California’s crops are rotting in the fields, and President Donald Trump’s immigration policies are responsible. As the 2025 harvest season peaks, the state that feeds America faces an agricultural crisis driven by the systematic destruction of its immigrant workforce.
Trump’s immigration crackdown has been underway for months. Masked and armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conduct workplace raids and terrorize agricultural communities. The numbers are devastating. More than 1 million immigrant workers have disappeared from the workforce nationally, according to preliminary census data analyzed by the Pew Research Center.
California has borne the brunt of the exodus. Historically, the state’s farms rely on immigrants for nearly two-thirds of their labor, and almost half of those are undocumented. When immigration raids started, many immigrants simply stopped showing up for work out of fear of being arrested. Others have been rounded up by ICE agents and deported.
The timing could not be worse. The harvest season ramps up this time of year. Without enough hands, some produce will go bad before it can be picked. Critically in Sonoma and Napa counties, peak grape harvest has arrived. Winemakers can ill afford to leave grapes on the vines.
The full impact will not be known until it is too late, but history suggests dim prospects. About half of farmers struggled to find enough workers even before the current immigration enforcement, and things have only gotten worse in Trump’s second term.
The worker shortage and reduced production translate into higher produce and meat prices at the grocery store for everyone. That’s on top of the inflation caused by Trump’s misguided trade wars.
Other industries struggle, too. Construction, hospitality, dining and others also rely on immigrants. Worker shortages in construction are particularly damaging as the state struggles with a chronic housing shortage.
Unfortunately, things are likely to get worse before they get better. The U.S. Supreme Court set Trump’s immigration enforcers loose with a Sept. 8 emergency decision. In the 6-3 ruling, the court’s conservative majority effectively authorized racial profiling and roving patrols. Agents can target Latino workers not based on evidence or probable cause but on appearance, language and workplace.
The decision specifically mentions agriculture, day labor, landscaping and construction as types of employment worth targeting because they often do not require paperwork and therefore are “especially attractive to illegal immigrants.” America’s farms have become hunting grounds for immigration violations.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent captured the constitutional affront perfectly. “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” she wrote.
The Trump administration has engineered a completely avoidable crisis that threatens America’s food supply and inflicts economic pain on rural communities.
There’s a case to be made for stronger immigration enforcement, but it cannot be the sole goal. Enforcement must occur as part of legislatively enacted comprehensive immigration reform. America needs immigrant workers, and they need a legal pathway to work here.
Trump seems particularly obsessed with cracking down on California, but he should heed the old saying: “As California goes, so goes the nation.” If the state that produces one-third of America’s vegetables and three-quarters of its fruits and nuts no longer has the immigrant workers it needs, consumers in every state will suffer.
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