Recent ICE raids have rocked rural America, delaying meat shipments in Kansas, threatening poultry production in Pennsylvania and affecting farmworkers in California, industry leaders say.
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More than 40 farmers and agricultural industry groups are warning Washington leaders that the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration is affecting the nation’s food supply, hurting farmers and risking higher grocery prices.
“Targeting immigrant workers who have not committed crimes and blocking workforce solutions for agriculture devastates agricultural producers, drives up food costs for all Americans and makes our nation more dependent on other countries,” the groups say in a letter addressed to President Donald Trump and congressional leaders, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post.
Signatories include the Milk Producers Council, the Texas International Produce Association, the Kansas Livestock Association and the Indiana Dairy Producers, among other members of the American Immigration Business Coalition, a bipartisan group of employers that lobbies for immigration changes on Capitol Hill.
The letter marks a shift in strategy for an industry that has been reluctant to publicly criticize Trump’s campaign of immigration raids, detention and deportation targeting its workforce, preferring generally to lobby the administration behind the scenes. About 66 percent of the country’s farmworkers are foreign-born.
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But the group decided to publicize its warning after recent sweeps by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents near major meatpacking plants delayed cattle livestock operations, shipments and harvesting in southwest Kansas; led to arrests of farm workers in California’s Central Valley; and threatened poultry production in Pennsylvania farm country, industry leaders say.
“We’ve been at odds lately with [the Trump administration], especially when folks … suddenly become the targets of ICE raids,” said Christian Herr, a signatory of the letter and president of the PennAg Industries Association. The group represents farmers, as well pork and poultry producers, in Pennsylvania. “You couple that with pressures from tariffs, high fertilizer costs and supply chain disruptions [and] some of the president’s most loyal supporters are fading fast.”
The letter also comes a little more than a week before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, which the group hopes will revive discussion of immigration legislation on Capitol Hill. Specifically, it calls on Congress to provide work permits for long-term agriculture workers, citing a bill introduced this year by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “G.T.” Thompson (R-Pennsylvania).
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