Employees Terrified of ICE Raids Are Failing to Show Up at Work
Bloomberg (archive.ph)
By Alicia A. Caldwell, Maxwell Adler, and Michael Smith
2025-06-19 21:00:39GMT
US farms already struggling to find enough crop hands are finding it even harder amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Photographer: Ivan Kashinsky/Bloomberg
The Los Angeles garment district is emptied out. Texas dairy farmers say workers aren’t showing up to milk cows. An Idaho onion grower already struggling to find enough crop hands says his labor supply is only getting worse.
And in Ventura, California, Deputy Mayor Doug Halter said that after nearby immigration raids targeted day laborers outside of Home Depots, all the Latinos seemed to have disappeared from one of the retailer’s outposts near him. Walking through the aisles the other day, from what he could tell, there were only White people. “If you know this area, you’ll know that is abnormal.”
The US labor landscape is being roiled as high-profile workplace raids by immigration agents kitted out in military gear scare off workers who lack permission to be in the country and leave employers unsure of how they’ll manage without them. Unauthorized immigrants make up an estimated 5% of the US workforce, with the concentration particularly high in construction, food processing and other areas that face chronic labor shortages.
Immigration raids targeting day laborers outside Home Depots have sparked Los Angeles protests over increasingly aggressive ICE tactics.Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
As President Donald Trump seeks to fulfill a campaign pledge to undertake the largest deportation operation in history, the economic fallout looms. The US workforce shrank in May, partly because of a decline in the number of foreign-born workers. In California—the most-populous state and home to a particularly large share of immigrants—mass deportations could wipe out $275 billion in economic output, slash tax revenue by as much as $23 billion annually and severely disrupt industries like construction and agriculture, according to a report this week by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute and University of California at Merced.
“If we deported everyone here that’s undocumented and working on farms, in fields, we would starve to death,” said Shay Myers, who runs Parma, Idaho-based Owyhee Produce, one of America’s largest onion farms.
Every year, Myers needs to secure about 90 farm hands with federal guest-worker visas, called H-2A, from Mexico and elsewhere to tend to 10,000 acres (4,000 hectares) in Idaho and Oregon. But getting enough laborers has become such a headache that he’s had to give up planting some crops.
“We will not feed our people in this country without these workers, plain and simple,” he said.
US farms run on an army of workers to grow crops, and the Department of Agriculture estimates more than 40% are undocumented. Owners and workers have been whipsawed as they try to decipher the Trump administration’s stance toward the agriculture industry. Last week, the president seemed to offer a reprieve by suggesting workplace raids should avoid farms, food processors, hotels and restaurants. But just a few days later, the administration’s stance abruptly shifted, with the Department of Homeland Security reaffirming agents should resume going after everyone in the country without permission regardless of where they work.
US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.Photographer: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Such policy volatility is typical of the Trump administration—the president’s plan for tariffs have also been notably unstable—and likely reflects competing views within the White House. While hardliners such as adviser Stephen Miller have pushed for an aggressive deportation program, setting a target of at least 3,000 arrests a day, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has appeared sympathetic to business concerns about labor shortages, according to people familiar with White House deliberations who asked not to be identified discussing internal debates.
Trump “realized that there really could be a big problem if they just rounded them all up and kicked them all out,” said Edward Ring, the head of the conservative think tank California Policy Center, who met with the president in January but says he doesn’t have direct knowledge of any policy discussions. “Trump got the word on that, and he doesn’t want to destroy a whole industry.”
Trump also is confronting fierce pushback to his deportation push, and particularly the heavy handed tactics often employed and the indiscriminate nature of the roundups. Over the weekend, protesters rallied in hundreds of US cities to denounce what they said were the president’s authoritarian tendencies. Days earlier, demonstrations in LA, sparked by increasingly aggressive raids from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, escalated following his decision to deploy National Guard troops and Marines to help quell violence.
In downtown LA’s Fashion District, where ICE raids helped spur the protests, mills usually filled with the buzz of sewing machines were silent, the shops shut down for lack of workers. Many showrooms that cater to wholesale buyers are padlocked. The LA Fashion District Business Improvement District reported a 40% drop in casual visits to the area since a high-profile raid on June 6, while attendance by employees declined almost 24%.
