Many communities have foods that define them: Los Angeles has tacos, Green River, Utah, has melons, while New Mexico’s Hatch Valley is famous for its green chiles. Historic power dynamics — from colonization to migration — have always influenced how and why people began growing, cooking and consuming these symbolic dishes and crops. Today, these foods and those who prepare, raise and sell them carry cultural power; people travel hundreds of miles to buy a juicy Crenshaw or sweet canary melon from a family-run stand in Green River. And yet the farmers themselves often struggle to stay afloat. They lose access to markets as large companies buy up smaller, locally run grocery stores. 

Most grocery stores across the West trace back to a few major corporations. Whether you’re visiting King Soopers in Colorado, Smith’s in Utah or Fred Meyer in Oregon, you’ll find the same Kroger-brand products. The original names of the once-locally owned grocers might remain, but the shops are now just part of one of the nation’s largest grocery corporations.

A handful of companies control the production and distribution of most of our food, and the West plays a leading role in that system. The U.S. headquarters for the world’s largest meatpacker, JBS S.A., is in Greeley, Colorado, while Driscoll’s, the largest berry producer, is headquartered in Watsonville, California. These companies rarely confront the riskiest parts of agribusiness, raising the cows and growing the berries. Instead, they produce, brand and ship them. 

This global food system has profound impacts on the West’s farmers, workers and consumers. It’s getting harder for family farms to turn a profit, and those who seek alternatives to the consolidated corporate market must navigate complicated policies and finances in order to sell directly to consumers. Berry-pickers and meatpacking workers — often immigrants — face exploitation and unsafe conditions, with workplace protections varying from state to state. 

Meanwhile, food insecurity has increased across the West, and yet Republican-led states, including Utah and Idaho, opted out of a federal summer grocery program for kids last year, in part because of anti-welfare politics. 

Beyond its connection to this international system, the West has deeply rooted myths and policies around water and land that create and sustain other layers of power. In the 1800s, settlers stole land from Native people and killed off bison as they drove tens of thousands of cattle westward. Ever since, the cowboy and his glorified cattle have held cultural power that politicians are rarely willing to tarnish. 

As “The Big Four” meatpackers have consolidated most of the beef industry, the economic power of ranchers has dwindled. Only 2% of U.S. beef comes from cows that graze on public lands, and yet multigenerational ranching families and large landowners continue to influence and benefit from antiquated federal grazing policies. 

Most land in the Eastern U.S. is privately owned, but the federal government owns nearly half of all land in the West. Ranchers graze cows on huge swaths of public lands, paying fees well below the actual cost of managing those lands. Over the past century, grazing policies have changed little even as cows destroyed native vegetation and degraded waterways. State and federal policies often put the health of livestock above that of the region’s arid soils or the lives of large carnivores like wolves and bears. 

Ranchers and Big Beef also intersect and overlap with those who control water in the West. Agriculture consumes nearly 80% of the water diverted from the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin, primarily to grow alfalfa and other cattle-feed crops. An investigation by ProPublica and The Desert Sun found that most of the water consumed in California’s Imperial Valley goes to just 20 farming families, with one of them using more than the entire metropolitan area of Las Vegas. Only four of those families use the majority of their water rights to grow foods people consume, like broccoli or onions. The rest use their water to grow hay for livestock. 

Many of these families have senior water rights, and that increasingly means power in the arid and rapidly growing West. Together with livestock associations, irrigation districts and their political allies, they have sought to influence food and water policy. 

Yet in some parts of the West, other interests are gaining power. In the Northwest, years of advocacy from tribes and environmental groups led federal agencies to decommission dams on rivers like the Elwha and Klamath. The farmers might worry about their ability to continue irrigating, but tribes are reclaiming their traditional foodways as salmon return. 

And the Northwest’s rivers aren’t the only places where tribes are reasserting their culture and food sovereignty: Indigenous-run restaurants, farms and cooking classes are springing up across the West. 

Farmers markets, mutual aid efforts and community gardens are creating new forms of cultural, social and economic power, often led by and benefiting those who are excluded and marginalized, including queer, immigrant and Black farmers. Their efforts encourage people to take back intrinsic food traditions while they act in resistance to the global, capitalist food system. 

Still, the corporate structures of our food system are so deeply entrenched that they can be hard to fully comprehend or even notice. In this region, food is power, and that power is not equally shared. Before that can change, however, we need to understand the complexities of this system, tracing its roots to the growth of retail giants and the consolidation of Western agricultural production. 

The grocery giants

The illusion of competition

Farmers markets — a bright spot in the grocery landscape

Get big or get out: Consolidation in agricultural production

The small family farm holds a special place in the American imagination. Today, however, a modest and diminishing portion of our nation’s food is grown on smallholder farms. Production is shifting to larger-scale factory farms in every Western state and across nearly every commodity.

Like many government agencies, the Department of Agriculture has a fraught history with discrimination and disenfranchisement. Farmers of color and young and beginning producers have long struggled to access capital, in the form of loans and grants, from the agency. 

So in 2022, former President Joe Biden’s USDA created the Regional Food Business Centers program using funding from the American Rescue Plan. The program established 12 virtual centers to function as business development resource hubs within rural communities nationwide. The centers were intended as a way to provide technical assistance, navigate federal and state resources, and administer grants to small- and mid-sized farmers and ranchers who wanted to develop food businesses or access new markets. The overall goal was to build a more resilient food system.

A total of roughly $400 million was earmarked to support the 12 centers, each run by a coalition of organizations and partners based in each region, which the USDA agreed to fund for five years. In 2024, many began distributing sub-awards from that pool of funds in the form of “business builder” grants.

