Earlier this year, Flor Sánchez made the agonizing decision to leave her husband and 6-year-old son behind and self-deport to Sinaloa, Mexico amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
As immigration enforcement activity spread earlier this year into Central Washington, where Sánchez worked in the fruit orchards, she chose to depart Sunnyside, Washington with her eldest son and leave the U.S.
Her story is part of a larger trend of immigrant workers without legal status choosing to leave the U.S. due to immigration enforcement.
Daisy Zavala Magaña and Hal Bernton covered Sánchez’s story for Range, and they join us to discuss their reporting.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI tools and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Jenn Chávez: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Jenn Chávez, in this week for Dave Miller. I am so glad to be back on the radio with y’all. Thank you so much.
We’re starting off today’s show with the story of Flor Sánchez. She spent a dozen years working in the fruit orchards of Central Washington, making innovations in her field that caught the attention of Oregon State University. But in January she made a painful decision: leaving her home in the Yakima Valley to return to Mexico, in fear of what might happen to her under the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
Reporters Hal Bernton and Daisy Zavala Magaña chronicled her story for Range, and they join me now to tell us more about it. Hal and Daisy, welcome to the show, and thank you for being with us.
Hal Bernton: Thank you. Glad to be here
Daisy Zavala Magaña: Likewise, thank you for having us.
Chávez: Of course. Hal, I want to start off with you, if we can. You reported that Flor was beginning to plan for returning to Mexico in the later part of last year. This was as the federal crackdown on immigrants was becoming more severe in the Northwest, something we experienced in Oregon as well. What was the environment like in Central Washington for immigrant farm workers like Flor at that time?
Bernton: Well, the fall had been really the peak in the Trump administration’s crackdown in 2025 in the Yakima Valley. It didn’t involve actual ICE agents entering orchards, but what happened is people on their way to work, or when they went to Home Depot or around the town were being stopped, arrested and detained. And Flor was very aware of that whole period and was very concerned that she might end up within the detention system. She felt that she had a very slim, if non-existent chance of getting legal status.
So late in the year, towards the end of the year, she made that decision that she would return to Mexico, where under U.S. law, the way it now stands, if she stays for 10 years, she would have a chance of reapplying for legal status. She left behind her youngest son and her husband, and her oldest son went with her.
Chávez: Daisy, I’d like to turn to you. The difficult decision to return to Mexico, like Hal just said, meant that Flor and one of her sons left the U.S. while her husband and their other son stayed in Washington. I know you have gotten to know the family, spoken with them in the time since. How has that been for them? What has this separation meant for their family?
Zavala Magaña: It’s been very heartbreaking, as one could imagine, and the adjustment process seems like it’s still ongoing now, months later. The way that Flor described it to me, it seemed like they were planning to meet up very soon, but the interactions that they’ve had so far have been pretty limited to just video calls, which is not the same. And for a 7-year-old, it’s incredibly difficult.
But throughout it all, Flor and her husband have been trying to keep a positive outlook, to just keep pushing forward and make it so that both of their children still have some sense of stability and support in the middle of all these turbulent changes.
Bernton: It’s important to remember that she has two sons, both U.S. citizens, a husband who is a U.S. citizen. So her youngest son and her husband, once they’ve saved up enough funds, can go to Mexico – she’s currently in Sinaloa – for a visit. And that’s what’s possible, but it’s really wrenching because everybody but her is a U.S. citizen. I think that it’s important to note that tens of thousands of children in the Northwest are in families with a similar situation where one member of the family is undocumented.
Chávez: Something that you mentioned before was that Flor had wanted to pursue getting legal status in the U.S. through her husband who is a naturalized U.S. citizen. But there was a specific law that, I believe, was passed in the 1990s which made that possibility much more difficult. Why wasn’t her pathway to legal status in the U.S. easier? Because I think, for folks like myself, I thought that having a spouse with U.S. citizenship would provide a pathway.
Bernton: Well, she had some significant, serious obstacles. She had come in, originally, to the United States as an undocumented worker, and then she had gone back to Mexico because her father was sick in Mexico. She had gone back to see him and be with him.
She then wanted to, of course, return to her life in the Yakima Valley. She tried to seek asylum unsuccessfully, and then she crossed a second time without authorization. Because she had those two entries without authorization, under this law that was passed in the 1990s, basically, it’s very, very difficult to get a waiver to this, and it requires you to leave the country for 10 years before you can be considered for legal status, even if your husband is a U.S. citizen. She was kind of crushed when she heard that news about the difficulties she might face in gaining legal status from attorneys, and that all weighed on her in making this decision to leave.
Chávez: Daisy, I wanna ask you, because in preparing for this interview, I learned that your own family also did agricultural work in Washington when you were younger. I’m wondering how you have reflected on that or what you have taken from that when you look at what’s happening today to immigrant agricultural workers, like Flor, in Washington.
Zavala Magaña: Yeah, that’s right. My parents came to Central Washington in the late ‘90s, and they worked in the fields. They still work in agriculture today, but in warehouses now, so it’s a little different. I have talked to my mom somewhat, and obviously other folks I know that work in the industry in a personal sense, but also as a journalist. What I’ve gotten from those conversations is that, in a lot of ways, what we’re seeing right now is not that unprecedented in the sense of having these kinds of raids affecting the agricultural communities, just because we’ve gone decades without any kind of immigration reform. The immigration system is so incredibly complex that a lot of people don’t even understand what they’re supposed to do to legally come here, or don’t really understand the consequences of entering without authorization.
What is unprecedented, I would say, is the scale and the fatal shootings that we’ve seen, with not only immigrants but even just U.S. citizens. For example, my mom was telling me she recalled that in ‘99 or ‘98, there were a lot of raids in Central Washington and they looked pretty similar to what they look like right now, which is ICE going to people at gas stations or other places like outside department store parking lots, or following them as they’re headed into work. And it’s been decades since.
Chávez: Thank you for sharing some of that perspective. Hal, we have only about a minute yet left, but I didn’t want to leave out that there is a piece of immigration reform legislation with bipartisan support right now, but I understand it hasn’t progressed. Could you give us just a very quick status report of where that piece of legislation, the DIGNIDAD Act, stands now?
Bernton: Well, very briefly, a Florida Republican, Rep. Maria Salazar, she’s the main sponsor. She’s very much a Trump supporter, a Republican. She keeps claiming that Trump will become the Abraham Lincoln of immigration reform and rally to her legislation. But it’s compromise legislation that has 20 Democrats and 20 Republicans signed on, and basically it would offer legal status – but not a pathway to citizenship – for many, many undocumented workers, those who don’t have criminal records. But it hasn’t even gotten a hearing and it’s been a year since it was introduced.
Chávez: Thank you so much. We’re going to have to leave it there. Hal Bernton and Daisy Zavala Magaña, thank you so much.
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