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In the 1970s, Estrada organized for farmworker rights alongside Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, participating in marches for the United Farm Workers and organizing grape boycotts in East Los Angeles.

According to the internal EPA documents, these grants, which range from about $20,000 to $20 million, include efforts such as reducing childhood asthma by improving air quality in affordable housing units; enhancing wildfire preparedness in farmworker communities; and improving drinking water on tribal lands.

It would provide over $1 billion for construction and repair of farmworker housing.

Farmworker advocates have also called for changes, saying the program is ripe for exploitation — because a worker’s permission to be in the country is tied to the employer — and should be bolstered with additional protections.

“In our perspective, it was definitely meant to terrorize the community, and especially the Latino and farmworker community,” Sofia Corona, a directing attorney with the UFW Foundation in Bakersfield, said of the operation.