Agricultural employers are watching warily as the Trump administration takes shape to see whether the president-elect fulfills his promise to launch a mass deportation of immigrants.
Trump appeared to reaffirm his pledge with the announced picks of Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff, Tom Homan as his “border czar” and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Miller has been a staunch advocate of mass deportations, and Homan headed Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s enforcement and removal operations unit from 2013 until he was tapped by Trump to lead ICE in 2017. Noem has criticized border security under President Joe Biden, even sending South Dakota National Guard troops to the border with Mexico at one point.
After leaving government at the end of the Trump administration, Homan became a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is listed as a contributor to Project 2025, a blueprint for an incoming conservative administration assembled by Heritage. Trump has disavowed the document, which recommends capping and phasing down the H-2A farmworker visa program.
In an interview with Fox and Friends Monday, Homan emphasized Trump’s priority is "public safety threats and national security threats.” He also said ICE will resume workplace raids.
But producers are worried, chief among them dairy farmers whose operations rely heavily on immigrant labor. The National Milk Producers Federation, citing a 2015 study, says 51% of the workers at dairy operations are immigrants.
Steve Obert, executive director of Indiana Dairy Producers, said he has seen figures showing that as many as 80% of dairy farm workers are immigrants, though he doesn’t know how many lack proper documentation.
He hopes the new administration will push for comprehensive immigration and workforce reform instead of trying to deport what is estimated to be at least 14 million immigrants, including approximately 1 million in the agricultural sector.
“I think there is some of that prevailing thought that's floating around, as we try to be optimistic” moving forward, Obert said. “This has to be fixed comprehensively.”
Farm workforce reform legislation advanced through the House in the previous Congress but stalled in the Senate when Idaho Republican M
Steve Obertike Crapo did not back legislation introduced by Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo. Crapo said one of the reasons he didn't back Bennet’s bill was that it that would have made “certified agricultural workers, who are currently undocumented, eligible for federal benefits like health care tax credits and food purchasing benefits for low-income Americans and families.”
Obert and milk producers nationwide warn of devastating consequences if they lose their workers. NMPF say the retail cost of milk would double and the economy would take a $32 billion hit.
“If we have mass deportation and the border gets sealed off, bigger problems will be created than just illegal immigration,” Obert said, pointing to the impacts on Trump's campaign pledges to lower inflation and address the lack of housing.
“All those would be much worse if we lose at least 50% of our workforce,” he said.
A report from the American Immigration Council estimates that the construction and agriculture industries would lose an estimated one in eight workers, while in hospitality, about one in 14 workers would be deported due to their undocumented status.
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“The big problem we face in the dairy industry is we need year-round workers, but they don't even provide us with a program to access the workers we need,” Obert said.
Michael Marsh, president and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, says he has the impression that Stephen Miller and other deportation proponents believe, despite evidence to the contrary, that Americans will jump to fill jobs left vacant if immigrants leave.
“If you had to deport almost a million farm workers, who would you replace them with?” he asked.
Marsh notes the H-2A program brings in about 300,000 workers a year, which would need to be more than tripled to make up for the loss of farmworkers. However, he noted that dairy farmers and poultry and livestock operators don’t qualify for H-2A.
“I I just don't have any idea what you would do, because you can recruit and recruit, and you can pay as much as you want, but you're not going to get the workers out on the farm and do the job,” Marsh said.
Miller has said that “mass deportation will be a labor-market disruption celebrated by American workers, who will now be offered higher wages with better benefits to fill these jobs.”
Trump advisers and others have said the deportation program will focus first on violent criminals.
One of those advisers, former U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States Carlos Trujillo, told Politico that “mass deportations should focus on those who are the most dangerous and most violent and pose the most risk to our country.”
Indiana farmer Kip Tom, co-chair of the Farmers and Ranchers for Trump 47 coalition, said of Trump, “When you listen to him, I think it's really about getting those who are here to do harm to our nation, to make sure we get them out and to close the border down.” Tom also is former U.S. ambassador to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture and chief of the U.S. Mission to the UN Agencies in Rome.
Jim BanksBut there are continued calls for more widespread detention and deportation. Newly elected Republican senator Jim Banks of Indiana said in an interview with CNN that “the goal should be to deport every illegal in this country that we can find. And if you take away the incentive for them to come here in the first place, by turning up the pressure on those who employ illegals, then … they're going to go back to where they came from.”
Banks said the first priority should be violent criminals, but also reacted to a quotation read by journalist Dana Bash about the potentially severe impact on the ag workforce by saying, “A mandate is a mandate, and the president winning the popular vote on Tuesday is a strong signal that this is what the American people, the public, expects us to do.”
He also said there would not be significant opposition in Congress to funding the deportation plan, whose costs have been estimated by the American Immigration Council at $315 billion. Trump said in a recent interview that the plan has “no price tag.”
Noting some of the “anti-unauthorized worker” sentiment among Trump’s advisers, Marsh said a challenge in getting his members’ message to the new administration is “how do you communicate that, and through who, so that it resonates?”
Of the workers who could be targeted for deportation, he says, “They're working and they're contributing, and they're paying taxes, and they're not getting in trouble, and they've been here for years, and they’re good members of the community.”
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