Welcome to iGrow News, Your Source for the World of Indoor Vertical Farming
This Startup Wants Vertical Farmers To Hire A Robot Gardener
“By automating the production with robotics and remote monitoring, we can lower labor costs and offer solutions for food producers that are economically viable and environmentally sustainable,” the company claims on their website.
Arugula micro greens are grown at AeroFarms on February 19, 2019, in Newark, New Jersey.
Photo: Photo by Angela Weiss (Getty Images)
In recent years, vertical farming has emerged as a futurist’s solution to the world’s agricultural problems. The growing trend seeks to use controlled environments to boost food production, leveraging indoor labs where temperature, light, and nutrients can be mechanically controlled.
Yet while vertical farms have gained in popularity, they are also still very expensive. When compared to conventional farming, these farms necessitate the purchase of pricey equipment to aid human labor—a fact that, when paired with other economic pressures, has apparently led to an industry “littered with bankruptcies.”
One company hopes to change this dire picture. Enter Watney the robot.
Watney was designed by start-up Seasony. The company, which was featured today at this year’s Alchemist Accelerator’s Demo Day, has sought to make the tech-farming trend more accessible by automating away some of the more difficult labor involved.
Image: Screenshot: Youtube/TV2LORRY
“By automating the production with robotics and remote monitoring, we can lower labor costs and offer solutions for food producers that is economically viable and environmentally sustainable,” the company claims on their website.
Indeed, Watney is designed to augment (and, in many ways, replace) a human labor force—currently one of the biggest expenditures for vertical farms. Essentially an intelligent, automated cart, the robot was designed to “move and transport plant trays” within a farming hub. In techno-jargon, it is an autonomous mobile manipulation robot (AMMR), a type of machine known for moving and manipulating items on its own. It is also equipped with a camera that captures image data and sends it back to farm management software for human analysis. Watney also gathers valuable horticultural data to help farmers optimize yields, said Christopher Weis Thomasen, Seasony’s CEO and Co-Founder, in an email.
From left to right: Erkan Tosti Taskiran, Servet Coskun and Christopher Weis Thomasen.
Photo: Photo from Seasony.
“We are doing for vertical farming what the integration of autonomous mobile robots did to amazon. We are able to decrease the costs of growing food in a vertical farm by alleviating the logistics pains of working from scissor lifts,” said Thomasen.
Thomasen, a mechanical engineer, and his two co-founders electrical engineer Servet Coskun and business specialist Erkan Tosti Taskiran, were inspired to create the business while brainstorming what it would take to sustain life in outer space (Watney the robot is named after Mark Watney, the astronaut in the movie The Martian, who, after being stranded on the Red Planet, fertilizes potatoes with his own poop to survive).
“It quickly evolved to Seasony setting up a vertical farming lab and exploring the technical challenges facing the new industry. Reducing the costs related to labor is key in order to scale vertical farming and make agriculture more sustainable,” Thomasen said.
There is, of course, some debate in the farming community about the social costs incurred through the large-scale displacement of human labor.
Presumably, we will have to wait to see what that cost-saving process looks like. Seasony, which is still getting off the ground, plans to do a pilot trial with the largest vertical farm in Europe in April. It has plans to conduct further testing with several smaller vertical farms, as well, Thomasen said.
Lucas Ropek
Staff writer at Gizmodo
Urban Farms Could be Incredibly Efficient—But Aren’t Yet
Casual farmers overwork, buy fertilizer, and use municipal water.
JOHN TIMMER - 12/28/2018, 3:45 AM
The green revolution that transformed modern agriculture has generally increased its scale. There's tremendous potential for efficiencies in the large-scale application of mechanization, fertilization, and pesticide use. But operating at that level requires large tracts of land, which means sources of food have grown increasingly distant from the people in urban centers who will ultimately eat most of it.
In some ways, hyper-local food is a counterculture movement, focused on growing herbs and vegetables in the same dense urban environments where they will be eaten. It trades the huge efficiencies of modern agriculture for large savings in transportation and storage costs. But is urban farming environmentally friendly?
According to researchers at Australia's University of New England, the answer is pretty complex. Within their somewhat limited group of gardeners, urban agriculture is far more productive for the amount of land used but isn't especially efficient with labor and materials use. But the materials issue could be solved, and the labor inefficiency may be a product of the fact that most urban farmers are hobbyists and are doing it for fun.
