Immigration raids leave crops unharvested, California farms at risk

Lisa Tate is a sixth-generation farmer in Ventura County, California, an area that produces billions of dollars worth of fruit and vegetables each year, much of it hand-picked by immigrants in the US illegally.

Tate knows the farms around her well. And she says she can see with her own eyes how raids carried out by agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the area's fields earlier this month, part of President Donald Trump's migration crackdown, have frightened off workers.

"In the fields, I would say 70% of the workers are gone," she said in an interview. "If 70% of your workforce doesn't show up, 70% of your crop doesn't get picked and can go bad in one day. Most Americans don't want to do this work. Most farmers here are barely breaking even. I fear this has created a tipping point where many will go bust."

In the vast agricultural lands north of Los Angeles, stretching from Ventura County into the state's central valley, two farmers, two field supervisors and four immigrant farmworkers told Reuters this month that the ICE raids have led a majority of workers to stop showing up.

That means crops are not being picked and fruit and vegetables are rotting at peak harvest time, they said.

One Mexican farm supervisor, who asked not to be named, was overseeing a field being prepared for planting strawberries last week. Usually he would have 300 workers, he said. On this day he had just 80. Another supervisor at a different farm said he usually has 80 workers in a field, but today just 17.

BAD FOR BUSINESS

Most economists and politicians acknowledge that many of America's agricultural workers are in the country illegally, but say a sharp reduction in their numbers could have devastating impacts on the food supply chain and farm-belt economies.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Republican and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said an estimated 80% of farmworkers in the US were foreign-born, with nearly half of them in the country illegally. Losing them will cause price hikes for consumers, he said.

"This is bad for supply chains, bad for the agricultural industry," Holtz-Eakin said.

Over a third of US vegetables and over three-quarters of the country's fruits and nuts are grown in California, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The state's farms and ranches generated nearly $60 billion in agricultural sales in 2023.

Of the four immigrant farmworkers Reuters spoke to, two are in the country illegally. These two spoke on the condition of anonymity, out of fear of being arrested by ICE.

One, aged 54, has worked in US agricultural fields for 30 years and has a wife and children in the country. He said most of his colleagues have stopped showing up for work.

"If they show up to work, they don't know if they will ever see their family again," he said.

The other worker in the country illegally told Reuters, "Basically, we wake up in the morning scared. We worry about the sun, the heat, and now a much bigger problem – many not returning home. I try not to get into trouble on the street. Now, whoever gets arrested for any reason gets deported."

To be sure, some farmworker community groups said many workers were still returning to the fields, despite the raids, out of economic necessity.

The days following a raid may see decreased attendance in the field, but the workers soon return because they have no other sources of income, five groups told Reuters.

Workers are also taking other steps to reduce their exposure to immigration agents, like carpooling with people with legal status to work or sending US citizen children to the grocery store, the groups said.

ICE CHILL

Trump conceded in a post on his Truth Social account this month that ICE raids on farmworkers – and also hotel workers – were "taking very good, long-time workers away" from those sectors, "with those jobs being almost impossible to replace."

Trump later told reporters, "Our farmers are being hurt badly. They have very good workers." He added, "They're not citizens, but they've turned out to be great."

He pledged to issue an order to address the impact, but no policy change has yet been enacted.

Trump has always stood up for farmers, said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly in response to a request for comment on the impact of the ICE raids to farms. "He will continue to strengthen our agricultural industry and boost exports while keeping his promise to enforce our immigration laws," she said.

Bernard Yaros, Lead US Economist at Oxford Economics, a nonpartisan global economics advisory firm, said in a report published on June 26 that native-born workers tend not to fill the void left by immigrant workers who have left.

"Unauthorized immigrants tend to work in different occupations than those who are native-born," he said.

ICE operations in California's farmland were scaring even those who are authorized, said Greg Tesch, who runs a farm in central California.

"Nobody feels safe when they hear the word ICE, even the documented people. We know that the neighborhood is full of a combination of those with and without documents," Tesch said.

"If things are ripe, such as our neighbors have bell peppers here, (if) they don't harvest within two or three days, the crop is sunburned or over mature," said Tesch. "We need the labor."