People gather in front of Ambiance Apparel after several employees were taken into custody by federal agents in the Fashion District in downtown Los Angeles, on June 6.Photographer: Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
“The President has been incredibly clear. There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE’s efforts,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for DHS, said in emailed response to questions Wednesday. “Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability.”
Texas state Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller says that while some Texas dairy farms have tried to use technology to lessen dependence on manual labor, the immigration crackdown has still hit hard. Some undocumented workers hoping to avoid ICE agents have stopped coming to work and even some legal workers are staying away for fear that they will be detained or questioned, he said.
“Those cows, they have to be milked every eight hours, so if milkhands are gone, what are you going to do?” Miller said. “It’s sheer panic.”
Trump has previously tried to shield the agricultural industry from economic pain, steering billions of dollars in federal aid to farmers in his first term, mainly to offset losses from his trade war with China. During the pandemic, he designated farm workers as essential and allowed some flexibility around visa rules, recognizing their importance to the nation's food supply chain.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Wednesday, he again sounded a note of sympathy for farmers while emphasizing the need for more deportations. “Now, look, we have to take care of our farmers. We have to take care of people that run leisure hotels,” he said. “But most importantly, we have to get the criminals out of our country.”
The 5.5 million immigrants who joined the labor force since 2020 have been behind most of the job creation in the US, but Trump has framed the crackdown as a matter of restoring public safety and protecting American jobs. While some of his tactics have drawn criticism, immigration enforcement still holds broad support. A Pew Research Center poll from March found that more than 80% of respondents believe at least some people who are in the US illegally, especially those with criminal records, should be deported.
ICE reported this month that it was averaging more than 1,600 daily apprehensions, a faster pace from an average of 670 arrests a day between when Trump took office Jan. 20 and May. It’s also a roughly 450% increase over typical numbers during former President Joe Biden’s last year in office. ICE doesn't publish daily arrest figures and didn't respond to a request to provide updated data when contacted by Bloomberg.
Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, said he hasn’t spoken to the president about his recent views on the agriculture and hotel industries, while acknowledging tensions between labor demands and immigration policy. “I have said for a long time, Congress needs to make some changes. We need a workforce to do that type of work, then create a legal pathway,” Homan told The Daily podcast in an episode released Thursday, referencing concerns from hotels and farmers. “The president understands there’s a broken system here, but it doesn’t mean we just ignore the law.” Homan said workplace raids are still happening, though agents are prioritizing the most serious criminals.
Sid Miller, Myers and others involved in the agriculture industry have said that easing the path for temporary visas for farm workers offer a way to address concerns about illegal immigration while maintaining the labor force.
Farmers work in a field in Camarillo, California, on June 17.Photographer: Ivan Kashinsky/Bloomberg
It’s onerous to secure legal guest workers, taking 90 days or more, growers say. A farm must first ask the US Labor Department to certify the need for workers they can’t find in America. Then, the farm has to find foreign workers, pay to bring them to the US, and cover housing and meals. It adds up to $21,250 per H-2A worker for 125 days of harvest work, according to Philip Martin, a professor at the University of California at Davis.
“People don’t really understand where their food comes from and what it takes to get their food to them,” said Myers, a third-generation farmer. He believes that Congress should overhaul US immigration policy to give law-abiding undocumented farm workers a pathway to legal immigration status.
Katelyn Eames, who runs Burg’s Corner, a peach farm in Stonewall, Texas, says she’s dependent on workers with temporary visas. The program requires her to advertise jobs to US citizens first, but in the years she’s been working at the farm, no Americans have ever applied. The work requires people willing to pick peaches in the brutally hot central Texas summers, where temperatures routinely exceed 100 degrees F (38 C).
“If it weren’t for them, there would be no peaches,” Eames said. “If you think a US citizen wanted to pick 500 acres of my dad’s peaches in the last 60 years, you would be sadly mistaken.”
Industry lobbyists also are mobilizing. The Kansas Livestock Association’s lobbyists are “getting inside the room” at the White House by focusing on Rollins, calling for giving law-abiding undocumented workers to be given a path to legal status because there aren't enough people in America to staff all the farms, ranches and meat processing plants, according to Chief Executive Officer Matt Teagarden. “We can use imported workers in our food production, or we can import food,” he said. “And, from a national security, food security standpoint, we don't want to import food.”
