Photo by Darrell Hoemann
The Nightingale Camp in Rantoul, Ill., is licensed by the state to house more than 400 migrant workers. The workers come north from places such as Mexico and Texas to detassel corn.
Road to Rantoul: Migrant workers journey to central Illinois
Each summer, hundreds of seasonal workers leave their homes in Texas and Mexico and travel more than 1,000 miles north to work in the corn fields of central Illinois. Many of those hundreds make their way to Rantoul, a village of about 13,000 people in Champaign County and the summer home of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign football team's training sessions. As the sessions get underway in mid-August, the hundreds of migrant workers wrap up the first wave of agriculture work in nearby corn fields.