ICE Targets Immigrant Day Laborers at LA Area Home Depots...
Work Today? Paid Today!
The Sandia Mountains above Albuquerque.
President Trump is happy as can be that he lit Los Angeles on fire, and people are protesting, sometimes violently, against ICE raids. I predicted Trump’s escalation and deployment of the National Guard on December 1 of last year.
The more interactions with police/soldiers, the more negative outcomes there are, including deaths. It will continue to get worse, as Marines are now deployed. Both deployments are over the objections of California Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass.
The undocumented immigrant violent crime rate is half the rate of U.S.-born citizens. Statistics from 2022 show that in 2% of interactions with police, the general public experienced a nonfatal threat or use of force. Minority populations experienced between two and twelve times the nonfatal threat or use of force than white people. When law enforcement shootings are involved, 55% of victims die.
I expect a declaration of Martial Law soon. I hope I’m wrong.
As I read the news stories of the immigration raids at the Home Depots in Los Angeles, I remembered an experience I had while living in Albuquerque in 1996. I was still relatively young and strong. As an anthropologist, I wanted to know what it was like to do the kind of work so many immigrants do, and the money I earned would help us too. Growing up as a carpenter, I knew something about it, but not what day laborers do. I learned quickly. I wrote this story in 1996, but I never tried to publish it. Maybe its time is now. I apologize for any errors in my Spanglish. Here it is:
At 5:30 a.m. one summer morning, I turned off Montano and drove into a small strip mall at 4th Street. Snuggled between a darkened drugstore and a sandwich shop, a brightly lit office beckoned. I parked my truck and walked toward the light. A dozen men and women were clustered in loose groups, talking and smoking, and blocking my path. I wove my way through and around them, and saw that I was in the right place. In the bright light of the window was a hand-painted sign in block letters: "REAL LABOR." Beneath, and in smaller script, was "WORK TODAY, PAID TODAY."
I opened the door and was greeted by a licking, wagging ball of fur. I leaned over and rubbed an old brown mutt behind the ears. The dog wandered away to lie down under a table and await the next arrival. The office smelled of new paint, drywall paste, sawdust, and sweat. A small anteroom held an old, groaning red Coke machine, two tables laden with safety manuals, and an empty umbrella stand. At one of the tables, two men were nervously scanning the manuals and filling out forms as if they were grade school kids cheating on an exam.
Behind the anteroom was the main office, approximately the size of a comfortable coffee shop. The office was dominated on the right by a chest-high counter that ran the length of the room. Ten rows of chairs faced a noisy television set on my left. Adults of both sexes, ranging in age from 18 to their mid-60s, sat in the chairs, apparently waiting to be called to the counter. Most stared at the television or engaged in conversation as they sipped free coffee from Styrofoam cups. A few were reading the classifieds from yesterday. The ethnic and racial composition of the room was mixed, but white men were the minority.
One dark young man read a Bible with effort, his eyelids fluttering, seeking sleep. His hand had a bandage on it. I paused briefly and watched him, and saw sleep win. At that moment, I noticed how beautiful he was, radiant and flawless, like a young girl. I turned away, thinking of angels.
Someone may have noticed me enter the room, but if they did, they didn't show it. I walked up to the counter and stopped in front of the man behind it. He was a soft, round, young white man. He wore black pleated trousers, a white pinstriped shirt, and a beautiful hand-painted tie. The tie was silk and black, with a gently swaying palm tree and hula girl that made me think of other infinitely better places, far, far away. Blond and nearly bald, his round face supported black frame glasses, rosy cheeks, and the irresistible wide smile of a child.
"My name is Paul--been here before?" he said, sticking out his hand.
"No," I replied, taking it.
"Oooooooo Kay," he said, handing me a pamphlet. "Fill this out, then take the safety test at the end. You might want to study the safety manuals at those tables out there before you take the test."
I scanned the manual and took the multiple-choice test. Over my shoulder, I could hear Paul answering the phone, pulling work requests out of the fax machine, issuing paperwork from the computer, and dispatching men and women to assorted job sites.
After about 15 minutes, I returned the completed test to Paul.
"Thanks--Bob," he said, first looking at my name on my form, and then checking that I had an ID that showed that I was either a US citizen or a legal immigrant with a work permit. I was the former.
"Have a seat," said Paul. "You’re 24th in line. With a little patience, you'll have a $5.00 an hour job before you know it," he said, smiling. He turned and filed my test away in a gray cabinet without looking at it.
I walked outside to watch the dawn and stood on the sidewalk next to the group of smokers. A golden glow was building behind the Sandia Mountains as the earth turned on its axis. If the day went as planned, and work was to be found, that golden glow would soon turn into a searing orb, making the day miserable.
A crane-like middle-aged white man with the merest suggestion of a chin spoke loudly, as if to all. "Weird fucken mornin, man," he said, leaning against the front of the building, rolling his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. "Jest a few tickets goin out."