In early January, Ed Harvey, a Navajo farmer in rural northern Arizona, was awarded a technical assistance contract dedicated to assisting Indigenous producers from the Southwest Regional Food Business Center, which was created to strengthen local supply chains throughout Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah. Not only does he grow apples, peaches, pears, plums, nectarines, cherries, and sumac berries, but Harvey runs a consulting business geared toward helping other Navajo tribal members through all of the paperwork needed in order to begin or continue farming on their land.

Much of the farmland throughout Navajo Nation is left idle, buried in layers of dirt, wind deposits, and towering weeds, with slivers of corn, squash, and melons here and there. Harvey attributes the situation to the federal mandate that tribal members need a permit with a conservation plan in order to use their land for agricultural production. It’s an exceedingly onerous application process, and the reimbursable RFBC funding was intended to cover the costs associated with the development of conservation plans for other tribal members. When he heard he was selected for the program, Harvey was elated, and immediately began advertising the opportunity to work with him free of charge: He reached out to community farm boards, promoted it across all of the reservation’s chapter houses, and even posted flyers in local businesses. 

That sense of joy morphed into one of sinking despair when, the following month, President Donald Trump’s administration abruptly froze the program’s funding, and a tsunami of layoffs at USDA and the Bureau of Indian Affairs saw thousands of federal workers leave their positions. The month of February, Harvey said, was the “worst of my life.” 

“It hurt me. It hurt the business,” he said. “I did a lot of conservation plans for free, not getting paid for it, because I expressed to people that it’s paid for, so I didn’t want to let it ruin my reputation.” While the fate of the centers remained in purgatory, Harvey scrambled to remedy the damage done, completing 36 conservation projects at no charge, the equivalent of hundreds of unpaid hours and thousands of dollars worth of labor — a huge net loss.

Finally, on July 15, the USDA announced it was shuttering the program, a decision that was met with considerable opposition across food and farming sectors. And just like that, Harvey’s big plans for his community went up in smoke. 

“This was a program fully dedicated to support rural people. So I was thinking, ‘Heck, yeah, I can support my relatives who live in the middle of nowhere. I can find a way to help my uncle, to help with what he needs by planting corn,’” said Harvey. “Out here in Navajo Nation, you have to take in the fact that there’s very limited opportunities for people to make money. The tribe here, we live on government assistance…people don’t have that dedicated time to give back to the land, to give back to who they are. It takes funding mechanisms or opportunities to find [it].”

In the press release announcing the end of the RFBCs, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins criticized the Biden administration for creating the RFBCs “without any long-term way to finance them,” which the release described as a “COVID-era program.” The release also specified that “over 450” grants so far awarded would be honored — which meant that roughly four of the centers that hadn’t yet officially awarded their grant selections had 60 days to cease operations, and the other eight overseeing those awards would end next May. But even those centers still operating through next spring won’t be running at full capacity, as the cancellation limits the scope of what each center can do to no more than merely monitoring awards and technical assistance for existing grants. Rollins also stated that “any remaining funds will be repurposed to better support American agriculture.” As of this story’s publication, the details of that repurposing are not yet known. 

Roughly a week after the USDA announced the end of the RFBCs, Rollins released a memo that again took the agricultural world by storm. The five-page document revealing Rollins’ plan to significantly reorganize the agency was accompanied by an unlisted YouTube video intended for employees, which also broadly detailed the four pillars powering the decision: ensuring the size of the agency’s workforce aligns with available resources and priorities, bringing USDA closer to those it serves by relocating resources, getting rid of bureaucracy, and paring down redundant support functions. 

According to current and former USDA staffers, the closure of the country’s regional food business centers and the agency’s reorganization rollout should not be considered as separate developments, but rather as successive decisions with intertwining impacts. Both moves are expected to have lasting effects on historically underserved rural communities in particular, where farmers and families are already facing the day-to-day impacts of a shrinking federal workforce in local offices. That’s to say nothing of the growing role of climate change in throttling agricultural production and amplifying economic stressors such as increased price volatility, trade war disruptions, and surging labor and production costs.

“To me, there is a real friction here between those in the administration that simply want to diminish, destroy, and decimate the federal workforce and any sort of policy goal that is aimed at improving the lives of Americans and reducing costs for those who live in rural communities,” said Michael Amato, former USDA communications director. So far in his second term, Trump’s USDA has gotten rid of more than 15,000 federal employees, nearly a fifth of its workforce, straining bureau capacity, even as the agency has culled billions of dollars in funding streams that, in the process, has buckled local and regional food systems. At least ten percent of the federal employees who have left the USDA this year worked for Rural Development, the nation’s lead agency that fights rural poverty. 

“If there was some policy objective, then it’s lost on me, because I don’t see how simply just cutting funds to try to run up your DOGE score as high as possible, and calling for deferred resignations across the entire department with no strategic plan about where you see waste or where you see bureaucratic bloat,” Amato continued. “It just seems like a meat axe approach with the goal of shrinking the department.”

Rollins did not specify a timeline for the plan, nor did she share many details of how it will be carried out, but noted that the agency will move more than half of the roughly 4,600 D.C. area employees out of the capital area. According to Rollins, the five hubs, located in Raleigh, North Carolina, Kansas City, Missouri, Indianapolis, Indiana, Fort Collins, Colorado, and Salt Lake City, Utah, would bring the USDA closer to its “core constituents.” The USDA did not respond to Grist’s request for comment. 

Multiple current USDA employees told Grist that not even they have been briefed on the details of the reorganization. “We haven’t been given any more information than is publicly available,” said one USDA employee who is based in D.C. and asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation. “It’s been unsettling. Morale is low. It has not been a great work environment, just because everyone feels insecure right now.” 

“The relocation is actually going to be moving many of our regional office partners farther from the states that they cover,” the staffer continued. “The logic is just not there. It doesn’t make sense. And the claim that they’re moving up closer to the people we serve, is just patently false.” The USDA staffer added that the mass layoffs experienced have already resulted in overworked employees and significant delays in processing financial assistance applications. “There are things falling through the cracks,” they said. 

