U.S. agricultural industry groups want President-elect Donald Trump to spare their sector from his promise of mass deportations, which could upend a food supply chain heavily dependent on illegal immigrants in the United States.
So far, Trump officials have not committed to any exemptions, according to interviews with farm and labor groups and with Trump’s new “border czar,” Tom Homan.
Nearly half of the country’s roughly 2 million farmworkers lack legal status, according to the labor and agriculture ministries, as do many workers in the dairy and meat-processing industries.
Trump, a Republican, has pledged to illegally deport millions of immigrants to the United States as part of his campaign to win back the White House, a logistically difficult undertaking that critics say could divide the families and disrupt American businesses.
Homan said immigration measures would focus on criminals and people with final deportation orders, but no illegal immigrants in the United States would be exempt.
He told Fox News on Nov. 11 that sanctions against businesses “should happen,” but did not say whether the agricultural sector would be targeted.
“We have a lot to do,” Homan said in a telephone interview this month.
The mass removal of farmworkers would shock the food supply chain and drive up consumer food prices, said David Ortega, a professor of food economics and policy at Michigan State University.
“They fill critical roles that many U.S.-born workers can’t or won’t fill,” Ortega said.
Farm groups and Republican allies are encouraged by the new administration’s focus on criminals.
Dave Puglia, president and CEO of Western Growers, which represents farmers, said the group supports this approach and is concerned about the effects on the agricultural sector if an eviction plan targets farmworkers.
Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt did not directly address farmers’ concerns in a statement to Reuters. She said American voters want Trump to “implement promises he made on the campaign trail, like deporting migrant criminals.”
Trump announced Saturday that he would nominate Brooke Rollins, who chaired the White House Domestic Policy Council during his first term, as agriculture secretary.
Agriculture and related industries contributed $1.5 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product, or 5.6 percent, in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
During his first administration, Trump promised the agricultural sector that his deportation efforts would not target food workers, although the administration did raid some agricultural work sites, including food processing plants. poultry in Mississippi and at produce processing facilities in Nebraska.
U.S. Rep. John Duarte, a fourth-generation Republican farmer in California’s Central Valley, said the region’s farms depend on illegal immigrants in the United States and that small towns would collapse if those workers were deported.
Duarte’s congressional seat is one of the few close races in which no winner has yet been declared.
Duarte said the Trump administration should commit that immigrant workers who have been in the country for five years or more without criminal records will not be targeted and explore pathways to permanent legal status.
“I would like it to be expressed more clearly that these families will not be targeted,” he said.
“We need certainty”
Farmers have a legal option to hire labor through the H-2A visa program, which allows employers to bring in an unlimited number of seasonal workers if they can prove there are no not enough American workers willing, qualified and available to do the job.
The program has grown over time, with 378,000 H-2A positions certified by the Department of Labor in 2023, three times more than in 2014, according to agency data.
But that figure only represents about 20 percent of the nation’s agricultural workers, according to the USDA. Many farmers say they cannot afford the salaries and housing conditions required by the visa. Others have year-round labor requirements that preclude seasonal visas.
Farmers and workers would benefit from expanded legal avenues for farmworkers, said John Walt Boatright, director of government affairs at the American Farm Bureau Federation, an agricultural lobbying group.
“We need the certainty, reliability and affordability of a workforce and programs that will allow us to continue delivering food from farm to table,” said John Hollay , director of government relations at the International Fresh Produce Association, which represents farmer producers.
For decades, farm and labor groups have tried to pass immigration reform that would allow more farmworkers to stay in the United States, but the legislation has failed so far.
The risk of lawsuits against the farms is likely low because of the workers’ necessity, said Leon Fresco, an immigration attorney at Holland & Knight.
“There are very large business interests that obviously want and need agricultural labor,” he said.
But for farmworkers, fear of law enforcement can create chronic stress, said Mary Jo Dudley, director of the Cornell Farmworker Program, which trains workers to know their rights if confronted by law enforcement officers. immigration.
If there are again raids on meatpacking plants, immigration authorities should take precautions to avoid legally detaining workers in the country, said Marc Perrone, international president of the United Food and Commercial union. Workers, which represents certain meat workers.
Edgar Franks, a former farmworker and political director of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, a Washington state workers’ union, said the group is seeing new energy from workers to organize.
“The anxiety and fear are real. But if we are together, we have a better chance of fighting back,” he said.
voanews