Urban ag
The researchers—Robert McDougalla, Paul Kristiansena, and Romina Rader—defined urban agriculture as taking place within a kilometer of a densely built environment. Working in the Sydney area, they were able to find 13 urban farmers who were willing to keep detailed logs of their activity for an entire year. Labor and materials costs were tracked, as was the value of the produce it helped create. The energetic costs of the materials and labor were also calculated in order to assess the sustainability of urban farming.
The plots cultivated by these farmers were quite small, with the median only a bit over 10 square meters. Yet they were extremely productive, with a mean of just under six kilograms of produce for each of those square meters. That's about twice as productive as a typical Australian vegetable farm, although the output range of the urban farms was huge—everything from slightly below large farm productivity to five times as productive.
For the vast majority of crops, however, the urban farms weren't especially effective. They required far more labor than traditional farms, and, as a result, the total value of the inputs into the crop exceeded the income from selling it. In other words, the urban farmers were losing money, at least by traditional accounting measures. And the farms weren't especially sustainable, with only about 10 percent of all the inputs coming from renewable resources. Again, labor was a major culprit, as it's not considered very renewable, and urban farming is very labor-intensive.
So that all sounds like a bit of a disaster, really. But as mentioned above, things quickly get complex. The urban farmers, as it turned out, bought compost and fertilizer and used the municipal water supply. Cities, as the authors note, produce large quantities of organic waste that could be used to make compost. While it would require additional labor and land space, it would be easy to make the care of the crops far more sustainable. Combined with the use of collected rainwater, these could get the percentage of renewable contributions up to roughly 40 percent.
Laborious
Then there's the issue of the time spent on labor. The urban farmers don't seem to be especially efficient compared to regular farm laborers, and by all indications they don't necessarily want to be. For many of them, it's more a hobby than career; they put in more labor because they enjoy it or find it relaxing. If you start reducing the labor costs to reflect this, things start changing dramatically. If only the material costs of urban farming are considered (meaning labor was set to $0), then the apparent efficiency improves dramatically.
Not surprisingly, ignoring labor costs also makes a big difference financially, with the profit-to-cost ratio going from a mean of 0.62 up to 2.8, indicating that these urban farms would generally be quite profitable.
Labor also makes a big difference in terms of energy use. As they're now operating, these urban farms aren't very different from rural farms, which means they're not sustainable. Shifting to local sources of materials, like rainwater and compost, would drop the energy use dramatically, shifting the farms into territory that's typically considered sustainable. Eliminating labor considerations on top of that would make urban agriculture among the most efficient means of growing vegetables presently studied.
There are two obvious caveats to this work: the small number of farms sampled and the fact that they were all in a single urban area. This sort of study will obviously need to be replicated in other locations before we can start generalizing about hyper-local produce. But the role of labor in this sort of analysis makes conclusions difficult to generalize. Is it reasonable to discount some fraction of the labor costs when people are doing the farming for pleasure? Do we start considering a tomato plant on a balcony part of an urban farm?
While many of the details are unclear, the overall conclusion seems solid: while urban farms aren't yet there in terms of sustainability and energy use, the potential for them to outpace their larger rural cousins is definitely there. But it will take an entire sustainable support infrastructure for them to truly arrive.
"Labor Is The Number One Topic In All The Conversations We Are Currently Having"
“…Being a wholesaler and being constantly aware of the need to add value to our customers’ businesses, we are focused on finding the winning innovation of tomorrow”
As we begin 2019, the moment is here to take a general look at the industry, and who better to discuss today’s topics with than Chris Higgins? With Hort Americas continually competing to be one of the leading wholesalers in North America, and Chris being a complete horti-geek, he’s on top of the industry’s topics of today and tomorrow. And there’s much to cover at the moment. “For us, Hort Americas, the only constant thing we see is change. Being a wholesaler and being constantly aware of the need to add value to our customers’ businesses, we are focused on finding the winning innovation of tomorrow”, he explains.
Drew Demler (State Fair of Texas), Chris Higgins and Stephen Ritz (Green Bronx Machine) (photo Hort Americas)
Anniversary
It's been almost a decade since Hort Americas was founded. In April 2009, a group of young American entrepreneurs united with the Dutch suppliers of Horticoop and started bringing horticultural products to the quickly growing horticultural industry of the USA and Canada. Operating as a wholesaler, the company made many products accessible to bigger and smaller companies.