On Thursday, August 21, a letter addressed to Rollins and signed by 32 USDA unions, and shared with Grist, also expressed widespread concerns about the reorganization. It noted that over 90 percent of USDA employees already live and work outside of the D.C. area and urged the department to “slow down, engage with Congress and the labor unions in good faith, and fully assess the true impacts of this reorganization before proceeding further.” 

“We are just trying to call attention to how poorly planned the USDA reorganization is, that they seem to be hiding whatever details that they have,” said Ethan Roberts, a physical science technician at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service based in Peoria, Illinois, who represents the bargaining unit employees at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research as union president. “There’s something going on. When I talk to the management in this building, they don’t know anything. They’ve not been told anything.

“Why this is incredibly harmful is because the USDA is already struggling administratively,” Roberts continued. “Here in my laboratory, the management and the admin are taking on two to three jobs just to keep up to try and make everything continue to function. If we lose even more people in D.C., at the highest levels of the human resources department, and our budgeting and our billing, it’s going to be catastrophic. There’s going to be a critical administrative failure.”

The lack of clarity has prompted plenty of congressional backlash, too. When news of the reorganization broke, a Senate hearing was swiftly assembled where a bipartisan contingency of Democrats and Republicans grilled Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Stephen Vaden about the unusually secretive nature of the rollout of the reorganization. Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry ranking member Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, said at the hearing that the committee first heard of the plan just minutes before it was announced. 

“It is clear from the hearing that this is a half-baked reorganization plan developed without input from Congress or stakeholders that will almost certainly result in worse services for farmers, families, and rural communities,” Senator Klobuchar later told Grist. She noted that the reorganization “follows the cancellations or delays of funds for voluntary conservation programs that protect our environment and improve farmers’ bottom lines.” 

Klobuchar and some of her colleagues on the Senate Agriculture Committee sent a letter to Vaden on Monday requesting more time to comment on the plan and increased transparency with the results of the agency’s ongoing public comment period. The letter followed at least two others that have been issued in the last month by groups of lawmakers demanding more information. Nearly all have referred to the first Trump administration’s relocation of the USDA’s Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture, which resulted in the resignation of three quarters of employees, and declining workforce productivity. 

Kevin Shea, a 45-year veteran of USDA who led the agency’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service for 11 of those years, and briefly served as Secretary of Agriculture during the Biden administration, points to the USDA’s claim that the reorganization plan will bring staffers closer to constituents as one example of the contradictions at play. “This whole ruse about being closer to farmers — what nonsense. They’re still going to be in cities hundreds of miles from farmers,” said Shea. 

What’s more, the RFBC program wasn’t solely addressing an immediate food system crisis that became clear because of the pandemic, he said, but “it was addressing a problem that had been revealed. The problem was always there.” A USDA report released last October found that the RFBCs led to more than 2,800 individuals receiving technical assistance, 1,500 new partnerships formed by recipients, and 287 businesses reporting increased revenue as a result of the program. Other critics of the Trump administration’s decision to cancel it have argued the program was established to meet a $4 billion congressional mandate in the American Rescue Plan to build more resilient food systems. 

Another current USDA employee based in D.C., who also asked to remain anonymous, told Grist that the double blow of the closure of the regional food business centers and the proposed relocations “is going to result in massive harm to rural America which, again, is a population that they purport to care about.” “There’s no particular rhyme or reason that we can tell,” the staffer said, while pointing out where the new hubs aren’t. “California is the biggest agriculture state in the country, and there’s not a hub there. Doesn’t make any sense.” 

“For farmers and people that rely on the USDA for information, for money, it’s going to be poorer quality service and less of it because there’s just going to be less people working,” said Roberts, the USDA union president. “If we experience an even greater loss of the administrative staff that keeps the USDA running, by telling them that they need to pick up their entire lives and move to somewhere across the country, the USDA is going to grind to a halt.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As the Trump administration shrinks the USDA, rural farming communities are left to pay the price on Aug 27, 2025.

(RNS) — San Diego Auxiliary Bishop Felipe Pulido noticed the way a father held his young daughter and stood close to his wife and teenage daughter in the courtroom. The love and care they had for each other was palpable on Tuesday (Aug. 12), when Pulido accompanied the asylum-seeking family for an immigration court hearing.

“As an immigrant, I got emotional because of that connection I have with my own family — I put myself in his shoes,” said the Catholic bishop, who was born in the Mexican state of Michoacán before immigrating to Yakima Valley in Washington as a teenager. He finished high school there, worked picking produce and eventually was ordained a priest.

Immigrants are facing court appointments with newly heightened levels of fear as the Trump administration has begun sending agents to detain migrants as they leave the courtroom. If immigration judges dismiss their cases, they can immediately face expedited removal proceedings without a chance to make their case for asylum. Previously, a 10-day response time  to the dismissal was allowed.

Guided by their faith, clergy like Pulido and other representatives from religious groups are accompanying immigrants to court appointments to provide comfort and information and, in cases where their worst fears are realized, to pick up the pieces of a shattered American dream.

The Rev. Noel Andersen, national field director at Church World Service who is ordained in the United Church of Christ, holds a weekly call on faith-based court accompaniment. He told RNS that through accompaniment, “Faith leaders bear witness and speak out against the ways masked ICE agents are abducting our community members.” Accompaniment is taking place “in every major city and in some rural areas, just about everywhere there is an immigration court,” he said.

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When it was time to leave their San Diego hearing, Pulido said, the family saw half a dozen United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and the mother told him she was scared. The bishop stuck close to the family, talking and reassuring them as they walked by the agents, he said. The judge had given them another hearing in December.

Pulido was present because the San Diego Catholic Church has partnered with Episcopal, Lutheran, Jewish and Muslim clergy, as well as lay people, to provide accompaniment for immigrants at the courthouse every day in August. They have more than 50 volunteers, and as more sign up, they’re planning to continue the ministry.