Everyone else nodded or muttered agreement. "Doncha think so, Mauricio?" the crane muttered.
A short, broad-shouldered Hispanic man in a blue workshirt and too tight Wranglers responded. "No shit bro. Ain't nothing happenin, man."
"Mondays are always weird, you know that," interjected a large, rather imposing young woman. She was about 5-11, and her oval shape projected the illusion of greater height and remarkable girth, as well as fearsome strength. She wore a robin's egg blue floral print sleeveless blouse, blue shorts, and black steel-toed work boots.
"Yeah," added a tightly wound, slight, Hispanic man, with large nervous eyes and a wispy salt and pepper goatee. "Permanent man doesn't show up for work early on Monday, the boss thinks he'll be there any minute. El Jefe is real pissed by lunch, but it's too late to call in another man to replace em. First man's not fired till Tuesday morning, but by then the boss has called in a ticket for one of us. And the man's chica kicks his ass till she's too tired to do it any more.
"Que triste," said the crane, "but good for us."
?Un frajo, senor?" asked Mauricio, offering me a cigarette.
"Gracias, no," I said, moving a foot or two closer to join the group. We heard the office door open. Two men exited, one with a work ticket in hand. Walking past us, the white man holding the ticket grinned, exhibiting a dark space topped with pink where his two upper incisors once were. His tan forearms rippled, his belly a small round boulder tucked beneath a taut T-shirt. He was followed by the tall, lean Bible reader, with the bandage on his hand now fully awake, and looking only slightly less angelic. The words hope and innocence came to mind.
"Good ticket," said the toothless face, waving a form at us. "Moving carpet at Carpet Club," he said, walking quickly across the parking lot to his truck. As his belly moved, the rest of him followed in rocking opposition. The Bible reader gracefully joined his companion in the cab of the truck. The truck tires squealed as they pulled out of the lot.
"Si," said Mauricio, "es uno ticket bueno." That's a muy cool warehouse grande man, cold as hell drinking fountain--you know, one of those real big arching streams of agua no need to fuck around with, not one of those poquito pieces of shit that dribbles out at you when you are so thirsty you wish you could suck it and can't porque germs. Banos muy limpiar tambien. Voy en those cool clean banos y never want to come out again man. I ain't kidding you, bros.
"Hey Mauricio, how was your ticket on Friday?" asked the oval woman.
Mauricio threw up his hands and spun around. "Eeeeeeeeeeee, hija, it was bad. Real bad." Mauricio shook his head, bent over, slowly put out his cigarette on the asphalt, and flicked it halfway across the parking lot with his thumb and forefinger.
"?Una problema?" asked the goatee, frowning.
Mauricio grabbed my arm and waved his finger at all of us in the circle that now surrounded him.
"It was so bad ustedes have to promise me you will never go out on ese boleto if you ever get it--nunca! Mauricio crossed himself.
"Si, claro," I said. The others nodded.
It was muy peligroso--it's not right that job," said Mauricio. "Too dangerous for any man, necesicitan una machina, un roboto."
"Who was the ticket for?" asked Oval.
"Una compañia se llama Envirotech."
"Never heard of it," I said.
"I hadn't either," said Mauricio, but now I know mucho, too much.
"?Que es el trabajo con este compania?"asked goatee. "What do they do?"
"You know what is left over cuando un hombre has his prostate removed, una mujer tiene una hysterectomy, o una breast removed con cancer? Or what they do with the needles despues taking nuestro sangre a la plasma center? O con la bandages after you been in an accident?
"Como?" asked Goatee. The rest of us knew.
"!Envirotech!" said Mauricio. "Hospitals desde El Paso, Las Cruces, T or C, Socorro, Gallup, Los Alamos, Santa Fe--all over New Mexico and west Texas, send it to Envirotech for them to burn it or get rid of it somehow."
"And what did you have to do?" asked Oval, knowing the answer was unpleasant.
"Shit, that stuff comes in big plastic bags in trucks, and someone has to take it off the trucks to be sorted, to make sure it goes in the right place," said Mauricio. "El hombre muy tranquillo, Lorenzo, you know the guy that reads the Bible all the time that just left for Carpet Club, he and I, well, we had to move it from the truck to these bins. I guess some of it is burned in a big furnace or something and the rest I don't know. And they were heavy bags, and the plastic was weak, and we were trying to move them real careful like, but the boss, hey that jefe was a real pendejo man, a big white guy yelling at us all the time because we were too slow. Pick it up with your arms he said, grab the bags, give them a hug like your girlfriend, like this!"
Mauricio stooped over, arms as wide as they could go, and acted like he was picking up a bag nearly as big as he was.