Within their client base you can find vegetable growers, ornamental growers as well as a wide variety of growers implementing a wide variety of innovative techniques used to produce an even wider variety of crops. However, there are various topics that unite them. “Labor is the number one topic in all the conversations we are currently having. It does not seem to matter if we are talking about commercial horticulture, field agriculture or vertical farming. This trend seems constant. In vegetable production as well as in ornamental horticultural production – the quality, availability and cost of labor is the number one topic in North America”, Chris explains. To the company, being on top of these trends and offering solutions to them is key.
“We have a fairly narrow focus on a niche market and we are in contact with our client base daily. This allows us to understand their needs intimately and find and deliver solutions that make our customers more profitable and more successful.” He continues, “This includes new emerging markets as well as established industries that are evolving to meet demand and stay relevant, like indoor farming of medicinal crops and the hydroponic production of soft fruits.”
On a side note he offers, “I do believe that out of these new or evolving grower populations, we are going to see some all stars: people that do things differently - apply new technology, or operate their business in a different way - and become the leaders. But, as common throughout history, it will only be a small percentage of the companies that change the industry. And it is not our desire nor our goal to pick winners. To us, the focus is the complete industry: seeing the similarities between the companies and the way trends and novelties impact their operation. Within these topics, we select products that are winners to us: that can add value to most growers' businesses. That’s how we’re serving the industry and how we are on the look-out for our own product range.”
Role as a wholesaler
The company's vision sounds clear - but there’s challenges in the market. In 2018 Horticoop, the Dutch partner of Hort Americas, announced it would resign their wholesale activities and focus on production only. Whilst this does not affect the Hort Americas business, it did urge the company to rethink their role as a wholesaler. Adding value is key, Chris explains. “Being a distributor is more than just selling or providing products. To us it is offering growers solutions to better their business in both the short and the long term.” To do so, HortAmericas puts a lot of effort in helping growers with their specific challenges and, if needed, educate them about the solutions. “Before, being a supplier meant supplying products. Now it’s about understanding what our growers need and value, then finding ways to fulfill those needs as a service: educating, improving the crop(s) quality, creating a better more efficient work environment, and eventually helping growers find ways to become more profitable.”
Demo Greenhouse
It’s not just a vision to Hort Americas. Besides being active continuously in educating growers and researching a lot, the company (which two years ago started their own demo greenhouse) is focused on creating positive change within their community while at the same time improving the knowledge of the Hort Americas team and their ability to communicate that knowledge with both their vendors and their grower partners.
“Thanks to our relationship with the State Fair of Texas (better known as Big Tex Urban Farms), who’ve continuously supported our business, we’ve been able to combine our efforts, energies and resources to create a demo greenhouse at the fairgrounds based in Dallas, Texas. As long as you have scheduled an appointment, it is open for both the community and growers year round. It is in production year round. It is in a constant state of learning and development. But most importantly it is contributing free, safe and healthy food to members of the south Dallas community in need.”
Night time before the start of the Texas State Fair, where more than 200 thousand people are estimated to visit the greenhouse each year. This pond uses Current, Powered by GE LED Top Lights and the Moleaer Nanobubble Generator. (photo Hort Americas)
Hot summer
When asked why Dallas, Texas, Higgins responds, “We are testing products and trying to prove their value. The hot Texas summers offer a tough and difficult environment to grow in. If we can make it work in Dallas, we are confident in the quality of these products and their abilities to perform in some of the most harsh circumstances.” From their commitment to have a positive social impact to their commitment to playing an important role in both the success of their vendors and their grower partners, Higgins is excited and enthusiastic about the future.Then there’s the social aspect: adding value to the local community.
Chilling the rootzone
In the demo greenhouse the Moleaer system is shown - one of Hort Americas' most talked about products at the moment. “We’ve focused on the limiting factors in producing the best possible crops 12 months of the year. One of the biggest issues in Dallas turned out to be controlling temperature of the root-zone. Chilling the rootzone is not cost-effective in most scenarios. Adding dissolved oxygen to it, turned out to do the trick.”
