One day a week, at around 6am, Eric Leland drives from his home in Petaluma to a certain gas station on a central corner across town. He and four to eight other volunteers load up a folding table with Spanish-language materials, like cheat sheets about civil rights in interactions with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. Alongside these pamphlets are equipment like face masks, gloves, and earplugs for protecting workers at loud worksites. It’s a one-stop shop for the day laborers who congregate here each morning, hoping to be hired for a day’s work.

Those who speak Spanish stick around at the table, chatting with the day laborers who are gathering on the corner. The rest of the volunteers peel off to covertly observe key intersections on the main road, especially near the highway, as “legal observers.” They’re looking for federal government vehicles, whether from ICE or the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

That’s the primary function of the new Adopt a Corner program, which was launched nationwide this summer by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON). The organization has asked that anyone not at risk of deportation take action by becoming a consistent presence anywhere that day laborers gather, to build relationships and to offer protection. Here in Petaluma, volunteers usually stay until around 8am, after most of the laborers have either found work or given up for the day.

[...]Since 2022, Odessa had been governed by a group of far-right hard-liners led by Mayor Javier Joven, the owner of a local roofing company who had run for office to help Odessa “publicly repent” for its sins. Political opponents nicknamed the Joven faction “the Squad” and argued that it showed little interest in infrastructure, public safety, or business development, the traditional priorities of municipal government.

The Joven wing of the city council passed an ordinance declaring Odessa a “sanctuary city for the unborn” and banned transgender people from using public restrooms that didn’t match their sex at birth. They fired top city staff, leading to an avalanche of resignations. They packed city commissions with political loyalists and hired a former executive director of the Republican Party of Texas as the city manager. Last year, Odessa lost its bond ratings from Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s after it failed to complete two audits on time—perhaps because the leaders of the finance department had quit.

After two years of chaos, charges of favoritism, and culture wars, Odessa voters had finally had enough. In the November 2024 election, Joven and his allies were trounced by a slate of moderate candidates led by Hendrick, a trial lawyer whose family has lived in Odessa since the 1880s.