"And then we were supposed to run! And some of those bags were broken man, and they had been in the hot sun for a day or two-- and they stank rotten. There were fingers in there, and parts of operations and bandages and everything and stinking and oozing and that pendejo thought we should treat them like they were our girlfriends man."
"And I said fuck this, and just tried to carry them faster, but more careful like, con cuidado. But no way was I grabbin it like that man said. But Lorenzo, he is a young guy, con un corazon muy grande, strong like a bull, with pride. So he grabs the bags like the man says and Lorenzo he is moving them real fast. After that, el jefe got off our asses and went to sit in the shade, but real sudden like Lorenzo stopped fast, and yelled out at me, scared. Maurico! he yelled, Ayudarme, por favor! And I saw he was real scared, and I dropped my bag and ran to him -- fuck that white guy I thought. Lorenzo was holding his hand out real strange like, limp but stiff like this you know? And I grabbed his hand easy and gentle, and there was this needle, this big syringe, and it was sticking all the way through the palm of Lorenzo's hand and out this other side."
"I yelled for another man, and this other guy came and held Lorenzo's hand steady while I pulled the needle out." Mauricio crossed himself again. "The boss, well he saw that, and at first he was pissed, and then all of a sudden he was all nervous-like. He made a call on his cell, and after awhile came over real nice and everything, and acted like Lorenzo and he was good friends and then he took Lorenzo to the doctor."
"I kept working, you know they were paying me and everyting, but I took it slow and careful-like, and even sat in the sombra under a tree for awhile so I could calm down un poquito cause my heart was racin you know for Lorenzo."
"Lorenzo, well, he was gone a el hospital por una tiempo largo, dos o tres horas, and when he came back, he was real happy like it was his birthday or something. Feeling pretty good showing me his bandaged hand, telling me that they tested him for AIDS because he could have gotten it from the needle that was stuck in his hand, and the doctor told him he was negative and so he was feeling so good."
"But then I said you pendejo Lorenzo, you don't know if you got AIDS or nothing. Those viruses or bacterias or whatever they are don't show up on a test the same day you stick a dirty needle in your hand. They just want you to think that if you get AIDS en el futuro it isn't their fault and you don't sue them, you dumb shit. I know this bro, I said, cause I know a girl that got raped and the hospital checked her every three months for a year and a half. And what about hepatitis? From that needle you could get hepatitis A, B, C, maybe even D and E and whatever--and you know I don't know nothing about no hepatitis, only that if you get the kind that turns you yellow maybe you got lucky and they can treat it. Otherwise, who knows what shit you got only that it could be real bad."
"Well, then Lorenzo, he dropped to his knees and started crying and praying, and I held him and tried to make him feel better, and then we talked un poquito mas, cuando el jefe..."
The door opened as dawn broke over the Sandias. Smiling Paul leaned out and looked around. His eyes settled on our group.
"Hey -- Mauricio, my man," he said. "Do you want to pull weeds for some old lady in the north valley today?"
Mauricio looked towards the heavens as if blessed, then walked towards Paul. "Senor, I thank God and the holy mother if I get to pull weeds today. If I could pull weeds for the rest of my life I'd die un hombre muy contento and face God with peace in my heart!" Mauricio grabbed Paul's shoulder fondly, and shook his hand, laughing gently. "Paul, my friend," he said, you get half my pay if I got to pull weeds today!"
"That won't be necessary," Paul said, one eyebrow raised slightly. "Here's your ticket. She's sounds like nice rich lady that'll probably give you ice tea and lunch and won't make you pee in the bushes."
"Muchas gracias," said Mauricio, taking the ticket.
"De nada," said Paul.
"Adios, amigos," said Mauricio, addressing us. "Vaya con dios."
Mauricio walked briskly across the parking lot toward an old Ford van I hadn't noticed before. He climbed behind the wheel and I noticed that a woman was sitting in the passenger seat, and it appeared that she was nursing a baby. Mauricio spoke to her briefly, and then turned to speak to two children in the back of the van. The van's windows were tinted, and it was difficult to determine the ages and sexes of the children. The woman waved at our group as they pulled away.
"Nice setup," said the crane.
"Yeah," said Oval. "Mauricio was telling me that he and his wife found a new RV campground up nine-mile hill just west of Rio Rancho where they get water and electric for 7 bucks a night. No shade yet, cause the trees were just planted last year." Oval watched the family pull away, and I thought I heard a note of regret or longing in her voice. "But the super likes the kids, and lets them watch TV some nights."
"Damn lucky man," said the crane. "Nice family, pretty wife, smart boys."
"Does the family go with him to the job site?" I asked.
"Where else would they go?" Oval replied. "Ten minutes from now and mama's sitting in the shade playing with the baby, and the two boys will help papa pull weeds until they feel like running around chasing each other and wrestlin' in the grass."
Goatee remained one conversation back. "We can't forget that Envirotech stuff Mauricio told us," he said. "I guess I never thought about what happened to trash from a hospital."