To Chris, the Moleaer product range offered a typical Hort Americas solution. “It can benefit many growers in an affordable, easy way and it is applicable in a wide area of the countries we service”, he explains. “With Hort Americas, we want to be there for a large group of growers. Products that are only accessible to a small part of the market are not a good fit to us. We are looking for the products that help the average grower in their business.”
Add value by specializing
He explains how the North American industry on one hand consists of big companies, in need of tailor-made solutions. “Then there is a large amount of smaller scale customers. These farming operations do not follow the same pattern of upscaling or monocropping. Instead they add value by specializing in specific groups of products, serving local communities with locally grown product or whatever business model proves them to be right. Whilst we are capable of supplying the large customers, we also want to bring suitable products and services to the farms and greenhouses of all shapes and sizes.”
The Sudlac product portfolio is another example of a product line that is effective for large and small greenhouse ranges as well as hydroponic vegetable production and ornamental horticulture. The demand for the various shading solutions has been on the rise. “Creating a better production climate is of course important to growers everywhere in the world. The added value at the moment is in innovative second generation shading products that not only reduce the amount of light in the greenhouse, but can manipulate and improve light in ways that can enhance crop quality.”
USDA Fresh Herbs Grant Planning Meeting held during the 2018 Texas State Fair. (photo Hort Americas)
Relationships with suppliers
The importance of a good and stable relationship isn’t a one way road. Relationships with suppliers are of high importance to Hort Americas. “Obviously the product itself is important in our selection, but it’s not just that... it cannot be just that. Trust between us and our valued suppliers has continued to evolve into a vital part of our business model. We look for specific relationships with suppliers. We look for companies that we can count on and trust, and vice versa. We ask ourselves, ‘Can the manufacturer add value to the chain? Can we help them market their products in the better ways? Do the manufacturers understand the needs of the market?’ Again we want to create partnerships. Partnerships lead to better business for everyone involved.”
A perfect example of this is Hort Americas' relationship with Current by GE (LED grow light solutions). Adding lighting to the crop is an important topic for many growers wanting to lengthen their season and increase their production. “This goes for vegetables, but for sure is not exclusive to vegetable crops. Managing light intensity, light quality and photoperiod is important in all crop production. LED lighting has helped everyone from tree nurseries (for example) becoming more efficient in growing maple trees to tissue culture facilities producing ornamental and medicinal crops.
"Investing in LED is all about effectiveness and efficiency - making it a perfect Hort Americas product catalog. And the engineering team at Current has helped us to develop a variety of fixtures perfect for many (not all) applications. We are working towards that.” Higgins’ excitement about the GE partnership carries over to other partners that are helping them produce innovative fertilizers and have provided them with opportunities to explore new technologies like 30MHZ (sensor products offering growers a better control and more insights on their crop).
Leafy Greens being grown under Current, Powered by GE LED Grow Lights (Arize Lynk LED Grow Lights) (photo Hort Americas)
Keeping up is a challenge
With the Hort Americas client base being super diverse, staying on top of the various needs in the industry is of vital importance. “Keeping up with all the issues along with the wide range of crops and topics indeed is a challenge”, Chris confirms. “On the other hand, trends are similar across the categories. Labor (again) is something affecting the complete industry: the quality, availability and cost of it is the number one topic in North America at the moment. The biggest difference between the various sub-segments within industries are access finance and the pace of developments and investments - depending on both the maturity of the sectors and what their opportunity for profits look like. But in the end the demand of growers is the same in all crops. It all comes down to the smart use of technology and how that technology lets the grower achieve a sound ROI. That’s the main question we are all trying to answer. This will always be the question we are trying to answer.”
For more information:
Hort Americas
Chris Higgins
chiggins@hortamericas.com
www.hortamericas.com
Publication date : 1/15/2019
Author: Arlette Sijmonsma
© HortiDaily.com
Corso’s Issues Statement, AmericanHort’s Craig Regelbrugge Discusses Industry Ramifications In Aftermath of ICE Raid
Corso’s Issues Statement, AmericanHort’s Craig Regelbrugge Discusses Industry Ramifications In Aftermath of ICE Raid
Corso’s says it “demands proper documentation” from workers following the raid that resulted in 114 of the company’s employees being arrested. AmericanHort is working to provide resources for green industry businesses to navigate the issue.
