[gentle acoustic guitar music] [tractor rumbling] [workers speaking Spanish] [workers speaking Spanish] - Sylvia Riez: This is our home sometimes.

You can see inside.

- [speaking Spanish] - For sure, I'm stranded.

I got a home where I could be inside for a couple days more until Sunday.

[all singing in Spanish] [gentle acoustic guitar music] - They're stranded.

Nallie want to look for a house for them because they see the way they are.

[girl giggling] - There was not a lot of housing.

And more migrant workers are coming up.

My name is Maria Dias, and what I do is I am the caretaker here.

And I try to help each family, different ways what they need, clothing, food, whatever they need, I try to help 'em.

I went to the thrift shop, so they're not new, but... - Oh, that's okay.

I just needed sweaters.

- Maria: We ask 'em, y'know, what their needs are.

If they need jobs, we refer 'em to a job service.

They have a job right now.

The only thing is that they don't have housing.

But they're working on it, but I said, "Don't worry about housing."

They could stay here 14 days.

There were so many coming through that I just, I lost count.

When my parents came, there were eight of us and my parents.

When we came to Wisconsin, we came on a train.

When we got off, we didn't know where we were.

We just got off.

And when I took this job, I said, "Well, I'm gonna take it so maybe I can do a difference.

Maybe I can help."

And I was very excited, but emergency shelter, which when my parents came, there was no emergency shelter.

We had to sleep wherever we landed.

- Okay, I am Rachael Garza.

And I came down here to look for work.

- Fernando Garza: Went to Oregon and back to Wisconsin from Minnesota.

And it's been a total of ten days from Minnesota to Oregon and here to Wisconsin.

It's been ten days, and we're a family of five.

Me and my wife and three kids.

And the five of us slept inside this cab.

I slept sitting down here and my wife slept in the passenger side, and all the sons slept in the middle, sitting down.

The three of them sitting down, and then my daughter slept down here on this side, on the floor.

And my son, he sleep on the other side.

That's how we sleep inside the truck for ten days.

And then on a Monday morning, that's when they told us about this place here.

They said emergency shelter, and we come over here, and we've been here ever since.

We haven't been able to move.

- We're gonna be here for 14 days, you know.

My little girl sleeps here.

Me and my husband sleeps in the bed.

And my two kids sleeps there.

And it's small.

We're pack in here.

- I don't know how many days I've missed of school there in Texas.

Like right now, being here.

Mm, we might leave outta here, or we might wait for a check or 'til we get tires or get money for the gas.

- These are used tires.

They came with the truck when I bought it.

I've been driving, went to Oregon and back, looking for work and looking for housing.

They're out of balance, you know.

Like I said, we've traveled about 3,500 miles looking for jobs.

Look at this rip right here.

And so you can tell, it's already starting to lose air.

And I don't know; if it does lose air, you know, it make it all that harder for me to move around and look for work.

And basically, the four tires are all the same.

So my father, you know, he's from Mexico, you know.

He went through hell trying to get those papers so he could become a citizen, and just, he worked and sent nine kids to school at the same time.

And then, you know, a migrant, it's hard to get top wage, you know?

You work for minimum wage all your life, you know.

I don't know.

I came out of service, you know, as a sergeant, you know.

And after four years, and now I'm back to where I started from, working the fields.

And I've been looking at houses, and they're just...

They're ridiculous, really.

Too high.

They ask for 300, 400 in deposit and 300, 400 in rent and they want it before you can move in.

And people like us, we ain't even got $10 between the both of us to, you know, for a down payment at least.

So we're just stranded here until our time is up to move out.

- Them, the guy that's right there, their family, they're in the same position.

[children speaking Spanish] [adults speaking Spanish] - Georgia Perez: He's five months old.

And he's been in the hospital before.

And last time, the doctor told me if he would get that fever again, I could lose him anytime.

I found out he had an infection in his ears, on his throat, bronchitis, and high fever.

When I took him, he had 103.

For a five-month-old baby, it's too much fever.

- And this one, she's mostly awake.

But they had the same thing.

I've had her in the hospital also.

- We're tired, really.

What we want is to settle down.

Settle down in a place and send our kids to school.

Let 'em finish school and get their degree.

But this way, how can we do it?

If they refuse us anywhere we go.

What do they expect from us?

I mean, I don't want my kids to work all their life in migrant work.

I don't, 'cause I work all my life.

I want what's best for my kids.

- I've done a couple phone calls for some families, and they say, "Okay, you can come and see the house."