"I don't think anybody does," said Oval. "We act like it just sort of magically disappears, like fog."
"Or like a dollar," said the crane.
Traffic was picking up on Montano as commuters began to leave for work, and a near accident and the echoes of horns honking and shouts off the building drew our attention until the river of traffic calmed.
Goatee spoke as the echoes faded. “That Envirotech job was bullshit man. But most jobs outta here are a lot better than that and it's all honest money."
The crane nodded agreement. "The only jobs I hate are those that ask for 15 dollars of bust-ass work out of a five-dollar-an-hour man," he said. "Fuck that shit."
The door opened again, and several people headed towards their cars or the bus stop, ticketless. "They're heading home to watch soaps, I guess," said Goatee.
"Looks like a long day," said Oval. "But may as well wait it out. I've got stuff I should be doin at home, but nobody pays me for it there. Anyway, my old man would never know the difference if the house were clean or not." She looked at her watch. "He's probably up and surly by now."
"I'm gonna get a mornin paper," said Goatee. "Anyone wanna split it?"
Crane passed him a quarter.
"Thanks bro," said Goatee, dragging his feet as he passed along the sidewalk away from us.
Oval put her hands into her pockets as if a chilled breeze were passing, and walked back into the office. There she leaned against the counter to talk to a lean black man in his 50's. Sharing a joke, I heard their laughter rumble through the pane glass window and closed door.
"Hope Paul got a good movie today," said the crane. "Some ass-kicker with Bruce Willis or Arnold maybe. Not Sly--he's such a short little prick."
"That would be nice," I said, wondering what he was talking about.
I walked into the building, poured a cup of coffee, and sat down in a cool metal folding chair. The sound poured from the television set, filling the room from corner to corner like gas from a ruptured main. I studied my peers in the room. Many of them watching the TV hadn't moved noticeably in the past hour and a half--they seemed either dazed, drugged, or hypnotized by the electronic hearth in front of them.
The outgoing tickets slowed as the phone quit ringing and the faxed work orders slowed to a trickle. Soon Paul stopped working, and he too stared at the television. I poured another cup of coffee.
Goatee returned with four newspapers in hand, apparently retrieved for the price of one from a nearby drugstore honor box. Standing at the front of the room, he pulled the newspapers apart into sections, and passed them out to those in the front row of metal chairs. The papers then passed from the front of the room to the back in a wave, with an occasional person keeping a section of interest to read. As they flowed past, I fished for one of the sections with a crossword puzzle and landed it.
Deep into my puzzle a few minutes later I felt, rather than heard, a change in the room. Conversation had slowed, and all were now watching the television. I joined them. The newscaster was halfway through a story relating that 57 hearing-impaired Mexican illegals had been found in two cramped apartment buildings in New York. They had apparently been exploited by other Mexicans who had forced them to sell merchandise on the streets without fair compensation. A helicopter provided an overhead shot of the apartment, and a crowd milling in the street as the Mexicans left the apartments in a line.
"Apartments my ass!" said Paul. "That's a Real Labor Office!" A dozen different laughs drowned out the newscaster, followed a moment later by the murmur of conversation.
I carefully filled in 27 down in my crossword--ORT--table scrap. The crowd in the waiting room continued to thin as eight o'clock passed. Occasionally, a ticket was issued, and someone went to work. About 10 of us remained, waiting patiently.
Two boys walked in, skateboards under their arms. Their shoulders and hips rolled in exaggerated opposition to each other as they strolled, very slowly, toward Paul. Their clothing looked like it had been stolen off a fat man’s clothesline. Huge black T-shirts hung to their knees, and baggy denim shorts to their ankles. One sported a hairnet over his short neatly cropped hair. They reached Paul who was standing at the end of the counter, now doing paperwork.
"We're here to work bro," hairnet said, hands in pockets.
"Wonderful," said Paul, who then leaned forward over the counter, looking at them carefully. "How old are you guys?"
They looked at each other briefly, but long enough for Paul to know that they were not old enough. Hairnet issued more of a challenge than a response. "Sixteen, man."
Paul smiled widely. "Outstanding work ethic, guys!" he said. "Keep it up. But come back in two years and I'll have a job waiting for you then."
The two sauntered out of the office as if the exchange never happened. Several older women sitting in front of me exchanged smiles and whispered comments.
Now Kathy Lee and Regis were on the television screen, lounging comfortably on a couch and engaging in conversation. Both had their legs primly crossed, with an arm on the back of the couch. Kathy Lee told Regis and the studio audience as well as the Real Labor office what a fine weekend Frank and she had just had. The luncheon at the country club after golf, the new pool at the Regency, her conversation with Travolta, among other highlights.
A long-haired white man in his 20's straightened in his chair, pushing his hair back with one hand and pointing at the screen with the other.