It was only when they’d gotten through the ordeal safely that the family asked Pulido which church he was with. The Catholic family were stunned to learn a bishop had accompanied them that day, he said.

Pulido said he was inspired by Pope Francis’ words last year when he attended “baby bishop camp,” an orientation for new bishops in Rome, to get involved in the court accompaniment ministry. “Be a sign of hope for the homeless, for the migrants, for those who are in prison,” he recalled Francis saying.

He said he believes sometimes ICE agents choose not to detain migrants even after their cases are dismissed because his priests are walking with them, though they have also witnessed detentions.

Pulido isn’t the only Catholic bishop who has gone to immigration court. In Orange County, where priests and deacons are also accompanying the faithful in immigration court, Bishop Kevin Vann attended the July bond hearing of Narciso Barranco, an immigrant without legal status and father of three U.S. Marines who was filmed being beaten in the head by immigration agents during his June arrest.

El Paso, Texas, Bishop Mark Seitz was also in immigration court on Tuesday, said Scalabrinian Sister Leticia Gutiérrez, the director of the diocese’s migrant hospitality ministry.

Seitz witnessed the detention of three people — “the sobbing, the anguish of the wife of one of them,” said Gutiérrez in Spanish. Seitz told her, “I saw Jesus walking through the hallway, sister, defenseless.”

Gutiérrez, who has organized a precise system for the diocese’s immigration court accompaniment in the last two months, arrives at immigration court at exactly 7:50 a.m., four days a week, and stays until the final cases have concluded.

Before ICE agents arrive (about 20 minutes after she does), Gutiérrez and a priest who is a retired immigration lawyer introduce themselves to migrants arriving for court and provide them basic legal advice and information — and try to sit with them in their anxiety.

While some of the diocesan team members observe the court sessions, ICE agents have also allowed them a protected zone in the waiting room, so when immigrants leave their court appointments, Gutiérrez helps them arrange their affairs, sometimes taking up to 30 to 40 minutes before they walk toward the agents. She encourages them to call their families one last time and share their Alien Registration Number, and then to write phone numbers on their bodies so they can call family if they’re detained.

If they’re willing to share personal information and their keys, she offers to let their family know if they’re detained, send another team to visit them in detention, connect them with a lawyer when available and move their vehicle so it doesn’t incur fines before their family can pick it up.

Many people are in shock when judges dismiss their cases, Gutiérrez said. “It’s incomprehensible for many of them, who say, ‘I paid taxes. I already have an apartment. I have a car … why are they going to detain me?’”

At that point, Gutiérrez said, “There really is no escape. You have to pass, no matter what, by the immigration agents. So it’s like Jesus, who goes directly to the cross.”

The Rev. Chloe Breyer, an Episcopal priest and director of the Interfaith Center of New York, told RNS witnessing detentions was “harrowing.”

“ All I could do is get their name in this tiny millisecond between when they left the courtroom door and when they were picked up by these officers,” she said.

“ We’re witnessing a kind of public display of lawlessness,” Breyer added. She, like Gutiérrez, said there seemed to be no “rhyme or reason” behind which immigrants were detained and which were able to leave.

The Episcopal Diocese of New York has publicized that three of their parishioners have been detained in courthouse arrests and has held a training on court accompaniment for over 80 clergy, said Mary Rothwell Davis, the diocese’s vice-chancellor for immigration and refugees. On July 8, Bishop Matthew E. Heyd witnessed immigration court detentions.

Breyer said she has gone to immigration court about half a dozen times in the last six months, along with rabbis and other Christian leaders. She has worked with the New Sanctuary Coalition, through which she shows up to accompany immigrants who happen to be there that day, and also with specific clients at the request of their lawyers.

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In Los Angeles, Isaac Cuevas, director of immigration and public affairs for the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, has trained about 180 priests, deacons and religious sisters in court accompaniment. While they make an effort to match parishioners who request accompaniment for immigration court with someone who has gone through the program, the vowed religious largely create their own schedules for going to courts in the area.

“If people are in need, then we try to come forward and answer that call however possible,” said Cuevas, emphasizing that they do so not by civil disobedience, but through prayer, solidarity and recommendations to seek legal advice.

Another LA group, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, observes courts daily.

In Arizona, Alicia Contreras, executive director of Corazón AZ, part of the grassroots multi-faith Faith in Action federation, said faith leaders in the state attend immigration court when community members request accompaniment. It is part of the group’s broader work, including know-your-rights and family defense planning, when a family makes plans for children, pets and bills in the event of a crisis. Corazón AZ has partnered with Puente, another Phoenix organizing group that maintains a more regular presence at the courthouse.

Corazón AZ has sent Disciples of Christ, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Catholics, Unitarian Universalists and volunteers without a specific tradition to the courthouse. The majority have been lay people.

“If I can offer a word of prayer, if I have brought folks a rosary or just sat with them, give them a gentle touch on their back, a hug when they need it, this goes a long way to calm the nerves,” Contreras said. She reminds immigrants to breathe. “We are not in control of a lot, but we are in control of our breathing.”

Fear can also cause immigrants to “black out” during their hearings, leaving them unable to remember what happened, Contreras said, explaining that faith leaders can help explain what happened afterward. In the worst cases, fear can lead community members to skip their court dates, a guaranteed way to enter deportation proceedings, she said.

Court accompaniment is an expression of faith, Contreras said.

“I know that their higher power, or in my faith tradition, God, does not want this for them,” said Contreras, a Catholic. “God is not putting the barriers, and God also is not wanting us to look away.”

A former National Park Service director says a Trump administration proposal to transfer ownership of national parks to the states would be disaster, pointing to the challenge posed by the Dragon Bravo Fire raging at the Grand Canyon for nearly six weeks.

