Worker advocates describe it as an on-farm immigration raid. The Department of Homeland Security disputes that characterization.
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Worker advocates describe it as an on-farm immigration raid. The Department of Homeland Security disputes that characterization.
April 24, 2025
April 24, 2025 – On Monday, armed agents from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), raided a Vermont dairy farm and arrested eight immigrant workers. The migrants, who ranged in age from 22 to 41, worked at Pleasant Valley Farms, just a few miles from the Canadian border.
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It may be the first time since President Trump took office that his escalating efforts around immigration enforcement and deportations directly landed on an American farm. Farmers rely heavily on immigrant labor.
During a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing in February, Senator Peter Welch (D-Vermont) brought up the impact that immigration crackdowns could have on his state’s agriculture economy. “It’s very simple,” he said. “If you don’t have farm labor in Vermont, you don’t milk the cows.”
At a cabinet meeting in early April, Trump made unclear statements about deporting farmworkers, saying that he would “slow it down” for farmers and that workers would “go out” and “come back as legal workers.”
In an emailed statement to Civil Eats, CBP Assistant Commissioner Hilton Beckham said that the action was not a raid targeting farmworkers. “Agents were called to a location at a dairy farm located about 2.5 miles from the Canadian border by a concerned citizen,” she said. “This was not a special operation or a worksite enforcement operation, however, when agents encounter individuals who are in the country illegally, they will take them into custody and determine their immigration disposition, including potentially turning those individuals over to other agencies.”
The workers were members of Migrant Justice, an organization that fights for immigrant rights. According to Migrant Justice’s Will Lambek, “Such a call would have been a flimsy pretext at best, as Border Patrol entered farm property, chased workers through barns, and entered a private dwelling.”
Lambek also said there was no evidence agents targeted the workers based on their organizing work with Migrant Justice, although the organization has reported being targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the past. In March, ICE agents arrested farmworker activist Alfredo Juarez during a traffic stop in Washington state.
Migrant Justice launched a petition and is holding a rally tonight at Burlington City Hall to call for the release of the workers. (Link to this post.)
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