"Now that, is a good woman," he said, apparently referring to Kathy Lee. "Her old man fucks around, gets caught with his pants down in front of a camera, and she's right behind him there on TV actin' like nothin happened. I could use a woman like that--one who loves me, has patience, and is willing to deal with my mistakes."
"Don't think I could do that," said Oval, still leaning against the counter, staring at Kathy Lee.
"Must be hard talkin about Frank and the family like that," said Goatee. "Maybe she should quit or somethin--get out of the public eye."
"Quit? You kiddin?" said an angular black woman. "Kathy Lee resign cause her old man can't keep his own dick in his own pants?
Goatee shrugged, turning palms up defensively.
"Kathy Lee be one class act," the woman continued, speaking rapidly, her eyes occasionally moving from goatee back to the screen. "She got a good job, likes Regis, show gets good ratins and she make a million bucks an hour. Fuck her old man that he stepped out. I say fuckem. Frank Gifford, he 80 or what? Just cause he be a good football player a thousand years ago you think he important now? He ain't shit now, and fuck that Monday Night Football shit. Anyone could take Frankie's place,-- after all, he ain't no Howard Cosell, and maybe he just ben hangin around ole OJ too long in that TV booth, fucking anything that moves and all."
"You boys think about it," she said. "That be one common lookin bitch that Frankie be with that night. Damn common, unlike Kathy Lee.”
The woman laughed and acted as if she was going to whack goatee with a section of newspaper that was lying on the chair beside her. "Quit the show my ass. Kathy Lee is the show and I know it and you know it and those producers know it. We sure as hell don't watch this show every mornin for that fuckin little suckass Regis, now do we?
"Buena, compa--you got it right my friend," said Goatee, smiling. "Never thought about it that way before."
A round, slightly wobbling Hispanic man in his 50's addressed the woman very slowly, with a heavy accent. "You make un punta buena, prima. La familia, es muy importante, the most important thing above all, just below God himself, and we must keep it together at all costs. Entiendes?," he asked. "Do you understand?"
When she nodded affirmatively, he continued. "Now me and my wife," said the man, making a fist with his right hand. He then tapped his chest twice with his fist, almost theatrically. "We're this close," he said, now crossing the second finger of his right hand over the first finger, bringing his hand up, rocking it gently, forward and backward, two inches from his temple. "This close," he repeated, suggesting that he and his wife were very close indeed.
The man’s hand continued rocking. "Not only are we close, but thanks be to God nosotros are cell mates tambien. Cell mates, you know.”
The woman looked puzzled for a moment, then started laughing. "Cell mates? You mean SOULMATES you borracho old goat! Laughter spread around the room as she patted the man on his back, and then hung on his arm, laughing.
"But, but..that's what I said...cell mates!" he insisted. The room laughed again, and after she explained the humor to him, the man laughed too, with tears coming to his eyes.
"Movie time!" someone said. It was 9:00.
"Got it, said Paul," rolling his chair southbound on the other side of the counter from one end to the other. He pulled a tape out of his briefcase and inserted it into a VCR that I couldn't see. After a moment, the TV flickered, the music soared, and John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara roamed the Irish countryside in The Tall Man.
I heard the computer printing a ticket, and Paul stood up.
"Mary, you want to bag mulch at a nursery?" he asked, holding the ticket up. Behind him the computer continued printing.
Oval walked up and pulled the ticket from Paul's hand. "Gladly," she said.
Paul ripped off another ticket, and looked down his list of names.
"Bob, Cliff, I have some work for you at Rudy's Metals." The crane had arrived at the counter by the time I realized I was the only Bob in the room. I joined the crane at the counter, mentally filing his name as Cliff.
"You guys hustle and you can still get seven hours in today," said Paul. "You got gloves? You'll probably be moving metal, and it will tear the shit out of your hands if you don't have them."
I nodded affirmatively.
"Could I buy a pair of gloves and pay you back this afternoon?" asked Cliff.
"Sure," said Paul. "No problem." He handed Cliff a pair of gloves he took from a cabinet behind the counter.
"Could you loan me two bucks so I could get a sandwich?" asked Cliff.
Paul opened his wallet and passed three dollars over without saying anything.
I was somewhat puzzled, as I hadn't expected to be called yet. I knew that there were people in the room who had arrived before me, yet hadn't been issued tickets.
"Are you sure I'm next in line?" I asked Paul. He glanced at his list.
"There are a few guys ahead of you, and a girl, but the ticket says they want big guys, and you two are the biggest I have." He looked around the room, and then at the list again to check. "Yeah, everyone on the list ahead of you is scrawny--no, scrawny is an exaggeration. They aren't nearly that big, and I can't send them out if I want to keep the client."
Cliff grabbed the ticket, and I followed him out the door. Seven hours, I thought. Thirty-five dollars.