The Meat Institute, which represents producers including JBS NV and Tyson Foods Inc., last week urged the Trump administration to include meat and poultry packers and processors in efforts to improve agriculture worker programs. Richard Kreps, chair of American Pistachio Growers, said his trade group plans to use Trump’s immigration crackdown to push for a guest worker program for farm workers, similar to the Bracero Program, a midcentury effort that allowed millions of Mexican men to work in US agriculture.
The American Hotel & Lodging Association, a trade group, has held “numerous meetings with administration officials to convey our acute workforce shortage challenges,” CEO Rosanna Maietta said in an email.
About 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles, in Ventura County, the strawberry and Brussels sprout harvests are in full swing. Days after high-profile immigration raids that targeted farm workers and produced videos of agents chasing men through fields, workers are mostly back. This time of year means lots of steady work, and even workers apprehensive about ICE raids were willing to take the risk. Workers asked passing strangers to identify themselves, nervous about seeing a camera or someone peering into fields through chain link fences.
Farmworkers harvest Brussels sprouts at a farm in Oxnard, on June 17.Photographer: Ivan Kashinsky/Bloomberg
“Farm workers live from crisis to crisis,” said Roman Pinal, national vice president of the United Farm Workers, adding that field workers in Ventura county worked through smoke-filled days during the LA wildfires in January and immigration raids in the Central Valley that same month.
Carolina, a 29-year-old Mexican national who asked to be identified with a nickname to avoid antagonizing authorities, said she has been working in California’s strawberry fields since she arrived in the US as a 12-year-old. She worries that she will be targeted by Trump's crackdown even though she has a work permit that is good for the next four years.
“We’re not criminals,” Carolina said. “We are just trying to work, not cause problems.”
— With assistance from Eliyahu Kamisher, Joe Lovinger, Skylar Woodhouse, Julie Fine, Myles Miller, Jennifer A Dlouhy, John Gittelsohn, Augusta Saraiva, Gerson Freitas Jr, Michael Hirtzer, Erin Ailworth, Patrick Clark, and Divya Balji
Bloomberg (archive.ph)
By Alicia A. Caldwell, Maxwell Adler, and Michael Smith
2025-06-19 21:00:39GMT
US farms already struggling to find enough crop hands are finding it even harder amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Photographer: Ivan Kashinsky/Bloomberg
The Los Angeles garment district is emptied out. Texas dairy farmers say workers aren’t showing up to milk cows. An Idaho onion grower already struggling to find enough crop hands says his labor supply is only getting worse.
And in Ventura, California, Deputy Mayor Doug Halter said that after nearby immigration raids targeted day laborers outside of Home Depots, all the Latinos seemed to have disappeared from one of the retailer’s outposts near him. Walking through the aisles the other day, from what he could tell, there were only White people. “If you know this area, you’ll know that is abnormal.”
The US labor landscape is being roiled as high-profile workplace raids by immigration agents kitted out in military gear scare off workers who lack permission to be in the country and leave employers unsure of how they’ll manage without them. Unauthorized immigrants make up an estimated 5% of the US workforce, with the concentration particularly high in construction, food processing and other areas that face chronic labor shortages.
Immigration raids targeting day laborers outside Home Depots have sparked Los Angeles protests over increasingly aggressive ICE tactics.Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
As President Donald Trump seeks to fulfill a campaign pledge to undertake the largest deportation operation in history, the economic fallout looms. The US workforce shrank in May, partly because of a decline in the number of foreign-born workers. In California—the most-populous state and home to a particularly large share of immigrants—mass deportations could wipe out $275 billion in economic output, slash tax revenue by as much as $23 billion annually and severely disrupt industries like construction and agriculture, according to a report this week by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute and University of California at Merced.
“If we deported everyone here that’s undocumented and working on farms, in fields, we would starve to death,” said Shay Myers, who runs Parma, Idaho-based Owyhee Produce, one of America’s largest onion farms.
Every year, Myers needs to secure about 90 farm hands with federal guest-worker visas, called H-2A, from Mexico and elsewhere to tend to 10,000 acres (4,000 hectares) in Idaho and Oregon. But getting enough laborers has become such a headache that he’s had to give up planting some crops.
