Fire & ICE

[As of the time of original publishing] Over 70,000 people were arrested by ICE in 2025 as it has carried out its illegal and reckless rampage through American cities.¹ Since the passage of the “big beautiful bill” in early July, ICE’s fearmongering, blatant disregard for due process, and explicit profiling of Black and brown people have, intentionally, caused a state of panic for people across the country. ICE has been guaranteed $170 billion over the next four years, making it a more robustly funded organization than many countries’ entire national militaries, including Italy, Israel, and Brazil.² 

ICE activity this year has also had a dramatic impact on specific industries that rely more heavily on immigrant labor, primarily agriculture and construction. From swarming Home Depot parking lots to illegally disrupting construction sites, ICE has intentionally targeted Black and brown laborers, with no regard for their immigration status and their rights, while completely ignoring the people who have benefited from their labor. This came to impact our close friends at New Frameworks when co-owner and panel carpenter Jose Ignacio “Nacho” De La Cruz was violently taken by ICE without cause earlier this year. 

Nacho migrated to Vermont when he was 21. Previously, he was a farmer in Tabasco, Mexico. Over the years, his harvests of corn and melons dwindled, and it became increasingly difficult to produce crops on his land. He attributes this decline to a combination of increased extreme weather events and local petroleum extraction by Mexico’s national oil and gas corporation, Pemex. Reports have shown that Pemex habitually dumps toxic sludge around the region, killing crops and local wildlife. Residents of Tabasco have been protesting their polluting practices since at least 1996. This, combined with more extreme flooding, dramatic sea level rise in the region, and more frequent extreme weather events, generally made farming near impossible. ^{3 4 5}

Once Nacho was in Vermont, he found work where many migrants do there, on a dairy farm. It’s estimated that there are over 1,500 migrant workers, often working 16-hour days with no days off, producing the dairy that has become Vermont’s largest agricultural product. As Nacho told us, migrant workers are often subjected to very poor, unsanitary, overcrowded living conditions, pay below the minimum wage, and other labor law violations. Nacho told us that workers were often living three to four people per room, all working different shifts, making it incredibly hard to get a full night’s sleep. Rooms were often infested with mice and cockroaches. Most farms still typically pay workers $10-11 per hour, well below Vermont’s minimum wage. 

Through this experience, Nacho became involved with Migrant Justice, a Vermont-based organization working for the economic justice and human rights of migrant farmworkers in the region. Migrant Justice’s Milk With Dignity program helps educate farmworkers on their rights and offers dairy farm owners incentives for meeting worker-defined standards of living and jobsite safety measures. This program has compelled participating farms to: create dignified living conditions for workers, reduce shifts to eight hours per day instead of the typical 12-16, offer at least one day off per week, give breaks for meals, and offer sick leave. By pressuring the national corporations, Nacho told us the program is actually a net positive for farm owners and workers, who are both being shortchanged by corporate interests. 

In a cruel abuse of their power, it was through Nacho’s connection to dairy farmworkers, despite no longer living or working on the farms, that he was targeted by border patrol and ICE, which led to his imprisonment. On the day of Nacho’s arrest, he was dropping off food at some of the dairy farms near Vermont’s northern border with Canada. Sharing traditional Mexican food with farmworkers had become a tradition for him on his days off, and on this occasion, he had decided to bring his 18-year-old stepdaughter, Heidi, with him.

We spoke with Nacho about his experience with ICE, and we also spoke with New Frameworks co-founder and co-CEO Ace McArleton about how communities and companies worked together to support Nacho, along with lessons for resisting ICE on your site. New Frameworks is a high-performance natural building co-op that produces pre-manufactured straw panels and ADUs, among other construction services. They are also a multi-racial, women-, queer- and trans-owned co-op that has led the way for more equitable building practices since 2006. We’re grateful for their pioneering efforts and their willingness to share their experience with us. 

The Last Straw Can you tell us about the day you were arrested as you were driving around dropping off food? 

Nacho De La Cruz After a stop I’d made, a border patrol officer started following us, but without flashing his lights. He followed us through the whole town, and out of the town, and then he flashed the lights.

I stopped almost in front of a house, because I was afraid that something would happen and there wouldn’t be people witnessing it. 