Cliff and I rode in my truck back down I-25, deep into the south valley, stopping to get Cliff a hot-dog and a Big Gulp at Circle K.
We turned left on Isleta, and Cliff swallowed a big bite of hot-dog.
"Damn, that tastes good," he said. "I haven't eaten since yesterday morning."
"Too long," I said.
"No shit. See this?" he said, pulling back his hair to reveal a gash in his scalp that had been closed with several stitches.
"How did you do that?" I asked.
"Scaffold collapsed at a job the other day and a 2 X 8 whacked me on the head after I hit the ground. Doctor told me that I had a concussion, and couldn't work. So they put me on workers comp, but damn, I had to eat today and worker's comp doesn't pay till the end of the month. So since I needed to eat, I had to turn down worker's comp, and yesterday I had the doctor sign a sheet letting me go back to work today. He didn't like it but wasn't willing to take me home for dinner."
"Here we are," I said, turning off under the shop sign of Rudy's Metal.
Rudy's was a warehouse on an acre of land. Scrap metal filled nearly every corner of the dusty lot that wasn't occupied by the building. Oddly, in the few places where there wasn't scrap metal, there were crates of rotting peaches. We worked our way through the maze.
"See that furnace over there?" Cliff asked, pointing to a cinder block structure the size of a one-car garage. It was open, like a fireplace, and backed by a blackened chimney that stood approximately 30 feet high.
"Yes," I replied.
"Bet your ass they fire up that furnace at night when the city can't see the smoke. Then they toss in the metal scraps with plastic and rubber on them, and burn it off. Then it’s clean metal. A hundred bucks to the neighbors now and again, and they don't call the city to complain."
A boy, perhaps 12 or 13 years old, wandered amidst the piles of scrap metal, looking at the ground, as if he had lost something. I addressed him in English and drew no response. My Spanglish drew a smile, and he told me that his name was Romeo and that his job was to pick up stray pieces of copper. For each piece of copper, he was paid a nickel. I reached into my pocket, pulled out several pennies, and told him to turn them in to the boss for a nickel each. Romeo smiled, and told me that Rudy was a good man, but there was a big man who worked there that wasn't always friendly.
Cliff and I walked into the warehouse. Two men on forklifts moved sorted metal here and there, from crushers to scales, from one pile to another. Various metal scraps were making their way through this part of the recycling process.
Seeing Cliff and I, one of the men stopped his forklift, climbed off, and walked toward us. He was dressed very nicely for a forklift driver, trim charcoal slacks, button-down collar, and black wing-tips.
"Buenos dias. Con Real Labor?" he asked, examining the ticket.
"Si," I replied. Trabajadores.
"Bueno. Follow me."
We followed him through the warehouse into the back lot.
"OK guys," he said, stopping at the back of two adjacent parked semi-trailers. "These trucks are full of aluminum to be recycled. I need you to separate the clean from the dirty. The clean has no other material on it. The dirty is like this," he said, reaching into a pile of aluminum behind him and pulling out a piece of scrap.
"It'll have steel bolts, rubber or plastic on it like this," he said, pointing to plastic sealed rivets on the aluminum. He then gestured toward two dumpsters that sat behind the paired trailers. "Toss the clean aluminum into one dumpster, the dirty in the other, and when the dumpsters are full I'll bring the forklift around and empty them for you," he said, with a smile of encouragement.
"Andale," he said.
We went to work. A tall ladder stood at one side of the nearest trailer. I climbed up it and over the side onto the scrap aluminum, and Cliff followed. The trailers were no longer roadworthy, mere shells with three sides, and open at the top and back. After putting on our gloves, we gingerly stepped from one semi-stable piece of scrap aluminum to another toward the open back of the trailer and the dumpsters, holding onto the rim of the top of the trailer wall for stability. One wrong step might produce a twisted ankle, and a plethora of cuts from the sharp edges that surrounded us like hopeful barracudas. The aluminum was twisted, heavy, and knotted.
The scrap was more dirty than clean, consisting of airplane superstructure, fragments of cut sheet aluminum, cabinets, cables of great lengths, curved 12-foot-long aluminum tubes, and computer parts. All were tangled together in unimaginable ways that fought and sucked our strength as we tried to move them from trailer to dumpster. It was nearly impossible to remove one piece without a second, the second without a third, and the third without the first.
After struggling with aluminum for an hour, I replaced thinking with feeling, and the feeling was pain. The sun was cooking Cliff and me in our own oils, reflecting not only off the scrap aluminum at our feet, but also off the aluminum walls of the trailer at our sides. No breeze cooled us, and I began to feel the subtle hints of mortality that extreme climates provide humanity. I had experienced this feeling several times before, most memorably on a fierce winter night in Fargo, North Dakota some twenty years ago when the wind-chill hit 60 below. That night I had felt the life being sucked out of my body before I found shelter. A brief exposure--be it a moment, an hour, or a day—— and the thread of life may be broken. We live and die in small pieces-- if we are lucky, and I recognized this as one of the pieces that pointed toward death.