“We will not feed our people in this country without these workers, plain and simple,” he said.
US farms run on an army of workers to grow crops, and the Department of Agriculture estimates more than 40% are undocumented. Owners and workers have been whipsawed as they try to decipher the Trump administration’s stance toward the agriculture industry. Last week, the president seemed to offer a reprieve by suggesting workplace raids should avoid farms, food processors, hotels and restaurants. But just a few days later, the administration’s stance abruptly shifted, with the Department of Homeland Security reaffirming agents should resume going after everyone in the country without permission regardless of where they work.
US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.Photographer: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Such policy volatility is typical of the Trump administration—the president’s plan for tariffs have also been notably unstable—and likely reflects competing views within the White House. While hardliners such as adviser Stephen Miller have pushed for an aggressive deportation program, setting a target of at least 3,000 arrests a day, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has appeared sympathetic to business concerns about labor shortages, according to people familiar with White House deliberations who asked not to be identified discussing internal debates.
Trump “realized that there really could be a big problem if they just rounded them all up and kicked them all out,” said Edward Ring, the head of the conservative think tank California Policy Center, who met with the president in January but says he doesn’t have direct knowledge of any policy discussions. “Trump got the word on that, and he doesn’t want to destroy a whole industry.”
Trump also is confronting fierce pushback to his deportation push, and particularly the heavy handed tactics often employed and the indiscriminate nature of the roundups. Over the weekend, protesters rallied in hundreds of US cities to denounce what they said were the president’s authoritarian tendencies. Days earlier, demonstrations in LA, sparked by increasingly aggressive raids from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, escalated following his decision to deploy National Guard troops and Marines to help quell violence.
In downtown LA’s Fashion District, where ICE raids helped spur the protests, mills usually filled with the buzz of sewing machines were silent, the shops shut down for lack of workers. Many showrooms that cater to wholesale buyers are padlocked. The LA Fashion District Business Improvement District reported a 40% drop in casual visits to the area since a high-profile raid on June 6, while attendance by employees declined almost 24%.
People gather in front of Ambiance Apparel after several employees were taken into custody by federal agents in the Fashion District in downtown Los Angeles, on June 6.Photographer: Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
“The President has been incredibly clear. There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE’s efforts,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for DHS, said in emailed response to questions Wednesday. “Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability.”
Texas state Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller says that while some Texas dairy farms have tried to use technology to lessen dependence on manual labor, the immigration crackdown has still hit hard. Some undocumented workers hoping to avoid ICE agents have stopped coming to work and even some legal workers are staying away for fear that they will be detained or questioned, he said.
“Those cows, they have to be milked every eight hours, so if milkhands are gone, what are you going to do?” Miller said. “It’s sheer panic.”
Trump has previously tried to shield the agricultural industry from economic pain, steering billions of dollars in federal aid to farmers in his first term, mainly to offset losses from his trade war with China. During the pandemic, he designated farm workers as essential and allowed some flexibility around visa rules, recognizing their importance to the nation's food supply chain.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Wednesday, he again sounded a note of sympathy for farmers while emphasizing the need for more deportations. “Now, look, we have to take care of our farmers. We have to take care of people that run leisure hotels,” he said. “But most importantly, we have to get the criminals out of our country.”
The 5.5 million immigrants who joined the labor force since 2020 have been behind most of the job creation in the US, but Trump has framed the crackdown as a matter of restoring public safety and protecting American jobs. While some of his tactics have drawn criticism, immigration enforcement still holds broad support. A Pew Research Center poll from March found that more than 80% of respondents believe at least some people who are in the US illegally, especially those with criminal records, should be deported.
ICE reported this month that it was averaging more than 1,600 daily apprehensions, a faster pace from an average of 670 arrests a day between when Trump took office Jan. 20 and May. It’s also a roughly 450% increase over typical numbers during former President Joe Biden’s last year in office. ICE doesn't publish daily arrest figures and didn't respond to a request to provide updated data when contacted by Bloomberg.
Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, said he hasn’t spoken to the president about his recent views on the agriculture and hotel industries, while acknowledging tensions between labor demands and immigration policy. “I have said for a long time, Congress needs to make some changes. We need a workforce to do that type of work, then create a legal pathway,” Homan told The Daily podcast in an episode released Thursday, referencing concerns from hotels and farmers. “The president understands there’s a broken system here, but it doesn’t mean we just ignore the law.” Homan said workplace raids are still happening, though agents are prioritizing the most serious criminals.
Sid Miller, Myers and others involved in the agriculture industry have said that easing the path for temporary visas for farm workers offer a way to address concerns about illegal immigration while maintaining the labor force.
Farmers work in a field in Camarillo, California, on June 17.Photographer: Ivan Kashinsky/Bloomberg
It’s onerous to secure legal guest workers, taking 90 days or more, growers say. A farm must first ask the US Labor Department to certify the need for workers they can’t find in America. Then, the farm has to find foreign workers, pay to bring them to the US, and cover housing and meals. It adds up to $21,250 per H-2A worker for 125 days of harvest work, according to Philip Martin, a professor at the University of California at Davis.
“People don’t really understand where their food comes from and what it takes to get their food to them,” said Myers, a third-generation farmer. He believes that Congress should overhaul US immigration policy to give law-abiding undocumented farm workers a pathway to legal immigration status.
Katelyn Eames, who runs Burg’s Corner, a peach farm in Stonewall, Texas, says she’s dependent on workers with temporary visas. The program requires her to advertise jobs to US citizens first, but in the years she’s been working at the farm, no Americans have ever applied. The work requires people willing to pick peaches in the brutally hot central Texas summers, where temperatures routinely exceed 100 degrees F (38 C).
“If it weren’t for them, there would be no peaches,” Eames said. “If you think a US citizen wanted to pick 500 acres of my dad’s peaches in the last 60 years, you would be sadly mistaken.”
Industry lobbyists also are mobilizing. The Kansas Livestock Association’s lobbyists are “getting inside the room” at the White House by focusing on Rollins, calling for giving law-abiding undocumented workers to be given a path to legal status because there aren't enough people in America to staff all the farms, ranches and meat processing plants, according to Chief Executive Officer Matt Teagarden. “We can use imported workers in our food production, or we can import food,” he said. “And, from a national security, food security standpoint, we don't want to import food.”
The Meat Institute, which represents producers including JBS NV and Tyson Foods Inc., last week urged the Trump administration to include meat and poultry packers and processors in efforts to improve agriculture worker programs. Richard Kreps, chair of American Pistachio Growers, said his trade group plans to use Trump’s immigration crackdown to push for a guest worker program for farm workers, similar to the Bracero Program, a midcentury effort that allowed millions of Mexican men to work in US agriculture.
The American Hotel & Lodging Association, a trade group, has held “numerous meetings with administration officials to convey our acute workforce shortage challenges,” CEO Rosanna Maietta said in an email.
About 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles, in Ventura County, the strawberry and Brussels sprout harvests are in full swing. Days after high-profile immigration raids that targeted farm workers and produced videos of agents chasing men through fields, workers are mostly back. This time of year means lots of steady work, and even workers apprehensive about ICE raids were willing to take the risk. Workers asked passing strangers to identify themselves, nervous about seeing a camera or someone peering into fields through chain link fences.
Farmworkers harvest Brussels sprouts at a farm in Oxnard, on June 17.Photographer: Ivan Kashinsky/Bloomberg
“Farm workers live from crisis to crisis,” said Roman Pinal, national vice president of the United Farm Workers, adding that field workers in Ventura county worked through smoke-filled days during the LA wildfires in January and immigration raids in the Central Valley that same month.
Carolina, a 29-year-old Mexican national who asked to be identified with a nickname to avoid antagonizing authorities, said she has been working in California’s strawberry fields since she arrived in the US as a 12-year-old. She worries that she will be targeted by Trump's crackdown even though she has a work permit that is good for the next four years.
“We’re not criminals,” Carolina said. “We are just trying to work, not cause problems.”
— With assistance from Eliyahu Kamisher, Joe Lovinger, Skylar Woodhouse, Julie Fine, Myles Miller, Jennifer A Dlouhy, John Gittelsohn, Augusta Saraiva, Gerson Freitas Jr, Michael Hirtzer, Erin Ailworth, Patrick Clark, and Divya Balji