But when they ask, "What's your name?"

And if I say, "Hernandez," if I say, "Santos," if I say, "Gonzalez," they pause for a little while.

And then I say, "Is there a problem?"

And then they say, "Well, they must be Hispanics."

And I go, "Yes."

And they always find some kind of excuse.

[family speaking Spanish] My goal is for them to stay.

To stay, and especially the younger ones.

They don't have to be in the fields.

They don't have to be in a cannery.

[gentle acoustic guitar music] [door creaking] I clean the bathroom like every other day 'cause it's really, they use it a lot.

Gotta keep it clean for them.

I let her, I let her help me.

She usually comes and helps me clean the restrooms or the empty units.

[both speaking Spanish] She had asked if I had any warm clothing, and I just remembered that we had just gotten a little donation from some people.

Sometimes I just go shopping at garage sales and see what I can find so I can bring 'em back.

[speaking Spanish] - [speaking Spanish] - Maria: She said that she's never had that much clothes before and that, I don't know what she's gonna do with it, but she's gonna wear 'em.

And she'll be prepared to come to some.

[both speaking Spanish] I try to keep it as clean and as homey and friendly as I can.

Because I know when the little ones come, they feel scared, like, "Where are we gonna sleep?"

And "What kind of camp is this?"

So, you know, I try to keep it as clean as possible for them.

When you come from a place that you have less, then you think, "Oh, this is a palace."

You know, this is like, Holiday Inn, you know, to them.

You know, so...

I wish I had a place like this when I was growing up, when I came.

It affects the kids when everything's going wrong.

A five-year-old shouldn't be worrying about, you know, "Where are we gonna sleep tonight?"

Or, "Where's my dad gonna work?"

Or ,"Where are we gonna end up?"

- How many years I work in the fields?

Oh, 15 years.

Yes, in the cucumbers.

Yes, that's my job.

Oh, I went to seventh grade.

Gave up and go to work.

And my wife went to fifth grade, Mexico.

[baby talking] Yes, if we can't find a house to rent, gotta go back to Texas.

[baby crying] - It's better here than Texas.

In Texas, you can't find no work.

It's harder and harder.

We are, together, five.

And three kids I have, these three.

The baby one and this is the older one.

And this one is three.

And if we didn't find nothing, we have to just keep on going for life.

- [speaking Spanish] - This is the first year for us here.

And we were really wanting to know that we wanna work, I mean, we wanna find something for us.

You can see, this is sometimes our home.

This is our home sometimes.

You can see inside.

Our bed for the kids.

But when we can find no work or house, we have to stay there for a while.

Sometimes we live three weeks sleeping there.

Like down in Colorado, stayed there for three weeks, sleeping.

And didn't have no place to go and no money.

We were scared, you know.

Well, I have to drive real slow 'cause you know, I have, from the steering wheel, I have to grab it real hard.

It's a little bit loose.

You know where the tires are, you know, the tires, those, one of those things, the one that goes to the...

It's broken.

Only with a chain around, that's what we have.

We bought it like that, you know, 'cause we didn't have no more money to buy new or good van.

Now I'm scared of that, you know.

If that chain got loose, it just... We'd run out of the street, jump, you know, way into the ditch.

[child coughing] - Priest: [speaking Spanish] [all singing in Spanish] [speaking Spanish] - [speaking Spanish] [all responding in Spanish] [speaking Spanish] [all responding in Spanish] - [speaking Spanish] [all responding in Spanish] [bell ringing] [speaking Spanish] - Amen.

- [speaking Spanish] - Amen.

- [speaking Spanish] - Amen.

- [speaking Spanish] [all speaking Spanish] [gentle acoustic guitar music] - [speaking Spanish] - [speaking Spanish] - Imagine looking down at the globe from above the North Pole.

No matter where on the Earth is the place is, you could draw a line that runs from pole to pole through your location.

[crickets chirping] [children speaking Spanish] [children laughing] - [speaking Spanish] - [speaking Spanish] - What they want to learn is more English.

They wanna learn English; that's what they wanna learn.

Good morning!

- Bus driver: Good morning.

- You've got three new kids.

- Bus driver: Okay.

- He's a kindergartner.

- All right.

- She's a second-grader and he's a third-grader.

- Eins, zwei, drei, and vier, huh?

Uno, dos, très.

[bus engine rumbling] - [chuckling] Hello.

I went to the job service this morning, and I was, they told us they might have work down in La Crosse, and that's what we were waiting for, to tell us if they're gonna hire us or not.

