Opinion: Federal policies targeting farming workforce and income need to be addressed before a bailout is needed

New federal policies seem to take aim at farming
incomes. (Photo by Richard Bell, Unsplash)

U.S. farmers face a rocky future as federal policies cut into sector labor and profitability. "Agriculture stands out as acutely vulnerable to President Donald Trump’s avalanche of tariffs, mass deportations and potential new regulations," writes The Washington Post editorial board. "Farmers don’t need a bailout. They need relief from overregulation and excessive immigration enforcement."

Soybean and corn farmers are "panicking about Trump’s trade wars, which expose them to retaliation from China, Canada and Mexico, their most important export markets," the board writes. Ranchers and produce growers have stood by and watched as "agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement descended en masse across fields to detain and deport agricultural workers."

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins suggested that Medicaid recipients, who will soon need to meet program work requirements, could replace the migrant workers ICE deported. Her comments "landed like an insult in farming communities," the board adds. 

Dave Puglia, president of Western Growers, a lobby group for produce growers in the West, told the Post, “The men and women who harvest our crops are highly skilled. To anybody who believes they can pick and pack in the field, go try it.”

The current administration’s solution for farmer woes is to send subsidy payments, but those will only help certain types of farms. "Trump’s tax bill included $66 billion in new spending for farm programs," the board writes. "While the generous income support programs may keep many farmers from switching political allegiances, the hit from the Trump administration’s policies won’t be easy to fix."

Using agriculture as political fodder is "unusual in American politics," the board adds. "Yet to be seen are the full economic consequences of going after America’s food producers. . . .On priorities that come at the expense of farmers, it is likely to do some real damage to the food supply. The better approach is to avert the damage, rather than wait to bail out farmers once they grow desperate."

Long-term care facilities face immigration crackdown and looming Medicaid cuts

Jackline Conteh is a nursing assistant in Va. She emigrated 
to the U.S. from war-torn Liberia. (KFF News photo)

Long-term care facilities call for immigration reform and push against Medicaid cuts as the sector faces "a double whammy from President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants and the GOP’s proposals to reduce Medicaid spending," reports Jordan Rau of KFF Health News. "More than 800,000 immigrants and naturalized citizens comprise 28% of direct care employees at home care agencies, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and other long-term care companies."

While labor shortages are not new to the eldercare sector, once the Trump administration canceled the industry's "protected" status in January and allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to raid health care facilities, the dynamics changed. Katie Smith Sloan, president of LeadingAge, an association of nonprofits that care for older adults, told Rau, “People may be here on a green card, and they are afraid ICE is going to show up."

The long-term and senior care industries are "urging the federal government to expand legal immigration channels for essential workers in healthcare and other sectors," reports Kimberly Bonvissuto of McKnights. "The Essential Worker Immigration Coalition sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that [said] the shortage of legal immigration channels for essential workers 'threatens the stability of our supply chains, the viability of small businesses and the strength of the American economy.'"

Besides additional staffing shortages brought on by immigration issues, long-term care facilities continue to lobby against the Republican party's Medicaid spending cuts, which passed the House and are under Senate review. Rau writes, "Federal spending cuts under negotiation may strip nursing homes of some of their largest revenue sources by limiting ways states leverage Medicaid money and making it harder for new nursing home residents to retroactively qualify for Medicaid."

Given the current issues, providers, patients and employees all have reasons to be concerned. "The long-term care industry expects demand for direct care workers to burgeon with an influx of aging baby boomers needing professional care," Rau writes. Jackline Conteh, a U.S. nursing assistant originally from Liberia, told him, "If all these people leave the United States, they go back to Africa or to their various countries, what will become of our residents? What will become of our old people that we’re taking care of?"

Trump officials reverse pause in ICE raids targeting farm, service workers

A seasonal migrant worker carries fruit in Michigan.
(Photo via The Conversation, CC)

In an abrupt about-face from last week's guidance that paused Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on farms, restaurants and meatpacking facilities, Trump officials reissued their call for ICE to enter any business where undocumented migrant workers might be found.

"Officials from ICE, including its Homeland Security Investigations division, told agency leaders in a call Monday that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants," report Carol D. Leonnig, Natalie Allison, Marianne LeVine, and Lauren Kaori Gurley of The Washington Post.