First it was an immigration officer. He came up to me at the window and spoke to me in English, but I asked if he spoke Spanish, because I don’t speak English. He responded in Spanish that he did speak a little.

He asked me to give him my license. And I asked him what the reason for my detention was. He just pointed out his uniform. He told me ‘I’m from the border patrol and you have to give me your identification.’ I told him that I wouldn’t do that until he gave me a reason.

Then he told me that he was going to go to his car and that he was going to come back later, that I should wait for him in my car. I just put the car in park and I waited for him.

When he came back about three minutes later, there were two immigration officers. 

They totally stopped speaking Spanish to me after that. I dialed the Migrant Justice emergency number because they translate for detention issues. I put my phone on speaker so that they could translate for me with the officers, but they didn’t accept the call, they ignored it.

Then they told me that I wasn’t cooperating. They took a gun and broke the driver side window of my car. All the glass broke. An officer put his hand inside my car to unlock the door. I remember the officer cut his hand on the glass.

[Nacho was violently removed from the car by Immigration officers and handcuffed, along with his stepdaughter. Their personal belongings were taken without their consent, and his driver side window was destroyed.] 

NDLC It was very difficult to see my daughter getting arrested. She was crying. I told her she was fine, but I was in the same situation as her, so I couldn’t do very much.

From then on, they separated us, one in each patrol car, and took us to a detention center close by.

We knew we had the right to a lawyer, and we asked to make a phone call, for our family to know that we were detained. They said we didn’t have any rights and that this wasn’t going to happen until we cooperated with them. But we had the training to know that we had the right to remain silent and not cooperate until there was a lawyer present. 

They took everything from my bag, from my pants, they took my wallet. And they took all my information from my license. They never asked me my name or anything, they just used my license. 

My daughter didn’t have any identification on her. When we were in the first detention center, they wanted to take her fingerprints and she wouldn’t let them. Two officers grabbed her, one grabbed her hand to put it on the scanner, and one bent her arm back so she couldn’t stop him. They broke one of her nails doing that. She was crying and screaming that they were hurting her, but they didn’t care. 

A translator wanted me to talk to my daughter, to convince her to cooperate, because if not, they would do it by force and they didn’t want to continue hurting her, was what he told me. He ​​also told me that after we were processed, they would let us make a phone call.

They moved us to another detention center, and [my daughter and I] rode in the patrol car together. I told her I didn’t want to keep seeing her get hurt, and to please let them take her fingerprints and cooperate with them so they wouldn’t hurt her anymore. At the next detention center, they processed us both. We continued asking, but they never let us make a call to let our family, or a lawyer, know that we were detained there.

[Nacho and Heidi were arrested around noon on June 14th and held in detention for over 10 hours before being transferred a third time. Throughout that process they were never allowed to notify family of their whereabouts, or to contact a lawyer. Late into the night of the 14th, Nacho was moved to a local prison in Vermont, and Heidi was sent to a women’s prison in New York. 

At the same time, because of Nacho’s phone call to Migrant Justice during his arrest, Nacho’s family and coworkers were already mobilizing and looking for them. Upon locating them, they were informed by the family’s lawyer how rushed the process had been, and that Heidi’s transportation across state lines was actually illegal. Through a quick injunction she was eventually returned to Vermont.]

NDLC We spent a month locked up in those prisons. It was very difficult, but thank God for the entire community here in Vermont. They supported us a lot.

TLS We understand you were released from the prison on bond and are still facing legal issues. Can you tell us what the status of your case is? 

NDLC I’m still in the process. My case hasn’t been closed. I still don’t know what’s going to happen. But here I am, still working, trying to change the world a little. Next month I’m going to court, so I’m going to need a lot of support, but yes, I think, first of all, that God will go well and we will continue working here in what we like to do..

TLS You’ve told us about Migrant Justice’s Milk with Dignity program, which you joined as a farmworker, living in those unsanitary conditions, working those long hours. Could you speak a little about New Frameworks building a home for farmworkers, and Migrant Justice’s efforts to reduce human rights violations in the local construction industry?

NDLC Yeah [because of the funding from the Milk With Dignity program] there’s been opportunities for the owners to build new houses because the housing where the workers live is no longer useful. That’s how we connect with the ranchers. I was a rancher once, I know what I would like my house to be for me, and for my colleagues. We’re designing many houses for workers which are ecological. We’re using straw to make the walls. It’s very cool.