CONCHO, Ariz. (AP) — The village of Concho in the Arizona high desert is home to about 50 people — barely a dot in a sprawling, dusty landscape speckled with clumps of grass, scrub oak and juniper. Concho, about 200 miles northeast of Phoenix, has one restaurant, a Dollar General and a gas station that closes at 7 p.m.

But this remote hamlet is now at the center of a Catholic Church controversy.

Over the last six months, several members of this tight-knit community have been speaking up in support of a lay group of young Catholics who call themselves the League of the Blessed Sacrament. They say the group has revitalized this ignored, poverty-stricken region.

However, leaders at the New Mexico-based Diocese of Gallup, which oversees the region, contend that group members misrepresented themselves as a religious order and engaged in activity not sanctioned by the Catholic Church. Bishop James S. Wall ordered the group to leave parish housing and stop leading liturgy and teaching in the region’s Catholic school.

Group members — Giovanni Vizcarra, Edward Seeley, Eric Faris, Anthony Ribaya and Lisa Hezmalhalch — maintain they have represented themselves truthfully and followed the diocese’s orders. They believe the diocese, the poorest in the nation, asked them to leave because leaders are worried about potential liability stemming from the group taking three boys, victims of alleged domestic abuse, into their care.

Diocese spokesperson Suzanne Hammons said Wall and the diocese are “not afraid of liability” and are accustomed to dealing with sensitive situations in their parishes and schools. The diocese has a duty to properly investigate all allegations and go through official channels to ensure everyone’s safety, she said.

Why the group came to Concho

The men arrived in Concho about four years ago from the Canons Regular of Immaculate Conception, an Augustinian community in Santa Paula, California, after accusing their superior of abuse and inappropriate behavior. They were dismissed a month later, after an investigation by the order’s leaders in Rome concluded there was no evidence supporting those allegations.

Vizcarra said a sympathetic priest bought them plane tickets to Arizona, suggesting they take time to ponder their future. Concho was different from Los Angeles, where hundreds attended Mass on Sundays. They initially found the small community’s intimacy uncomfortable.

“People would ask you what your favorite color is or what your favorite cake is,” Vizcarra said. The ladies would call him “mijo,” a Spanish term of endearment that means “my son.”

Gradually, the sense of community became a healing salve and they learned to embrace it, he said.

Group revitalized struggling parish and community

More than two dozen residents from Concho and surrounding towns spoke passionately in support of the League of the Blessed Sacrament, saying the newcomers revitalized the community and parish. They’ve distributed food to the needy, hosted birthday parties for children whose families had nothing, breathed life into the village church with holy music and liturgy, and revived Concho’s historic Christmas fiesta that had recently floundered.

Angela Murphy, a longtime resident and local historian, said the men prayed at the church seven times a day.

“It was because of them that we heard church bells in Concho once again,” she said.

After they were dismissed from their religious community, the group stopped wearing their habits and requested community members not address them as “brothers” or “sister.” But people still would out of reverence, Murphy said.

Group members now wear black outfits, including sweatshirts bearing the logo of their organization, which Vizcarra said they founded years ago as seminarians in California.

In their four years in Concho, they started an animal farm, a thrift store, a Catholic bookstore, a farmer’s market and a coffee shop. The stores and a radio station, which the group purchased rights to, are in the heart of Concho. Vizcarra said they paid for projects with their teaching salaries, fundraising and donations from family members.

The group’s work with children

They taught at St. Anthony’s Catholic School in Show Low, a nearby town, until the diocese fired them in February.

Vizcarra taught religion, Spanish and robotics; Seeley, math and religion; Faris, art; Ribaya, music. Hezmalhalch taught first grade. They all taught catechism as well.

Several families shared stories of troubled or academically struggling children flourishing under their tutelage. Students who showed no interest in religion wanted to be baptized and confirmed after attending catechism, they said.

The men also cared for three boys who came from troubled homes, including two brothers. With permission of the boys’ mothers, they helped house the children with a local resident who opened up her rental unit.

One boy’s mother, Katherine Therese Heal, who shares custody of her son with Vizcarra, said the men have been strong role models for her son as she was divorcing his stepfather. She said her son, now 14, was depressed, had low self-esteem and loathed school.

“Now, he wants to go to college,” Heal said. “What the brothers have done with him is miraculous. They have been the answer to my prayers.”

Vizcarra said he and his colleagues initially balked at assuming parental roles.

“We felt these children needed normal families and we’re not parents or dads,” he said.

That reluctance eased when Heal’s son responded with joyful tears when asked if he wanted to be under their care. Heal confirmed that Vizcarra and the men had begun the process to adopt her son.

“While it feels strange because none of us signed up to be a parent, we believe this is a way God has shown us to help people in dire need,” Vizcarra said.

Community demands answers

Hope MacMonagle, a Concho native, said the group has done “more for our Catholic community in three years than the diocese has done in decades.”

“When the brothers came here, it was like a breath of fresh air,” she said. “I’m a cradle Catholic and I love my religion. But when they got here, it was like I was learning my religion all over again.”

MacMonagle said she and others have asked the diocese why this group was told to leave. They have been met with silence, she said.

“Sometimes, I get the feeling that people don’t listen to us because we are small, insignificant, just a few people in the middle of nowhere,” she said.

The group also was known in surrounding towns, such as Show Low, St. Johns and Snowflake. John and Ann Bunn, Show Low residents, met them at St. Rita’s parish. She said the group did not “entrench” themselves in the community.

“They were, rather, embraced by the people here because of their good deeds and the enormous amount of goodwill they’ve built here,” John Bunn said.

Longtime Concho resident Christine Bennett became emotional ticking through the answers she is demanding from the diocese.

“We just want to know why,” she said. “We see all that they’ve done to light up this community. Now, they’re being ripped out of our parish and our hearts. Why is this happening?”

Hammons said the diocese has not responded to residents because “the answers to these questions are not appropriate to air publicly.”

