WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown on undocumented immigrants could have a major effect on the agriculture industry, which relies on migrant labor. The concern is especially profound in Texas, which leads the nation in the number of farms and ranches, and where agriculture is a more than $30-billion-a-year industry.
As Trump pursues an aggressive campaign of mass deportations, there are growing worries about what that could mean both for the immigrant workforce that helps sustain the agriculture industry and for food prices.
“It’s definitely going to have an impact on our ability to provide an abundant source of food, and if we aren’t able to do that, then we’re going to have to rely on other countries for that product. Therefore, the prices at the grocery store will go up,” Laramie Adams, the associate government affairs director of the Texas Farm Bureau, said.
In recent years, 42% of hired crop farm workers in the U.S. have no work authorization, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“The vast majority of undocumented immigrants are hardworking people who pay taxes and contributed to American society some for decades,” Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said at a recent Congressional Hispanic Caucus press conference denouncing Trump’s executive actions on immigration.
Adams said some Texas farmers agree with the need to impose more controls along the southern border.
“A lot of our farmers and ranchers have suffered the consequences of the border crisis, and so we are very firm and saying, ‘we have to control the border,’” he said.
“We’re hopeful that we can work with the administration to make sure that this is done in a in a fashion that doesn’t impact agriculture, because we do rely so much on immigrant labor. This is the fact: there aren’t a lot of Americans in line to do a lot of these jobs that it takes to make sure that our crops are harvested and planted.”
Adams sees an opportunity to reform H-2A visas, which are for temporary agricultural workers, with the new administration including with Trump’s pick for agriculture secretary, Texas native Brooke Rollins.
Rollins was asked at her Senate confirmation hearing about the undocumented workforce in agriculture.
“My commitment is to work with all of you to work to solve and do everything we can to make sure that none of these farms or dairy producers are put out of business,” Rollins told senators.
Rollins reiterated that the Trump administration is first focused on arresting those convicted of crimes and who already have removal orders. But border czar Tom Homan has said undocumented immigrants with no criminal records would be detained and possibly deported if they are swept up in enforcement actions targeting criminals.