And yes, Migrant Justice is also leading a program called Building Dignity, which is basically a copy of the Milk with Dignity program, but for the construction industry, with construction workers. There are many of the same problems. Contractors also provide housing for their workers sometimes, and have them living with three, four people in a room. It gets a bit more complicated in terms of salary [negotiations] for the workers, because there are so many different types of jobs in construction, but [Migrant Justice] is working with the whole community. 

TLS You’ve already touched on this from a few different angles, Nacho, but in the face of so many terrible things, how do you think about making a better world?

NDLC For me, a better world is basically about [New Frameworks] founding principles. We have zero discrimination in this company. We’re very open, to any type of gender or people of color, whatever you want. We have always known what we want to project in the construction industry. That not only men can do construction, but also women can do construction. Then the vision of the company in terms of climate change. We have to promote that construction be a little bit more natural.

And aside from everything that we are building, we don’t want to keep all this information to ourselves, so we are sharing it through our little school called the Seed Program, with many other companies that want to do this type of work and come to us to learn. It’s very nice to know that other people are trying to do something for climate change also.

Gavin Fraser (The Last Straw) How was the decision made at New Frameworks to be very public about Nacho’s situation? 

Ace McArleton I guess we’ve always been very transparent. People have their own reasons and their own times, and so it’s not a critique of anybody, but closets don’t really help anybody. Being clear about who we are and brave and bold helps everybody and helps make a better world. Our company has always been run on that premise. So when Nacho was taken with Heidi, so suddenly and so violently, I mean, we had obviously all been aware of the larger trends that were scary even back in the spring with the regime, so we were actually a lot of us were all gathering and like getting ready to go march [for the first No Kings Day]. I was at a friend’s house with my kids and dad when I got the call from Nacho’s partner Rossy letting me know what had happened. I think we pretty much kicked into crisis gear. One of the first things that was clear was [talking to] all of our [New Frameworks] members who are in any way classified as immigrants individually. I didn’t want to talk to anybody or give any interviews until we had decided what we wanted to do as a company. We had started a Signal chat and then I also asked for a special board meeting to figure out a media plan. This is so much work: who’s going to talk to the media and what media. That day when Nacho and Heidi were taken, we all mobilized to drive up to the border station.

GF I think it’s so rare for an organization to put that much time and energy and money to spend time doing that instead of working on building projects. 

AM Yeah, [I’ve shared this diagram that shows] the trades as this circle and there’s little satellite circles like gender, race, colonialism, capitalism [around it and there’s a] big circle drawn around all of them. We don’t have to wait for people to give us permission to create the world that we want. [That] doesn’t mean we don’t have to contend with the reality that we’re in. We absolutely have to make money to stay open and to have our doors open. And so we have to contend and work within the structures that exist and were handed to us. [But] we also don’t have to wait for permission to recreate and redraw those lines and those circles. That’s kind of been the way that we’ve designed the business: to create as much as possible the world that we want. It’s not always the most profitable way to design a business, but it’s the most rich in life.

GF I imagine the network that you were able to draw on at that moment, is partly a result of the ethics of the company. Could you tell us about that informal network and what parts they’ve been playing? 

AM It was the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. Solidarity is sort of second nature to that group. For them [it immediately made sense to support New Frameworks]. It was very heartwarming [that] the little bit more conventional green building community, that we have been a part of for almost two decades now in the Northeast, particularly through the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA), threw down in their own ways. A business group that we were a part of for a number of years, called Building Energy Bottom Lines, wrote a letter of support for us, and everybody there signed it personally. They sent resources to [Nacho’s Gofundme] and they posted on social media. There was an architect who is a part of that group who basically was like “whatever happens to you, it happens to me; this is personal. This is an affront to my craft”.

We had green builders in Vermont who we actually aren’t close to ask “what can we do? Our whole company is ready to do something. What do you want from us? We have these ideas.” The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Chapter for Vermont organized a round table and the Architect’s Newspaper reached out to do a piece [on Nacho’s situation].

Just seeing the way that people saw themselves reflected personally in this was one of the most powerful and beautiful things that came out of this very frightening and violent occurrence.

GF You’ve already been talking about the diversity of the network you were able to pull on, from politicians to national organizations to local organizations. New Frameworks seems so rooted locally, but is also a leader nationally. Could you say a little bit about how you’ve fostered that community and the diversity of it? 