Perhaps Cliff and I had started too strongly and hence faded quickly. Sweat had poured off us in puddles at first, then lessened. I tried to fool myself that this was because we were getting used to the work, when in actuality, I knew we were sweating no more because we were dehydrated. We tried to keep water in us, but to do so meant that we had to stop working, and when we did stop, the water was nearly undrinkable, hot from the sun.
"Señor," said a small voice from below, near the dumpsters. It was Romeo. He tossed something round first at me, and then at Cliff. I caught mine. It was a fresh peach. I forced a smile and sank my teeth into the peach, draining its juices. A hint of strength seemed to enter my body and cling precariously.
Late into the second hour, two men greeted us from below. One was in his mid-forties, strong and thin. The other was in his mid-thirties, strong and thick.
"Buenos tardes, amigos, como estas?" asked the older man
"Been better," said Cliff.
"Yo tambien," I replied.
"We work for Labor for All," said the older man.
"We're from Real Labor," I said.
"Rudy's inside," said Cliff. "You gonna help us? We sure could use it."
"No," said the younger man. "We are to be stripping wires, and I think that we are lucky that we are later than you and didn't have to do this work." He motioned toward the scrap aluminum we were standing on.
"I hope somebody is lucky here," said Cliff. "It sure ain't us."
"Muchas gracias," said the older man as he turned to walk into the warehouse. The younger man followed after taking one more concerned glance at the pile of aluminum under our feet.
Cliff and I continued working, and with every passing second our energy drained further. Eventually, we tired to the point where we were leaning over, hands on knees, resting, after nearly every piece of aluminum was tossed out. Without discussion, we hit a painful synchronous rhythm. Cliff would extract and toss a piece into a dumpster, as I rested for a moment. As soon as the piece of aluminum clanged against the side of the dumpster, I would move to try to pull one out, while Cliff rested. While we were not working at the same time, from the warehouse one could hear continuous noise from inside the trailer. The appearance would be that we were both working at the same time.
One piece in particular presented what appeared to be an insurmountable obstacle. A green military storage cabinet sat like a beached whale atop of the smaller aluminum pieces, near the center of the trailer. A stenciled notice on the side of the cabinet announced that it weighed 680 pounds.
I leaned against the side of the cabinet to rest while I contemplated the effort that it would take to move the cabinet 20 feet or so into the dumpster. "Can you push 340 pounds out of here and over the edge?" I asked Cliff, dividing the work effort in half.
"You fuckin kiddin?" he coughed.
Now we were both bent over, hands on our knees, chests heaving, with blood trickling from a variety of cuts from fingers to ankles. As soon as I physically could, I stumbled across the aluminum, lowered myself out of the back of the trailer, and staggered to the warehouse to talk about the weight of the cabinet with Rudy, knowing that it could easily be moved with a chain attached to the forklift.
I had almost reached the shade of the interior of the warehouse when a large man stopped me at the door.
"Done with both trailers?" he asked.
"No," I said slowly, panting. "We ran into a cabinet that weighs 680 pounds, and we can't move it. I was thinking a cable or a chain on the forklift would pull it out. After it is out of the way we can move everything that is left faster."
A look of disgust passed across the man's face as he moved toward me. "Sorry, no, but that's what we pay you for. If you can't move it, go home. You aren't worth paying." The distance between us had closed, and he shoved me back toward the trailer with a grunt. I stumbled, but didn’t fall.
An hour later, using the 12-foot aluminum cylinders for levers, we finally were able to move the cabinet inch by inch to the edge of the trailer above the dumpsters. As it crashed into the dirty aluminum dumpster below, we sat down and tried to catch our breath. It was several minutes before either of us could speak.
"Fuck this man, this isn't right," said Cliff finally, panting and wiping his brow. "This is just too damn hard for five bucks an hour." He looked around at the sides of the tall trailer walls that surrounded us.
A fierce headache soon contributed to my misery, letting me know that I was past the onset of true dehydration. I looked at Cliff, and he looked no better. The first muscles to go were those in my hands. They grew weak, then started cramping, turning into claws as I painfully gripped the scrap metal. Once my cramped hands had gripped the metal, the strength of the cramping muscles made it nearly impossible to release the pieces into the dumpsters. After I managed to pry my hands open to drop the metal, they instantly cramped into tight balls. I forced them open, pushing palms against my thighs, and held my palms open against each other until I found another piece of scrap metal, when I would let the claws slam shut around it. Prying my hands open again, I threw the piece into the dumpster. Then the cycle repeated, again and again.
