Trump’s Immigration Plans Are Already Wrecking the Food Industry: Immigrant farm workers are too scared to show up to work.

https://newrepublic.com/post/190555/donald-trump-immigration-deportations-farm-workers

40 comments

  1. So, the food industry cannot function without sub-minimum wage exploited labor?

  2. “This was identified early on as a likely outcome” is a sentence I’ll be using a lot from now on.

  3. 100% predictable. Wait until the price increases show up at the grocery store as products rot on the vine while they try to find people willing to do hard farm work.

  4. This is a weird place to begin. Bakersfield and the rest of California’s Central Valley is dominated by large Republican corporations and mega donors. Trump is too fascinated by his tech bros to realize that.

  5. Your papers, please:

    >Undocumented workers have been targeted walking in and out of gas stations, getting breakfast, at Home Depot, or while driving along the 99 Highway, leaving many with no other option than to simply stay at home.

    >“We’re in the middle of our citrus harvesting,” Casey Creamer, president of the industry group California Citrus Mutual, told CalMatters. “This sent shockwaves through the entire community. People aren’t going to work and kids aren’t going to school. Yesterday about 25 percent of the workforce, today 75 percent didn’t show up.”

  6. What. Real life in 2025 isn’t a John Steinbeck book? You mean to tell me that there aren’t a bunch of middle aged white guys in straw hats walking around looking to pick fruit? I can’t believe it.

  7. Let their fields lay fallow, and their crops fall into rot, for they forsook their fellow man, and this is now to be their lot.

  8. It warms my cold dead heart that this is going to disproportionately affect those that voted for it.

    I do wish well for all the workers who go into hiding. Perhaps start whistleblowing who hired you illegally to whatever sane media is left while you are at it.

    Tell the world.

  10. The trickle down starts now

    Food shortages will start up soon

  11. Great news for egg and grocery prices, amirite?

  12. can’t wait to see the price of eggs next month..

  13. And so the first domino starts to fall. Agriculture is the bedrock of society. When it gets hit, **everyone** feels it.

  15. well.. they voted for that criminal. this is just the beginning..the pain..when the tariffs hit..then the REAL sufferings begin..when the tech bros got their tax cuts and YOU & I have to pay more taxes to make up for it then you know America gonna has a “interesting” four years under Trump.

  17. All those folks in America who will never travel more than 500 mi from the place they were born are about to see just how small the world it really is.

    Not that it’s going to change many of their minds but I do have predict a whole lot of :

    *You can’t make me feel bad about making a decision that I had no idea was going to affect me*

    Buckle up buttercups… Eggs are off the menu.

  18. I’ve been into casually gardening the last few years and am planning on increasing how much I grow this year in anticipation of fresh produce prices getting to who knows how high.

    Even if you live in an apartment, there’s a lot you can grow in pots as long as you have a space with sun. If you have access to a rooftop, it’s often better than a balcony, but you can also add cheap grow light anywhere. Tomatoes, peppers, snap peas and kale/lettuces are good starter plants that grow well in pots. My mom inspired me to rooftop garden – she has a yard but it is all concrete, so solely in pots she grows enough of the above plus blueberries, strawberries, green onions, lemons, oranges and more than she basically lives off her own garden and freezes a ton for the winter.

    If you have a yard, zucchini and cucumbers are notorious for growing to abundance. Last year I had so many zucchini from two plants that started as tiny seedlings it became a joke – every time I saw a friend I gave them two giant zucchini. I also grow probably a thousand cherry tomatoes from a single plant I started from a seed.

  20. In 2009 there was an immigration sweep in Brewster, WA. Not only did the crops not get dealt with, no one was shopping in the grocery store, buying gas, going out to eat. The fruit company there wasn’t the only business in trouble because of it. Everyone lost.

  21. It’s happening here in north Georgia, too. We have massive industrial poultry plants owned by Trump supporting uber wealthy families and conglomerates.

    So those egg and chicken prices? Going opposite of down, folks! Thanks Trump

  22. So less workers means the eggs will be cheaper, right? Right?

    /s

  23. Backyard and balcony food gardens are going to be the hottest thing this year.

    edit: aside from the internet, libraries have free resources. Not just books, seed catalogs and equipment loan programs. Get into local seed exchanges and look up community gardens nearby.

    Container gardening is an option too, you can use any old can or pot or whatever for that, especially to start seedlings.

  24. Well well well, if it isn’t the consequences of my actions.

  25. Are all the welfare collecting MAGAs rushing out to get their field worker, roofing, and dishwasher jobs back from the immigrants? 🤔

  26. Every single person who either voted for trump or didnt vote at all because of “inflation” or “high prices” should be required to read headlines just like this.

  27. Wont be long. Fix food prices? Oh yeah, like he fixed those casinos that went broke.

  28. Trump deliberately destroying America and we’ve only just begun.

  29. Welp, time for those claiming foreigners are stealing our jobs to step up and do the backbreaking work for agricultural minimum wage.

  31. They voted to deport immigrants. They’d better get out there and pick those strawberries.

  32. “B-But he said the eggs would be cheap”

    Well guess what. He lied. Now everything goes up.

    We warned you. Oh but Fox News is so much more trustworthy than your fellow fucking Americans.

  33. That’s OK. MAGA Welfare Queens will work for free to help lower our grocery prices back to 1990s level like Trump promised.

  34. Maybe when ICE is done rounding up migrants they can door to door in rural America and get all these lazy white people ~~working~~ to work in the fields.

  35. Well, red states voted for Trump and have voted for Republicans for generations. If this kills off their farms they have no one to blame but themselves.

  36. I don’t see the problem, they’ll just be replaced by good white American citizens. Oh wait… they can’t because those people don’t exist and the illegals were filling in for missing workforce. Oh well, who needs farming products after all.

  37. Sooo… Food prices go down when?

    I hope that our agricultural industry survives. I hate that it’s so dependent on undocumented workers that are easily exploited by bad actors and I would so much rather have protections for them than whatever is coming. If you can, probably best to take up gardening this year.

  38. Farmers who can’t sell produce will be forced to sell land at predatory rates, once again accelerating the wealth inequalities in the country.

  39. Empty kitchens, silent fields,

    Where once a busy rhythm wheeled.

    The shadows cling, the work undone,

    When fear keeps workers on the run.

    A vacant chair, a half-built wall,

    Lost wages echo through it all.

    The fruit unpicked, the child unkept,

    While whispered stories must be kept.

    No safety net, no voice to claim,

    Just whispered fears and whispered shame.

    The engine stalls, the progress fades,

    When human value hides in raids.

  40. This is immensely gratifying – let him destroy the country.

    When we’re picking up the pieces from this fucking dumpster fire, my hope is that people will learn and moving forward will intelligently vote.

    Remember, the ONLY reason Trump is instituting these garbage executive orders is to hurt the country – because he’s upset that he lost in 2020

    I would hope the news media hold this jackass accountable and stop giving him a free pass.

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