AM I think that it might have to do with mine and [co-founder] Jacob [Racusin]’s worldview, which is very rooted in the local and connection to place. I don’t know if you all have ever run into Murray Bookchin’s work on social ecology but I went to the Institute for Social Ecology here in Vermont in my early 20s, and it very much influenced [my thinking]. [Bookchin] talks about the specific and the general and how there is a dialectic that exists between those two things. [Even though] we’re very rooted where we are in place, [we are also] a part of these larger ecological systems. There are connections that exist on multiple different kinds of scales and multiple different kinds of levels. So that’s kind of like a philosophical way, I guess, of answering you. And then like a practical way of answering you is just that being connected to people has always been at the heart of our practice and our beliefs. I don’t think that there is work that exists that isn’t either in relations with plant relatives, or mineral relatives, or human relatives, [or something like that].

It’s [also] partly because when we stay in one silo, you do really limit what your creativity is, and what the problem solving can look like. When we have these problems that are systemic, we need solutions that are systemic. But the solutions also have to be rooted in a real place, like you can’t just have these sort of theoretical things that you try to apply [the same] to everybody. They have to be grounded in the specific experience of everybody. [Bookchin] used to [say that] there are these general principles that can be applied in these very specific ways and have to be particularized into a location and vice versa. So maybe the particularizations are going to change some of the general things that we [had assumed]. So [that’s the] dialectic that exists. 

Okay, that was all very theoretical. I can be more specific if you want. 

GF That’s very poetic. I liked it. Turning our attention to the present and potentially the future, and knowing that our readership is primarily people working in architecture, engineering, and construction: what should we do? What do you think is the most important sort of North star? 

AM [As far as preempting ICE raids goes,] businesses can mark private and public spaces. [Even though] we’ve seen at this point that constitutional guardrails are not reliable, we’re acting as if they matter and defending them. It’s been really important [to delineate] the boundary [so that] if there is someone who crosses that boundary, you have clear demarcation of that crossing [if your case goes to court].

At our shop we actually lock everything all the time. We recently have gotten cameras and an intercom system so that we don’t have to open the door to talk to anybody. Those are just the physical kind of defense things that we can have in place [at our main facilities].

OSHA actually recommends that whenever there’s an active job site, you mark it off. Most people don’t necessarily follow that practice, but [OSHA] likes for you to use stakes and to mark out with caution tape the area that you’re working. What we have employed is cones, stakes, and then caution tape and signs noting “private construction area,” [and] “no entry without permission.”

[More broadly, the North star for people working in architecture, engineering, and construction] is relationships. Jacob, my business partner and co-founder of New Frameworks, Chris Magwood, and I gave this presentation in 2019 at the NESEA Building Energy Conference in Boston. We got asked to do the keynote like one month before the [conference] and we threw together this presentation all about embodied carbon. One of the things we talked about is the carbon cycle and why the architecture/engineering/construction (AEC) industry would need to understand it. [Most people’s first reaction was] like “that is so out there. I’m not an earth scientist. I’m not doing research on climate or whatever. I care about the climate, but like, just tell me what to do!” But part of what we were trying to say is that we are in an interconnected reality in our world. In order to understand the choices that we make as builders, designers, engineers, architects, developers, we need to understand more about how we fit and how we are able to influence and also are influenced by relationships that we’re in with other people, with plants, with place, [and] with other kinds of material. 

[We also talked about how] there’s carbon capture and storage that people are talking about, where huge machines are going to pull carbon out of the sky and inject it into the earth. We said, “let’s look around: plants are carbon capture and storage technology literally given to us by the world that we inhabit.”

We need to see ourselves as participants, as gardeners, as active learners, as vulnerable participants within a process that we have some agency in. Everyone has agency. We have the ability to choose what kinds of choices we’re going to make and how we will be wise and how we will be a part of processes and how we will construct solutions creatively within that. I think that it’s hard because it’s a complicated answer. But I think that the path to it is [asking ourselves] “What matters to me? Where do I live? What are the things that make my heart sing? What are the things that I love to do? Who are the people that I love? What are the things that I love?” It’s about both understanding and learning more about how we are a part of the world systems. And then taking wise action with others in relationships. That’s the blueprint.