Meet the workers who put food on America’s tables – but can’t afford groceries

Undocumented immigrants are doing the backbreaking farm work that keeps the US food system running but struggle to feed their families

Photographs by Encarni Pindado

In the piercing midday heat of southern Texas, farmhand Linda Villarreal moves methodically to weed row after row of parsley, rising only occasionally to stretch her achy back and nibble on sugary biscuits she keeps in her pockets. In the distance, a green and white border patrol truck drives along the levee beside the towering steel border wall.

For this backbreaking work, Villareal is paid $7.25 per hour, the federal minimum wage since 2009, with no benefits. She takes home between $300 and $400 a week depending on the amount of orders from the bodegas - packaging warehouses which supply the country's supermarkets with fruits and vegetables harvested by crews of undocumented mostly Mexican farmworkers.