The see-sawing instructions reflect the tough reality of supporting American farmers and service workers all the while pushing ICE to arrest thousands of undocumented workers a day. Leonnig writes, "Some immigration experts say ICE would need to ramp up worksite enforcement to meet the administration’s ambitious arrest quotas. Past raids at meatpacking plants, for instance, have led to hundreds of arrests at once."

Even among President Trump's officials, the two sides pull against each other. "White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said last month that the administration wants ICE to make a minimum of 3,000 arrests a day," the Post reports. "Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, meanwhile was on the opposite side of the issue, stressing to Trump the concerns that those in the farming industry had raised about losing workers."

On Sunday evening, Trump pulled away from his farming and service worker exemption stance and "made a post on his Truth Social account that he said amounted to an order for ICE officials 'to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,'" Leonnig adds, "which he said would require them to 'expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities.'"

On Monday, Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary for DHS, told reporters, “There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE’s effort. Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability.”

Farmers worry about labor shortages as migrants hide from threats, deportation confusion

A large, dedicated work force is needed to pick the more than 1.2 billion pounds of apples New York farms can produce. (Adobe Stock photo)

Migrant farm workers across rural northern New York are reportedly hiding to avoid being picked up, harassed and possibly shipped out of the U.S. by immigration police. American farmers, who often rely on migrant workers to keep their farms profitable, are in an uncomfortable spot. Many voted for Trump but now "feel anxious about the prospect of losing a crucial labor force," reports Anan Ley of The New York Times. 

For migrant workers, hiding is one of the few ways to avoid "what they describe as cruel and chaotic deportation efforts," Ley explains. "In rural New York, some immigrants have been briefly detained and then released, while others with legal papers languish in custody, leaving many confused about who is being forced out of the country and who gets to remain."

If immigration police continue to round up and deport undocumented farm workers, farmers say they will be in a bind. David Fisher, the president of the New York Farm Bureau, a nonprofit industry group, told Ley, "Local sources of labor are simply not available in most cases."

Regardless of the national tension surrounding immigration, undocumented workers fill many U.S. agriculture jobs. "About 42% of farm workers are not legally authorized to work in the country," Ley reports. "In New York State, experts at Cornell University estimated in 2019 that about half of all farm workers were undocumented."

The loss of migrant workers could alter how much of a product a state can produce and ship nationwide. For New York, that means apples. Ley writes, "It is famous for producing more apples than any other state except for Washington — supplying the nation with one of its most-consumed fruits."

Farmers like Robert J. Colby, who runs Colby Homestead Farms just outside the small town of Spencerport, N.Y., advocate for a quick, no-nonsense approach to immigration. He told Ley, "The Congress and Senate [need] to get to work and get an immigration program together . . . . We should be able to vet people’s backgrounds and process them within six months in order for them to be able to come and become citizens."

ICE contracts help some rural jails shore up their budgets, but the money comes with strings attached

Ozark County Jail, Mo., transports and temporarily holds
detainees for ICE. (Photo by Jesse Bogan, Marshall Project)

Small, rural law enforcement offices hurting for money are signing up for Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts, but the money to assist with national mass deportation efforts comes with added oversight and risks.

Sheriff Cass Martin from Ozark County, Missouri, "sees his prayers answered in a new contract with ICE that could boost his $1.1 million annual budget," reports Jesse Bogan of the Missouri Independent. "An enormous ramp-up in detention capacity is underway. New contracts are being negotiated. . . . Ozark County is already reaping the benefits by raising wages and hiring for new positions in law enforcement."

Martin saw the ICE contract as a possible answer to his budgeting shortfall. He told Bogan, “We were really hurting. The day after the inauguration, a federal inspector showed up here at the jail wanting to look at everything throughout the facility."

Ozark County is one example of how a small, rural law enforcement office can become an effective "arm" for ICE. "They’ve made 525-mile runs from Ozark County to the federal building in St. Louis, down to the Greene County Jail in southwest Missouri, then back home," Bogan adds. "They’ve picked up detainees 325 miles away in Oklahoma and taken them to the tarmac at Kansas City International Airport."

But the added work and money have strings attached. ICE "detention and transportation contracts come with much more scrutiny and oversight than typical jail work, especially in Missouri, which doesn’t have statewide jail standards," Bogan reports. "Still, ICE reported that eight detainees had died nationally while in custody this year, as of May 5, including one death in a rural Missouri jail."

