are signing the pledge. There’s also gonna be a big rally in Salem, but there will be visibility actions in different parts of the state.
Miller: What was that first day like last month when the series kicked off?
Lopez: It was very wet. It was during the atmospheric river, but that didn’t stop us. Honestly, it felt really good to just be out there and to see the overwhelming support. We got an account that there were about 500 people out doing human billboard actions in different cities across the state, from Medford to Canby, Woodburn obviously, and Salem, up to Gresham, and a lot of communities that hadn’t really been doing any of these kinds of things during this time. So we saw marches and rallies, and it felt really good to be out there. Hundreds of people that signed the pledge said that they were going to be taking off work for that day.
Miller: As you noted, many people in immigrant communities, undocumented and documented, are facing dire economic uncertainty or a loss of earnings because of a fear of ICE raids or arrests. I can imagine people saying, “I appreciate this idea and I support the goals, but not going to work is not going to put food on the table when I’m already anxious about that.” Have people said that to you?
Lopez: Not from the immigrant community, not folks that are directly impacted by this issue. And that’s mostly because people are already having to make those difficult decisions. And for us, it was really more of a way for people to understand the plight of the immigrant worker a lot better and to give other people an opportunity to also join in on actually elevating and amplifying the efforts. I think that we really want to not only make our presence known in the state, but we also want to make our absence felt in the state. And the way you can do that is really by having a more organized effort that has a clear message, that has allies, white allies, other sectors of the economy also supporting it. And identifying those specific days is a really critical way to make those statements and say them aloud.
Miller: Who do you see as the most important audience for these actions? Whose attention do you want to get?
Lopez: We really want to get the attention of every other sector in the economy that also is impacted by the immigration enforcement. I think that we have been very loud as PCUN, the farmworkers have been loud, a lot of immigrant-led organizations, but we wanna see more of our business community step up and get out there. We wanna see other sectors, like the health sector and the other food sectors, growers, to also come out and step up.
We have an influence with a certain set of lawmakers, I think. But when it comes to who has the ear of the president, who has the ear of Republicans, we need them to step up, and they’re going to be a really critical voice here. It’s going to take time to be able to build and get them in a relationship, I think, with the Day Without an Immigrant.
Miller: Have you had events and do you plan to have events in more conservative, more red areas of the state in addition to more blue areas?
Lopez: Oh yes, absolutely. And we’re really excited about the events that are happening. The Medford events. There’s also an event in Hermiston that’s happening and we had an event in Springfield. There’s been events in different areas that you would say, hey, that’s not your average liberal hub. These are places that actually have a lot of immigrant labor that has settled there with their families. We have the famous Hermiston watermelons. We have a lot of the farmworker industry down in Medford. We want to make sure that those places are also highlighted and brought into this.
That part has been, I think, a really important piece, that people who haven’t traditionally been heard, and what we’ve been seeing in terms of the bigger actions that are happening, like the No Kings and all of that, which are awesome actions … But this really does center a community that is in these areas that might not traditionally be participating in some of the broader actions we’re seeing in Portland.
Miller: How concerned are you about ICE activity at the events that you’ve been organizing?
Lopez: This has been a topic that we have prioritized because we can’t actually just dig our hands and heads into the sand and say that there’s no possibility that they wouldn’t show up. As ICE escalates, it’s lawless attacks on our communities, the reality is that we really just can’t predict when the ICE is going to strike.
But I will say that on the positive side, we have not actually seen that at any of our actions, including the May Day action in Salem, May 1 of 2025. No matter what, we have been preparing ourselves for any scenario. Our partners have been giving us training. We have human rights observers at all of our events and people who are trained in what to do if ICE does kidnap a community member.
I will say that what we’ve been seeing more so is actually more instigators that show up or hecklers. It’s not really been ICE that we’ve been having to prepare for, but how to navigate and de-escalate situations with folks that might just not agree with us in different communities, especially if we’re in a place that’s a little bit more purple or a little bit more red. We just have to be ready for that.
Miller: As I’m sure you’re well aware, people like Stephen Miller, who is a top adviser to the president and one of the main architects of the administration’s immigration policies, he wants to see dramatically fewer immigrants of all kinds in the U.S. – less legal immigration, fewer people here on work visas of all kinds, fewer people with refugee status, the end of birthright citizenship and a militarized crackdown on people who are not documented.
That vision veers towards not just a Day Without Immigrants, but a country without immigrants. Given that political reality, are you at all concerned that your actions could backfire, could give people like Stephen Miller what they want?
Lopez: These ideas that Stephen Miller is perpetuating these efforts to change policy in this way, they’re very, very radical ideas that the majority of Americans just do not agree with. And it’s important for us to actually give y’all a little piece of what that would look like. I think that people would really realize that that’s not actually something that is good for America. It’s not good for Oregon. It’s not good for the millions of mixed-immigration status, mixed-race families across the country.
And again, I think the important part of this is making sure that people see that immigrants really help power the economy, just here in Oregon and across the nation. Immigrants contribute more to Oregon’s economic output than people would even think. We make up about 10% of the state’s population, but we account for 13% of the economy. And when we talk about dollars and cents, that’s $33 billion of Oregon’s economy. I think that any kind of effort to disappear that would have devastating impacts on Oregon and even more so across the country. We are the backbone of some of the most important workforces in the nation, including health care, education, construction, and of course, farm work, where it’s not a secret. The majority of us who are picking your food and making sure that you eat every day are people who are immigrants.
Miller: Where would you put this current effort in the historical context of farmworker action and organizing in our country?
Lopez: I’ve been reflecting on this a lot, especially since Monday is not only a Day Without an Immigrant, but it’s also Martin Luther King Day. I think about the legacy of nonviolence principles. I think about Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, and what the United Farm Workers achieved through boycotts and strikes that went above anything we could have ever dreamed of in terms of getting fair wages and union contracts. And to me, that is the legacy that we’re continuing, to continue to build a voice and to continue to build power for communities that have been left out for decades.
It really is an example of why PCUN was founded. But also, I found myself teaching the Kingian principles actually today to a very multi-generational audience. And it is humbling that in this time in history, it’s something that we’re gonna continue to do. Every generation has their own struggle and it’s gonna look different than it has in the past, but I do see it as part of that legacy. We will continue to teach those principles and continue that legacy through Day Without an Immigrant.
Miller: Reyna, thanks very much.
Lopez: Thank you.
Miller: Reyna Lopez is the president and executive director of the farmworkers’ union, PCUN.
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