The way forward

Last month, the group moved to Vernon, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Concho. They’ve started a K-12 Catholic school. They are moving the farm animals as well but will maintain a presence in Concho with their shops and radio station.

Despite the struggle for acceptance from the diocese, group members said they’ve received the healing they sought in Concho through their community service. But it still hurts and “wasn’t supposed to be this way,” said Faris, a Protestant minister who converted to Catholicism and wanted to become a priest.

“But God has provided us a way to be more holy and in a way, more conformed to him.”

Faris and others say they still feel called to be priests, but are unsure if that will happen.

Seeley said he is focusing on service and prayer. All members say they are keeping up their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

Ribaya said he will never “sacrifice truth and justice for the sake of being a priest.”

“If God wants us to be priests, he’ll make it happen,” he said. “If it has to take 30 or 40 years, so be it.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

‘Sentí que fallé a mi familia’: el golpe invisible de Trump a la frontera en Yuma

Araceli Aquino-Valdez / Plumas Invitadas

Una noche de marzo, Isaac Valdez jugaba con su bebé de un año en casa. Acababa de terminar su turno como guardia de seguridad en una instalación de procesamiento de la Patrulla Fronteriza en Yuma, Arizona.

Entonces, su teléfono vibró. Era una notificación de WhatsApp.

Al leer el mensaje, su rostro cambió. Volvió a leerlo, esta vez más despacio. No había error: después de tres años de trabajo, su empleo había terminado con un simple mensaje de texto. La Patrulla Fronteriza había cancelado el contrato con la empresa de seguridad con la que trabajaba, y debía entregar su uniforme y equipo al día siguiente.

Isaac llevaba tiempo trabajando en esas instalaciones, con un salario de 30 dólares por hora. Ese sueldo le permitió comprar su primera casa y empezar una familia, todo antes de cumplir los 30.

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En sus campañas pasadas, la inmigración siempre ha sido un tema central para el presidente Donald Trump. Eso no cambió en su candidatura de 2024, con la que finalmente ganó las elecciones.

“Hacia finales del año pasado, hablábamos sobre lo que podría pasar con el cambio político. El regreso del presidente Trump, con un enfoque fuerte en seguridad fronteriza e inmigración, hacía evidente que su administración afectaría trabajos como el de mi esposo”, dijo Araceli, esposa de Isaac.

Lo que no se imaginaban era que la Oficina de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza (CBP) anunciaría el cierre de varias instalaciones temporales, incluyendo la de Yuma, debido a la caída en cruces fronterizos. Según la Casa Blanca y CBP, desde que Trump regresó a la presidencia, las detenciones en la frontera suroeste han disminuido en un 85%.

“Aunque intentamos mantenernos positivos, no esperábamos que las consecuencias llegaran tan rápido. Poco más de un mes después de que asumiera el cargo, llegó ese mensaje que le quitó su trabajo”, comentó.

La seguridad fronteriza y la inmigración son temas complejos y polémicos. Para muchos, la disminución de cruces fronterizos puede parecer una victoria, pero para la familia Valdez representó la pérdida de un centro laboral que sostenía a cientos de familias como la suya.

“En un lugar como Yuma”, señaló Isaac, “donde el mercado laboral ya es pequeño, el golpe se sintió aún más fuerte”.

“Es cierto que estas instalaciones eran temporales, pero la gente que trabajaba en ellas no. Personas como mi esposo dedicaron años de su vida ahí. Compraron casas, formaron familias”, expresó Araceli.

Ahora, las instalaciones ya no existen, pero la comunidad sigue sobreviviendo en Yuma mientras la población crece y las oportunidades disminuyen.

“Mi esposo no podía creer que todo terminara de un día para otro. Durante semanas seguía en shock. Era difícil aceptar que el lugar donde pasó casi todos sus días por años simplemente desapareciera”, recordó. “Eso lo afectó profundamente”.

Después de cinco años en los Marines, Isaac siempre trabajó duro, sin pasar mucho tiempo desempleado. Ahora, pasa el tiempo cuidando a la bebé mientras Araceli trabaja como profesional de comunicaciones para una organización comunitaria llamada Rural Arizona Engagement.

“Aunque valoramos el tiempo con nuestra hija, sé que esto ha afectado su confianza. Siempre fue un proveedor orgulloso y, perder esa identidad de forma tan repentina lo hizo cuestionar su valor. Me ha dicho más de una vez que siente que nos falló”, detalla Araceli con tristeza.

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Por si no lo leíste: Conecta Arizona gradúa a segunda generación de Plumas Invitadas; tenemos a 20 nuevos colaboradores

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Financieramente, la familia de Isaac y Araceli sobrevive con su ingreso. Apenas logran cubrir los gastos, cuidando cada dólar.

Si yo perdiera mi trabajo también, no sé qué sería de nosotros, pero trato de no pensar en eso. Tengo fe en que se abrirán nuevas puertas.

La instalación donde trabajaba no empleaba a una sola compañía. Había personal de seguridad, cuidadores, cocineros y más, todos contratados por distintas empresas. Cuando cerró, todos fueron despedidos.

Durante una venta del Día de los Caídos en JCPenney, una cajera reconoció a Isaac. Ella también había trabajado en la misma instalación, como cuidadora de familias y niños migrantes. Su equipo también fue despedido, y les compartió que fue difícil encontrar empleo desde entonces.

“Una amiga mía tenía un hermano que trabajaba como guardia en otra empresa contratada por el mismo sitio. También lo despidieron”, dijo Araceli.

Es que Yuma es así de pequeño, asegura. Todos conocen a alguien que trabajaba en ese lugar. Ahora está cerrado, y sus empleos desaparecieron, pero las personas siguen aquí, enfrentando un mercado laboral aún más limitado.