Cramps in my hands were followed by cramps in my arms, then in my legs. Trying to straighten out each muscle to relieve the cramp resulted in the contraction of its opposing muscle, which brought on a cramp in that muscle. Finally, bending over caused my stomach muscles to cramp, and straightening out resulted in my back muscles cramping. Yet, I still worked, fighting the knotted cramps, the knotted aluminum, and the relentless sun. Every second was a minute, every minute an hour. Cliff and I spoke no more.
A length of pipe broke free, I managed to pull my hands off it as it dropped. Below, a face met mine. It was Rudy, next to the dumpster.
"Good job, senors. That's it for the day. No mas."
We climbed out of the trailer with effort, yet with miraculous relief. Rudy signed our ticket that would allow us to be paid, and we walked away toward my truck. Trying to keep my body from continued cramping, I moved along like Frankenstein.
Somehow I managed to lean into the drivers seat, pull my legs in, shut the door, and place my cramping hands around the steering wheel and gearshift. I pulled away from Rudy's Metals, hoping to never see it again. I tried to force myself to drink what warm water I still had, but found it nearly impossible as it made me queasy.
I turned north into the heavy rush hour traffic on Isleta. We hadn't gone far when Cliff pointed out two men walking down the side of the road, backs to us.
"Stop," he said. "Those are the two guys who were stripping wire."
I pulled alongside them.
"Hey, amigos, where you headin?" asked Cliff.
"To the corner of Isleta and Rio Bravo," said the older man. "Our homes are near there."
Cliff looked at me, and I nodded.
"Hop in," he said. The two men climbed into the back of the pickup. In my rearview mirror, I saw that they were engaged in a spirited conversation, happy to have the ride.
I fought the traffic the best I could until I heard a thumping on the side of the truck that told me that we had reached our passengers' destination. I pulled over into a supermarket parking lot at the corner of Isleta and Rio Bravo as saliva began to rush into my mouth and the back of my throat. I managed to stop the truck safely, climbed out, leaned against the truck, and vomited until my stomach was empty of all that I had put in it that day, which was water. I thought of the traffic, and that people passing must be thinking that I was a drunk driver who had been forced to pull over to empty his stomach. If I had felt any better, I would have been embarrassed.
Finally, the urge to vomit subsided, and I managed to straighten up.
"You all right, bro?" said the younger man who had ridden in the back of the truck. All three of the men had politely engaged in conversation on the other side of the truck while I was vomiting, as if it were an everyday occurrence.
"I think so."
"No, I don't think so," said the older man, walking around to my side of the truck. He put his hand on my shoulder. "From being in the Army at Fort Bliss, I know that you are sick, my friend. You have heat exhaustion." He opened my truck door for me, and I could tell he was checking to see if I was well enough to drive. "You go home, rest, take a cool bath, drink lots of water, a little salt--Gatorade if you can afford it. You'll be better in a couple of days."
He shut my door, and I started the truck. Cliff clambered into the passenger side, fastening his seat belt.
The two men crossed the heavy traffic to the other side of the street, waving thanks as they reached the sidewalk safely. I put the truck in gear and pulled out onto Rio Bravo to drive back to the Labor Ready office. Five excruciating minutes on Rio Bravo, five more on I-25 north, and we exited at Montano, where a red light on the off ramp stopped us.
By the side of the road stood a bedraggled man holding a sign that said simply, “Help.”
"Fucken homeless," said Cliff, looking at the man.
"He's just trying to make a living," I managed to say in response, twisting from my cramps.
"Just a fuckin beggar," said Cliff with disdain. "If he wanted to make an honest livin he could have worked like we did today, bustin our asses."
"Maybe he can't find work," I said, looking at the man, noticing that he had a pleasant face.
"Bullshit. Anybody who wants to work can be first in line at the Real Labor office every morning. Or a dozen offices like it." The light turned green, and I drove without thinking until I reached the parking lot of Real Labor. The office was empty, except for Paul, who smiled at us when we walked in.
"You guys look like shit," he said.
"Feel like it too," said Cliff, handing Paul our signed ticket.
I didn't have the strength to nod in agreement.
"Well, tough job but someone had to do it, right?" said Paul. We didn't respond. A moment later, the computer was printing out our paperwork. It paused, Paul tore off his copy and handed ours to us. He then opened the cash box, smiled, and handed each of us $35, our pay for the day.
"Lucky men we are--we get to eat tonight," said Cliff, walking toward the door. He held the door for me and I followed him outside.
And I went home and I climbed into a cool bath with several glasses of water beside me, and Annie drove to the Circle K down the block to get me some Gatorade.
I’ll always stand with those men and women, with papers or not, looking for work at the Home Depots in Los Angeles. They are my brothers and sisters.
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Were in for a long hot summer. It doesn't have to be this way. Democrats and Republicans had a bi-partisan bill to start to deal with immigration in a rational way. This isn't about immigration. This is about authoritarianism.