June 12, 2018
Conner Howard and Michelle Simakis
Corso’s Flower & Garden Center says it is “fully cooperating with the government’s investigation” after law enforcement officers raided its facilities in Northwest Ohio and arrested more than 100 employees suspected of working in the U.S. illegally June 5.
Corso’s, a family-owned business that also includes wholesale perennial production, growing more than 2 million perennials supplied to seven states, and a landscaping division, was the target of an operation by U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials and cooperating agencies. According to several news outlets, the raid involved about 200 agents and led to the arrest of 114 Corso’s employees at its Sandusky and Castalia, Ohio, facilities.
According to the Associated Press, the ICE agents were targeting specific individuals suspected of tax evasion and identity theft stemming from an October audit of the company that found 123 suspicious documents out of the 313 employee records reviewed.
According to a May news release from ICE, “a notice of inspection alerts business owners that ICE is going to audit their hiring records to determine whether they are complying with existing law. Employers are required to produce their company’s I-9s within three business days, after which ICE will conduct an inspection for compliance. If employers are not in compliance with the law, an I-9 inspection of their business will likely result in civil fines and could lay the groundwork for criminal prosecution if they are knowingly violating the law. All workers encountered during these investigations who are unauthorized to remain in the United States are subject to administrative arrest and removal from the country.”
Corso’s statement, which was shared on the garden center retailer and landscaper’s Facebook page, indicated that the company was not aware that some of its employees may be in the country illegally. According to The Washington Post, ICE is investigating Corso’s and “the role the employer played in hiring undocumented immigrants,” but has not yet filed any formal charges against the company.
“Just as Corso’s has strived over the past 77 years to be honest and fair in its dealings with its employees, Corso’s expects its employees to be honest with it as well,” Corso’s statement read. “Corso’s strives to comply with U.S. employment laws and therefore asks its employees and prospective employees for honest and legitimate identification and documentation. If mistakes were made or if anyone used false, fraudulent, or otherwise disingenuous identification documents or other documents to secure employment at Corso’s, the company was not aware of those things. Corso’s looks forward to the resolution of this unfortunate situation and in the interim will continue to focus efforts on serving customers as the investigation proceeds.”
Corso’s added that it regretted the “stress and pain” the arrests caused to families and that the company was “troubled” by some reports of alleged “poor treatment of our employees during the arrest process, including an apparent lack of information provided by federal authorities to family members of those arrested. It is our hope that federal authorities will work diligently to ensure minimal disruption to families of our employees as they execute their orders.”
According to a Facebook post from HOLA, a Latino advocacy organization based in Northeast Ohio, more than 200 children in Northwest Ohio have one or both parents who are in detention; the Corso’s employees were taken to facilities in Youngstown and Seneca County, Ohio, and St. Clair County, Mich.
“This is a major humanitarian crisis unfolding, as many of the workers have spouses and children,” HOLA’s Executive Director Veronica Dahlberg wrote in a news release. “In some cases, both sets of parents were seized, and we know of many children left with babysitters, including babies and toddlers.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said in an email that his office is assisting children affected by the raid.
“My first concern is for the children who were separated from their families by the raid, and my office is looking into what we can do to help the children,” Sen. Brown said. “Tearing families apart is not going to fix our broken immigration system. Instead, we need a bipartisan solution that recognizes we aren’t going to deport 13 million people here already, but we can secure our borders and create a pathway for people to earn citizenship if they follow the law, have a job and pay taxes.”
ICE ramps up enforcement
The impact of immigration on the horticultural workforce has been a common topic of discussion among experts, and Craig Regelbrugge, senior vice president of industry advocacy & research at AmericanHort, told the GIE Media Horticulture Group that the raid on Corso’s is only the most recent example of a wider crackdown on undocumented labor and that AmericanHort is striving to provide knowledge and resources necessary for green industry businesses to navigate the issue.
“This is just the latest [incident],” Regelbrugge says. “We've seen this before and it underscores the absolute importance of better tools and solutions for the industry to ensure access to a legal and sufficiently stable labor supply. I'm fearful that we're going to see a lot more of this.”
Regelbrugge believes it’s a rare situation in which an employer will knowingly take such a legal risk of hiring undocumented workers, and that more often than not, these employers are being duped by falsified documents. In its statement, Corso’s says it does “demand proper documentation from all those seeking employment at its facilities and also ensures that all employer taxes are properly paid.”