At least in Ozark County, local input on ICE contracts has been minimal; however, local officials working on ICE details haven't broadcast their federal negotiations. "Just one [local resident] attended a recent county commissioner meeting," Bogan writes. "Two years’ worth of meeting minutes didn’t mention the ICE contract in detail. The county commissioner said he wanted to wait until federal money started coming in before listing projected revenue in the county’s $7 million annual budget."  

In rural Maine, farmers worry migrant workers will be too afraid to show up for work and crops will rot in the fields

Blueberries burst forth during Maine's early summer,
but they need to be harvested quickly. (Adobe Stock photo)

As the Trump administration steps up its immigration and deportation efforts, Maine farmers who rely on immigrant labor to harvest seasonal crops such as wild blueberries are concerned about labor shortages. Some farmers worry that no matter how legal their past immigrant employees may be, fears about deportation will keep them from "showing up to rake [blueberry] fields — out in plain sight," reports Joyce Kryszak of The Maine Monitor. Without immigrant workers, Maine farmers say they can't bring in all their fields within the short window to harvest before crops begin to rot.

Harry Ricker and his wife, Nancy, own Ricker Hill Orchards in the small town of Turner, Maine. Each year the couple pays to participate in the H-2A visa program to employ "dozens of hard-working apple pickers each harvest season, mostly from Jamaica," Kryszak writes. They don't think they can hire enough non-immigrants to complete their apple harvest. Harry Ricker told Kryszak, "There are a lot less local people that want to do it, so we have to have [the H-2A] program. Without it, we’ll just be out of the industry. We go away.”

Meanwhile, state officials are working to help Maine businesses stay on top of visa program requirements and changes. "Patrick Woodcock, the executive director of the Maine Chamber of Commerce, told Kryszak, "Regardless of the merits of the polic[ies], we really do want to ensure that employers understand how to be in compliance. There may be employees that were authorized to work that may be affected by changes and may not be authorized to work now or in the coming months.”

Local apple and blueberry farmers aren't the only ones worried. "Agricultural farmers of all types . . . and fisheries. . . have come to rely on the largely Latino migrant and year-round immigrant communities," Kryszak reports. "A 2015 Maine Department of Labor . . . survey, the most recent report available from the Department, found that 56% of migrant farm workers were from Mexico, with others from Haiti, Canada, Honduras, El Salvador, and the Philippines."

When residents in a small Indiana town discuss an immigrant welcome center, clashing views take center stage

President-elect Donald Trump promised mass deportations of illegal immigrants would begin during his first 30 days in office. For many residents in the small town of Seymour, Indiana, the expulsions "can't start soon enough," reports Arian Campo-Flores of The Wall Street Journal. "Seymour is one of many cities across the U.S. feeling the effects of a historic wave of immigration, where residents seeking to integrate migrants are clashing with others calling for them to be rooted out and sent home."

Historically, most immigrants who came to Seymour settled peacefully until a proposal for an immigrant welcome center circulated in the spring of 2024. The plan incensed residents who feared the center would bring even more immigrants. "Such residents have complained for years that a flood of unauthorized migrants. . . strained schools, hospitals and housing," Campo-Flores explains. "With President-elect Donald Trump promising to conduct mass deportations . . . . They are organizing opposition to illegal immigration."

Location of Seymour, Ind.
(Wikipedia photo)

Seymour has a population of roughly 22,000 people, many of who have voted Republican for decades. Unemployment is low and jobs are plentiful, making it attractive to migrants who "began arriving in significant numbers in the 1990s," Campo-Flores writes. "For most of the period since, the flow of arrivals was manageable and generated few flashpoints, residents say."

But at the March city council meeting the welcome center proposal "proved to be the spark that ignited simmering frustration over illegal immigration," Campo-Flores adds. "At the meeting, speakers fumed about migrants allegedly failing to assimilate, committing crimes and crowding multiple families into small homes. . . . Republican state Rep. Jim Lucas, who is from Seymour, said at the meeting that the city welcomed immigrants who arrive legally and are properly vetted."

Seymour resident Tim Smallwood supports Trump's planned deportations. Campo-Flores writes, "He thinks the Trump administration should first target unauthorized migrants with criminal records and then pressure other migrants to 'self-deport.' He told Campo-Flores, "It’s the only way they’ll solve this problem. You’ve got to make it hard enough on them that they don’t want to come here in the first place.”