Daughter of deported coffee farmer trying to keep operation afloat

HONAUNAU — At this time of year, Kona coffee farmer Andres Magana Ortiz would be checking the farms he manages, making sure the trees are ready for the first major round of harvesting and preparing for the arrival of cherry to the wet mill.

The farmer personally owns about 12 acres, but takes care of closer to 140, many of which are on farms owned by elderly people.

But Magana Ortiz isn’t here to welcome that first major harvest. Last month, he boarded a plane off the island and eventually made his way to the town of El Rincon de don Pedro in the Mexican state of Michoacan.

The man, who came to the United States without a visa in 1989 at the age of 15, was ordered to leave the country, forcing him to leave behind the business he built and the family who’s now trying to keep the operation going.

“I’ve always helped him, so I’m not super lost,” said Victoria Magana Ledesma, 21, the coffee farmer’s daughter. “But I’ve never done it by myself; it’s a lot of responsibility to bear. It’s really harder than I thought.”

Magana Ledesma is also finishing up an accounting internship at the Four Seasons and will be returning to school, albeit for limited days so she can help keep the business running.

But even with the help of family and the farm’s workers, Magana Ledesma said on Saturday at her dad’s mill that they can only keep the farm running without her dad for so long.

“He needs to be back within a year for this to stay the way it is,” she said.

Magana Ledesma, born in California, was a little over 2 years old when she moved to Hawaii around 1999.

Her dad came first, she said, arriving as a migrant laborer to pick coffee.

“And it paid better than the lemon and the orange orchards did over there,” Magana Ledesma said, “so he brought me and my mom over.”

After several years of picking coffee, her dad eventually got a job with a commercial farm and became the head of the coffee picking crew.

A few years later, the farm changed hands, and new management began cracking down on undocumented laborers, leaving Magana Ortiz without a job, despite his position in the company.

Fortunately for the family, a man whose farms Magana Ortiz had been taking care of offered him the farm on which the mill now stands in exchange for labor and a percentage of the coffee.

That, said Magana Ledesma, gave her father the chance to do his own thing.

Growing up, her dad’s immigration status didn’t seem so out of the ordinary.

What she didn’t know, though, was how “difficult the consequences would be,” and the fear of immigration officers.

“You’d see a white van and it was just scary,” she said. “But it’s just, it’s part of your life, and I know so many other people besides my dad and it’s just normal.”

The 2016 presidential campaign presented its own concerns, when the election put a sharp light on the way immigration laws have been enforced in the country.

“When the election happened, it was a scary time period because of the viewpoints the current president expresses about immigrants and how he kind of categorizes and just makes generalizations about all immigrants and especially Mexican immigrants,” she said. “I guess that was just a scary time because you saw how someone can view you because of where you’re born and how you’re judged based on that, how you’re automatically stereotyped.”

Despite what was being said, though, she said, she didn’t think things could change as rapidly as they did.

“I had never felt fear of racism against immigrants like I do now, because it was always there, but now stuff is actually happening to people,” she said. “And I think it’s just dumb because we’re experiencing a shortage of laborers. So I think when we feel that as a country, maybe it’ll make us rethink.”

Even with the challenges of being an undocumented immigrant, Magana Ledesma said her father loved watching the business thrive.

“He loves being here and seeing his own business, his own thing growing,” she said.

That’s not so easy in Mexico, she said, where business owners run the risk of robbery or shakedowns from criminal gangs.

“It’s hard for people to even have a living because it’s dangerous to have it,” she said. “To be able to have your own thing and not be scared that you become a target for someone? It’s a privilege here and it’s awesome.”

An immigration court originally determined in 2011 that Magana Ortiz could be deported, but a work authorization and stays of deportation let the man remain in the country for the next several years.

In 2016, he married his current wife, a U.S. citizen, who filed a petition to put him on track for permanent residency.

When the new administration changed at the beginning of this year though, attitudes toward immigration enforcement changed with it.

This past March, officials denied his application for a stay of deportation. A fourth one filed in April was denied after just two weeks.

His wife’s petition was also denied. His attorney has filed a notice of appeal to challenge that decision with the Board of Immigration Appeals.

This past week, Magana Ledesma turned 21, making her eligible to file her own petition to get her dad permanent residency. But because he’s been deported, the man is now subject to a 10-year bar before the feds will even begin to consider her petition, she said.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has also introduced a bill to make Magana Ortiz eligible for legal, permanent residency in the United States.

Given their many options, Magana Ledesma said, she feels confident her father will make it back to the country.

Their case has also been given an extra boost by an appellate court opinion that made national headlines this past May.

After Magana Ortiz’s attorney filed an emergency motion asking the court to halt his client’s deportation, 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt responded with harsh words for the government’s move to deport the man even though the court had no authority to block it.

“It is difficult to see how the government’s decision to expel him is consistent with the president’s promise of an immigration system with ‘a lot of heart,’” the judge wrote. “I find no such compassion in the government’s choice to deport Magana Ortiz.”

Magana Ledesma called the judge’s opinion “incredible.”

“Because the person who decided that my dad should leave didn’t want to make that decision, and he’s a judge,” she said.

Even though the judge had no power to stop the deportation, she said, he still took the opportunity to recognize what he called “contrary to the values of this nation and its legal system.”

“That letter that he did, I believe, it was his way of helping,” said Magana Ledesma.

Not only has it put focus on Magana Ortiz’s case, it’s also brought more focus on those affected by immigration enforcement.

“Many people get deported every day and nobody blinks an eye,” she said.

With that in mind, she said, she hopes the national conversation not only helps her own family, but also brings attention to other families in similar situations.

“And I think I’d just like people to understand immigrants are not here to take things that are someone else’s,” she said. “I think they are just trying to have a better life than they did in their own country, to actually have a chance at having a decent living.”