Immigration Raid

One summer morning circa 1948 the La Migra (immigration) threw a raid on the Simons Brickyard. They drove up with several migra buses. They proceeded to round up the workers, all of them, since every worker that worked in the yard was Latino/Mexican. I with several of my friends stood watching as the workers were lined up to get into the buses. As I watched I spotted my dad in line to get into one of the buses. Not knowing any better at age twelve I run to my dad and said to him: “pops, they can’t take you, you have papers” I said that because I had overheard some migra agent asked some of the workers something about “your papers” I didn’t know anything about “papers” I just assumed my pops had them.

“Hijo (son) let me get in the bus. La migra will be passing out sandwiches, after I get some I’ll get off” my pops said to me. Not long after my pops walked off the bus eating a sandwich and holding another one. Later at home he was telling us how when la migra agent was passing out the sandwiches my pops asked him in very good English if he could have two sandwiches since he had not had breakfast yet. Pops said the agent told him “you speak very good English for a Mexican” pops replied to the agent: “I should, I've been here all my life and went to the local schools” My pops said the agent threw two sandwiches at him and told him to get his ass of the bus. I wondered how pops knew about the sandwiches, I asked him and he told me that this was not the first time he gone through this routine.

I later learned that there were many illegals working at the brickyard since about 30% of the workers were taken away. By the next summer most of them were back working at the brickyard.