“Foreign-born labor has been critically important in our industry and in agriculture for decades. The vast majority of employers, when they're hiring, they're following the letter of the law,” Regelbrugge says. “It just so happens that a lot of the people who are applying have documents that appear genuine but won't stand up to the forensic scrutiny that gets applied when these audits are done.”
According to a news release issued by ICE May 14, the agency has more than doubled its worksite enforcement investigations and I-9 audits in the past seven months.
“From Oct. 1, 2017, through May 4, [Homeland Security Investigations] opened 3,510 worksite investigations; initiated 2,282 I-9 audits; and made 594 criminal and 610 administrative worksite-related arrests, respectively,” according to the release. “In comparison, for fiscal year 2017 – running October 2016 to September 2017 – HSI opened 1,716 worksite investigations; initiated 1,360 I-9 audits; and made 139 criminal arrests and 172 administrative arrests related to worksite enforcement.
"These laws help protect jobs for U.S. citizens and others who are lawfully employed, eliminate unfair competitive advantages for companies that hire an illegal workforce, and strengthen public safety and national security."
ALSO READ: For more information on how to prepare for I-9 audits and ensure your documents are accurate, read the March 2018 cover story in Nursery Management magazine.
In addition, ICE arrests overall increased by 30 percent in 2017 when compared to 2016, with a total of 143,470 arrests, according to the Fiscal Year 2017 ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Report. The raid on Corso’s represents one of the largest in the recent past, according to The Washington Post.
Regelbrugge says that the immigration and labor issues require a nuanced approach both in terms of legislation and industry adaptation.
"There will be people calling for the industry to sort of take a look in the mirror and go through some self-analysis and figure out how to get the work done with less labor and how to potentially succeed at attracting more American workers into the industry," Regelbrugge says. "But, all those things aside, we're a full employment economy. The official government agencies that track the statistics on this sort of stuff are now telling us that there are more open jobs than there are people in the labor pool seeking to fill them."
Visa systems aren’t sufficient
With demand for labor being as high as it is in the horticulture industry, Regelbrugge says the current systems in place to grant working visas to documented immigrants aren't up to the task.
"There's an agricultural visa program, H-2A. We have a lot of folks in our industry who are attempting to use H-2A to supplement their labor. We have a lot of folks in the landscape sector who are looking to the H-2B program and the H-2B program is totally over-subscribed," Regelbrugge says. "The cap (which is 66,000) was hit in record time this year. Homeland Security just made available an additional 15,000 visas -- that represents roughly one quarter of what's actually needed. In a matter of just a few days, more applications have been received for that limited number of visas than there are visas. We really, ultimately, do need legislation that improves the available visas programs and increases the bandwidth of those programs."
AmericanHort is working to influence legislation to allow greenhouse, nursery, landscaping and retail operations better access to employees who are documented and working here legally.
“It's obviously a very difficult challenge, and we work in coalition with a lot of other industry groups and others who have overlapping interests in seeing our immigration system modernized,” Regelbrugge says. “We may actually see a vote or votes in the house of representatives in the next couple of weeks on some immigration-related provisions. It could be as few as one, it could be as many as three or four different bills, depending on how the process unfolds."
There are efforts to improve some parts of immigration policy, including modernizing the H-2A program, Regelbrugge says, but the process is slow due to limitations of the administration and the congressional legislative process.
“In the short term, administrative improvements could be made that might reduce costs and improve efficiencies for employers,” he says. “So, we're very much supporting that effort as well -- that's been taking shape for about the last year.”
Policy, law and labor issues aside, Regelbrugge also laments the human tragedy inherent in ICE raids such as the one targeting Corso’s Flower & Garden Center.
“We can talk about labor as an input, like water or fertilizer, something you need to be able to produce, distribute, sell and install plants. But the rest of the story is that these folks are as human as we are, and they are, by and large, like family in these operations,” he says. “Not only does the employer find themselves reeling just from a business survival standpoint, but it's like members of their family being ripped away and carted off in handcuffs. It's just brutal. This tears at the fabric of communities, you end up with families being separated, you end up with kids whose parents don't pick them up from daycare and they end up in foster homes."
Patrick Williams and Chris Manning contributed to this article. ICE did not immediately respond to requests for information. Photo courtesy of ICE.