Trump indicates support for farmers after immigration raids : NPR

President Trump vowed to help protect agricultural workers just days after federal immigration officials targeted farms and meat packing plants in a widespread effort to detain people without legal status.

For months, the Trump administration has been sending mixed signals to the agriculture community about how immune their workforce is to the effort to conduct mass deportations. The agriculture industry is among those that employ large numbers of workers without legal standing to work in the United States. And in several communities, meat packing plants employ people with temporary protected status or parole, which includes work authorization, though the administration revoked many of those protections in recent months.

The administration's focus on worksite enforcement has mostly left the agriculture sector alone. That changed when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested more than 70 people at a meatpacking plant in Omaha, Neb., and other federal agents targeted farms north of Los Angeles on the same day, June 11.

“There's been rumors here and there after the new administration started, people would have fear that maybe something like this could happen,” said Roger Garcia, a Democrat and the Douglas County commissioner in Nebraska. His district includes Omaha. “People who had their mothers taken away, their spouses … just people who have been working here for decades raising a family. These are just individuals who want to work and unfortunately got caught up in the raid.”

A day later, speaking at the White House, President Trump said there could be a solution for farmers in the near future.

“We can't take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don't have maybe what they're supposed to have, maybe not,” Trump said.

But other members of his administration have had a different message: anyone without legal status has to leave or risk being arrested.

“Those who think we can ignore these sanctuary cities and ignore laws so that we can keep somebody in a job is absolutely ridiculous,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, speaking to Fox News. “That's not what America is about. We have a workforce and a generation of people who have been cheated out of jobs.”

And White House Border Czar Tom Homan continues to vow that there will be more worksite enforcement.

“These operations protect not only American workers but also illegal aliens,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement to NPR. “President Trump will not allow criminals to abuse and exploit workers for profit.”

Elizabeth Strater, director of strategic campaigns for United Farm Workers, said last week's worksite enforcement was the most action she has seen so far targeting the agricultural sector. The union also received reports of employers turning federal officials away if they did not have warrants.

“We are hearing from agricultural employers who would typically view us as kind of an adversary, and they are receptive in seeking out advice and resources on how to protect their operation,” Strater said.

“That's one silver lining of what happened. We did see a number of incidents where there was an attempt to raid a worksite and that employer knew their rights and that employer put up the barrier there and said, ‘you don't have permission to be here, you have to leave my property,'” she added.

Strater said after Trump's comments claiming to protect agriculture workers, workers in farmworker communities just north of LA continued to get arrested and detained by federal immigration officials into the weekend.

On Sunday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on social media she supports President Trump's immigration agenda “starting with strong border security and deportations of EVERY illegal alien.”

In the post she nods at concerns of disruptions to the American food supply chain should the labor be impacted.

“Severe disruptions to our food supply would harm Americans,” Rollins wrote. “It took us decades to get into this mess and we are prioritizing deportations in a way that will get us out.”

Farmers ask for visa changes

The raids on farm and food sector workers coincided with several American Farm Bureau Federation members' visit to Congress, where they went office to office talking to leaders about labor issues.

The Agriculture Department estimates that about 42% of crop farmworkers do not have legal status. And an overwhelming majority are settled, meaning they work in a single location within 75 miles of their home.

The agricultural sector gets access primarily to the H-2A visa, which is for seasonal workers to come on a temporary basis. In 2020, guest workers accounted for just 10% of the farm labor workforce, but their numbers are skyrocketing, especially in southeastern states and on the West Coast. Already this fiscal year, demand is up by nearly 10% from last year, according to Labor Department data.

But not everyone qualifies. Dairies, for example, which require year-round work cannot hire with H-2A visas. Industry estimates show that results in a higher number of unauthorized workers.

“It's been a challenge with the current goings on with deportations. We absolutely support securing the border,” said Kim Skellie, vice president of the New York Farm Bureau, in a sit down with NPR. “It's also put a lot of dairy farm employees on edge worrying about, you know, what their status is going to be, if there's going to be a raid on a farm that may change their lives significantly and change the lives of the owners of the farm as well.”

The administration has been open about its goal to go beyond arresting and deporting those with criminal convictions in what officials call “collateral” arrests. That, Skellie said, is what has the communities on edge. Even on the Hill, the targeting of immigrants without a criminal record has raised questions from Republicans.

In a letter to acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons, six GOP members of the House requested data on the criminal characteristics of those detained.

“We are concerned that your limited resources may be stretched to pursue individuals that do not constitute an immediate threat to public safety,” the lawmakers wrote. “Every minute that we spend pursuing an individual with a clean record is a minute less that we dedicate to apprehending terrorists or cartel operatives.”

Still, it is up to Congress to make changes to any visa program, including expanding access to who can use it or change the rules, or provide pathways to legal status.

The H-2A visa program, employers said, can be cumbersome for them as well because they have to provide housing, transportation, and medical care for the workers, which adds to the cost.

“By the time we figure all those care costs, we're at about $39 an hour to put a worker in the field,” said Mike McCarthy, of the Oregon Farm Bureau, a farmer who grows apples, pears and cherries. He said workers are needed to prune and pick each fruit by hand. “And that far exceeds our ability to cover those costs through the prices we receive for our fruit.”

This year, he said, the crops of apples and pears in the Northwest are projected to be larger than usual. He said that tends to decrease the prices of the fruits themselves.

The farmers point to the pandemic-era food supply chain disruptions as an example of what could happen if the workforce went away.

“We don't want people to forget how there were empty shelves for a while and we don't want to revert back to that because of mass deportations to farmworkers that could be otherwise averted for the better of the country,” Skellie said.

Despite the recent flurry of action, some still hold out hope their sector will be left alone.

“I think there's a realization of how important farm production is to the rural communities,” McCarthy said. “I don't think that's going to be lost – that numerous deportations in the farm communities may cause severe economic problems in our rural communities across the United States.”

Elizabeth Strater with United Farm Workers and other immigration advocates disagree that the industry is off the table.

“I don't think that there's any such thing as a safer place right now,” Strater argued. “This willingness to go into a farm worker community and terrorize everyone present regardless of their legal status should really be a wakeup call to anyone who is still holding on to hope that the Trump administration is somehow going to look the other way when it comes to agricultural employers.”

Still, Strater said, despite the fear in the communities the work will continue.

“We might have a few days here and there where people are really scared or they're withholding their labor,” she said. “There's a lot of things that they're going to change their patterns on, but they're going to keep going to work.