En abril de 2025, el condado de Yuma registró la tasa de desempleo más alta en todo Arizona, un 11.3 %, casi el triple del promedio estatal. El gobierno canceló estos contratos de forma abrupta, sin considerar a quienes dependían de ellos para vivir. Aunque muchos de estos trabajadores colaboraban codo a codo con agentes federales, no eran empleados del gobierno.

Al terminarse los contratos, los empleados fueron excluidos de cualquier conversación o apoyo. Muchos eran veteranos militares, como Isaac, y ni siquiera recibieron una advertencia previa, solo un mensaje de texto con la instrucción de devolver su equipo al día siguiente.

Un informe de 2024 del Centro de Educación y Fuerza Laboral de la Universidad de Georgetown recomienda invertir en capacitación, educación y desarrollo de infraestructura laboral en comunidades rurales. Aunque casi la mitad de los empleos rurales son considerados “buenos trabajos”, cada vez son más difíciles de encontrar. En ciudades como Yuma, las brechas son más profundas, pero las soluciones como la formación laboral o la planificación a largo plazo rara vez se priorizan.

“Hemos trabajado duro para llegar hasta aquí, pero cuando el ingreso de tu familia puede desaparecer de la noche a la mañana, sin red de apoyo, cuesta sentir que el esfuerzo realmente vale la pena”, comentó Isaac.

Araceli sostiene a su hija Azul entre sus brazos, la observa sonreír, mientras finca sus esperanzas en que la situación financiera del país no empeore bajo la administración de Trump. Ella espera que su hija tenga un mejor futuro.

“Quienes se levantan cada día, quienes sirven a su país, y quienes construyen sus vidas en comunidades como Yuma, merecen algo mejor. Necesitamos empleos confiables, liderazgo que escuche y sistemas que no nos dejen atrás”: Araceli.

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Nota: Los nombres y apellidos de algunas personas han sido cambiados para proteger su identidad.

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Conecta Arizona no es responsable del contenido de las columnas y artículos de nuestros colaboradores comunitarios. Las publicaciones de quienes colaboran con Conecta Arizona no expresan su línea editorial.

The post Refuerzo fronterizo bajo Trump deja sin trabajo a comunidades como Yuma appeared first on Conecta Arizona.

La organización Poder en Acción, que asiste a inmigrantes en Arizona, realizará este martes un taller llamado “Conoce tus derechos”, dirigido a empresarios que quieran aprender qué hacer legalmente y cómo responder si agentes de Inmigración llegan a sus negocios. La capacitación será de 6 pm a 7:30 pm en el 4414 N de la 7° Avenida en Phoenix, Arizona, y para más información se puede llamar al 602.919.7004.

“Estamos informando a nuestra gente sobre sus derechos, pero también a los empresarios, para que todos sepan qué hacer al momento de que venga Inmigración. Los empresarios deben tener un plan para poder saber cómo van a intervenir para proteger a sus clientes y también a sus empleados”, señaló Miros Mejía, de Poder en Acción, en declaraciones a La Hora del Cafecito, el programa de radio de Conecta Arizona.

Mejía, además, dijo que Poder en Acción acompaña a los inmigrantes que deben ir a sus citas en las cortes de Inmigración, para asistirlos ante posibles detenciones de ICE. “Mi mejor recomendación es que tienen que atender a nuestras cortes, pero no lo tienen que hacer solos porque también hay ese miedo de que si voy y qué tal si no regreso. El trabajo que estamos haciendo es también acompañar a las cortes, para que la persona no tenga que ir sola”, agregó Mejías, entrevistada por Maritza L. Félix.

Vamos a platicar de lo que hemos estado viviendo en Arizona en los últimos 6 meses, cuando gran parte de nuestra comunidad migrante se ha sentido más desafiada que nunca. ¿Qué han visto en las calles?

“Desde que empezamos en esta administración presidencial hemos visto más los ataques contra la comunidad latina, específicamente la comunidad migrante. Localmente aquí hemos visto ataques de ‘la migra’ que empezaron en las cortes. Y luego han incrementado donde hemos visto desde junio 10 que Inmigración se está viendo por todas partes de Arizona, están yendo a lugares públicos como los Home Depot, a hogares, a los trabajos a hacer los chequeos, estamos viendo Inmigración por todos lados. Estamos viendo familias y a nuestra comunidad separadas y no sabemos cómo va a seguir este proceso que tiene planeado esta Administración con las deportaciones, esto es algo que no hemos visto anteriormente”.

Hemos visto que bajo las directrices del presidente Donald Trump ha dicho que se iba a enfocar en ciertos lugares a la hora de cumplir con las leyes de inmigración y se supone que ha puesto una cuota de 3,000 detenciones y deportaciones al día, principalmente en ciudades que son gobernadas por demócratas, como Phoenix y Tucson en Arizona. Pero le ha puesto como un énfasis muy importante a los negocios latinos también. ¿Cómo se pueden proteger estos dueños de negocios en dado caso de que al final de cuentas los agentes lleguen tocando las puertas de sus comercios?

“En negocios hay áreas que son partes públicas y partes privadas. Los empresarios se pueden proteger sabiendo sus derechos, cómo cumplir con las órdenes que lleva Inmigración y también saber que tienen el derecho de no cumplir con esas órdenes. Ellos tienen el derecho de trabajar o no trabajar con Inmigración, pero no muchos empresarios saben que pueden hacer eso. También tienen el derecho de defender a sus empleados y a sus clientes presentes. Y el modo de hacer esto es aprender cómo hacer entender sus derechos, también crear un plan de acción para que no solo el propietario sepa qué acciones tomar, pero también los gerentes; es activar a todos los empleados en el negocio para que todos estén al tanto de cuáles son sus derechos en caso de que llegue Inmigración”.