If they're gonna hire us, we leave tomorrow, probably.

- Hello, this is Maria Diaz from Aurora Center.

I'm calling in regards to Sylvia Riez.

She wanted to know if you had heard anything about the job you had told them yesterday you were telling them about?

[child crying] Okay.

Mm-hmm, bye-bye.

She said that they have seven houses, but there's, somebody has to go check and see if they're still, if somebody could live in there.

But they can't get ahold of the lady that goes and checks at that camp.

- [speaking Spanish] - They said, well, we have to find something.

We gotta find a job.

Right now, if we have a job, they'll help us, and social services, they'll give us some money for gas or a voucher for gas.

And our time is running out.

[telephone ringing] - Good morning, Aurora Center.

This is Maria.

No, I have them right here.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, I'll tell them that they have to go and pick it up Monday.

Okay, uh-huh, bye-bye.

[speaking Spanish] - Si.

- [speaking Spanish] - [speaking Spanish] - No.

[both speaking Spanish] Mm-hmm.

- Maria, what happened?

- Well, they told us that they already have the house and everything ready to go.

And we're gonna go to Monday.

Start going Monday.

See what we're gonna start Wednesday or Thursday, start working.

- What an exciting afternoon!

That's what this is all about.

And I'm glad when finally I can say, "Well, take it easy this weekend.

Next week, you have a job and you have a house."

- [speaking Spanish] [truck engine rumbling] [gentle acoustic guitar music] [people chatting] - It's better for us to return back to Texas.

They gave us $120 for the gas money and the tires.

And I hope that will be plenty to buy those tires.

But for gas, I don't think so.

- I hope we make it safe over there and nothing will happen to us.

I hope.

- Right now, there's no work in Texas.

Only thing they got is like, the oil fields, you know?

But, you know, you gotta wait 'til somebody gets hurt or gets killed or something on the rig before they let that job go.

- I think we've got a cracked head, and it'll take me at least about $180 to get it fixed.

That's me doing the labor.

And this radiator, it's around about 40, 45 miles and the truck overheats, and then it dies out.

And then I gotta sit there for about half an hour and let it cool off.

You know, it's a good thing I'm Catholic, so I pray to God, you know.

Just getting back to Texas, you know, that's all I want.

- Child: [speaking Spanish] [truck engine turning over] - Bye!

- Bye, thank you.

[truck engine rumbling] [gentle acoustic guitar music] [mop bucket thumping] - [speaking Spanish] - Are you sure?

- Check it out.

- Right now, what we're doing is we're closing the camp.

We have to clean every unit.

We have to clean the stove, the refrigerator.

We have to be sure everything's locked up.

Well, everybody's gone.

They left since Friday afternoon because it was getting kinda cold.

A lot of 'em, we had to put 'em in a motel in Wautoma.

The family went to Salvation Army, and they take people too for shelters.

And some just went home.

It is kinda sad to close up, y'know, 'cause I still got phone calls regarding families that needed shelters.

And I wonder where did those families went to?

And I wonder, if this place wasn't here, where would they have gone?

Sylvia and her brother went to La Crosse.

We called the camp over there and they said that they had work for both families, for Celia's family and her brother.

And they had housing.

They were gonna leave that night, but the thing that happened is they went and got their van checked, and there was a big part, a metal part from the bottom that the repairman said that if they moved that van, he won't guarantee-- that it's gonna fall and it's dangerous to have a family in there.

And Sylvia said, "Well, we don't have any money."

And he says, "Well, let me see what I can do."

And so they went back in an hour.

The man at this gas station gave 'em, well, gave 'em a van for $50.

Plus, they didn't even have the $50, so the man says, "Mail it to me, because I think the most important thing is your family."

And Sylvia was so surprised that somebody had done that.

So that was a happy ending.

It was kinda rough, but it was a happy ending for them.

Fernando and Rachael, they went back home.

They, I don't know if they fixed their tire, but they went back home.

They thought they were coming to something different, and a lot of 'em told me, "It's the same thing.

Here and there, why did we travel so far?"

And a lot of 'em tell me it's because they're so desperate.

Where do you get your cucumbers?

Where do you get your lettuce, your celery?

Your potatoes; there are a lot of migrant workers working in the potato.

The carrots.

The forgotten people; they're all forgotten.

But yeah, I do hear the voices sometimes.

Like the kids outside laughing and giggling out there.

I could hear the ladies talking in the laundry room.

I could hear them fixing their food.

And I still do.

I still hear 'em.

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