Cuando estaba el sheriff (Joe) Arpaio las redadas en los lugares de trabajo eran muy invasivas, podíamos ver las patrullas, el despliegue policíaco que se hacía para arrestar principalmente a los trabajadores bajo la ley estatal de sanción al empleador, ahora es una directiva federal. ¿Cuáles son los negocios que podrían estar más vulnerables, los que sí necesitan cumplir con el E-Verify? ¿Cuáles son los que deberían abrir la puerta y cuáles podrían decir ‘aquí no entra nadie’?

“Los negocios que hemos visto que fueron más impactados al principio fueron carnicerías, gasolinerías, que tienen también intercambio de dinero. Hemos visto cómo han cambiado ahora, por ejemplo a las tiendas como los Food City, los súper, estamos viendo más lugares donde gente va a comprar comida. Cualquier otro negocio puede ser impactado, no sabemos la agenda de esta Administración. Queremos que cada empresa, cada negocio pueda tener un plan de acción, que todos los empleados puedan saber sus derechos y crear un plan de seguridad para que todos estén listos en caso de esto pase. Es todo inseguro cómo va a procesar la Administración Trump la segunda ronda de redadas o qué va a pasar. En Poder en Acción estamos informando a nuestra gente sobre sus derechos, pero también a los empresarios, para que todos sepan qué hacer al momento de que venga Inmigración”.

¿Cómo hacemos también para proteger a los clientes? Porque hemos visto últimamente que las autoridades tienen la discrecionalidad, por ejemplo, de preguntar el estatus migratorio, no solamente a la persona a la que van a buscar sino a las personas que están alrededor de ella. Esto siempre se ha hecho, pero por un período de tiempo estuvo como más tranquilo, pero ahora los agentes sí están utilizando esta discrecionalidad y eso es lo que también tiene con desasosiego a nuestra comunidad.

“Sí, eso es cierto. Como propietarios, después de tener este conocimiento legal, saber derechos, saber cómo hablar con los agentes de Inmigración o cómo pedir las órdenes, otra cosa es saber que en espacios públicos si Inmigración nos pide nuestra información no tenemos que cumplir y decirles nuestra nacionalidad, pero sí nos podemos identificar, dar nuestra información y luego preguntar si estamos arrestados o no. Tenemos que hacer verbal esa pregunta porque necesitamos saber si nos van a dejar ir o no. Si no tienen una orden judicial firmada por un juez para uno lo que hemos visto también es que Inmigración no está cumpliendo con las leyes. Hay casos de personas que se las han llevado en espacios públicos y por eso es importante que los empresarios sepan qué hacer en esos casos: documentar si Inmigración no está cumpliendo con la ley y si está llevando a personas injustamente. Es difícil, porque ahí se va a abusar de los derechos humanos. Los empresarios deben tener ese plan de poder saber cómo van a intervenir para proteger a sus clientes y también a sus empleados”.

Otra de las preguntas que hemos recibido es el temor que existe por la presencia de las autoridades migratorias afuera de las cortes de Inmigración. Muchos de estos pequeños propietarios son personas que aún tienen casos pendientes con el sistema judicial y que no saben si deberían o no presentarse en estas audiencias que ya tienen pactadas desde hace mucho; ellos pensaban que por cumplir con todo a tiempo y estarse presentando iba a haber algún tipo de recompensa migratoria al final, pero ahora les da mucho miedo tener que acercarse a una corte de Inmigración cuando podrían cerrar su caso y terminar deportados.

“Eso es cierto. El miedo es válido, es muy válido porque no sabemos cuándo va a estar Inmigración. Esto de Inmigración en las Cortes en las cortes es algo nuevo, es un piloto nuevo que se vio en diferentes ciudades, no solo en Phoenix. Mi mejor recomendación es que tenemos que cumplir con esas órdenes y atender a nuestras cortes, pero no lo tienen que hacer solos porque también hay ese miedo de que si voy y qué tal si no regreso. Para lo que está pasando hay mucho movimiento y trabajo hecho por organizaciones comunitarias. Mi recomendación es si usted o un ser querido tiene que ir a su corte póngase en contacto para pedir que alguien lo acompañe. El trabajo que estamos haciendo es también acompañar a las cortes, para que la persona no tenga que ir sola. Porque cuando una persona es llevada por Inmigración es muy difícil para que nuestros seres queridos nos busquen y sepan dónde vamos a estar. Es para dejarle saber a tus seres queridos lo más rápido posible, para que no tengan que llevar tiempo sin escuchar de ti. Hay un equipo que está apoyando en las cortes y el número es 480.506.7437”.

Nos llegan comentarios a WhatsApp de que algunos pequeños propietarios decidieron no hacer su declaración de impuestos por el miedo de la cooperación de las autoridades migratorias con las agencias fiscales, en este caso con el IRS, para evitar volver a ponerse en riesgo con las autoridades. ¿Eso es algo que se trata también dentro del taller de ‘Conoce tus derechos’?

“Sí, vamos a ver un poco más de esa información legal en el taller que vamos a presentar este martes (24 de junio) y también vamos a dar recursos sobre abogados de inmigración. Es importante que consulten con abogados de inmigración, especialmente estas preguntas, para que puedan hacer una decisión de cómo quieren seguir adelante con sus impuestos. Quiero invitar a empresarios a los que les gustaría ser parte de una red de negocios donde ellos quieran saber, tener herramientas para prepararse mejor”.

The post En Arizona, Poder en Acción capacita a empresarios sobre qué hacer y cómo responder si Inmigración llega a sus negocios appeared first on Conecta Arizona.

Local community organizations and volunteers in Patagonia are banding together to offer free lunches to local kids starting June 9.

The post Community Preps Summer Lunch Program for Kids appeared first on Patagonia Regional Times.

Federal prosecutors in New Mexico charged 28 people on Monday for crossing into the new 170-square-mile “National Defense Area” created earlier this month by the Trump administration. The president said he was permitting U.S. troops to detain people from coming to the U.S. from Mexico.