As Deportation Threats Loom, Farmworkers Respond | Civil Eats

Farmworker Challenges, Solidarity Emphasized as Threat of Mass Deportations Looms

In this week’s Field Report, results of a historic farmworker tribunal, an anti-monopoly roadmap for Trump 2.0, and more.

By Lisa Held

November 25, 2024

Farmworkers In Southern California Receive Heat Education From Aid Group

TODEC Executive Director Luz Gallegos during a heat awareness education outreach in 2023 near Hemet, California. TODEC is an immigrant advocacy organization. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

During a virtual event last week organized to release a report on the struggles of farmworkers across the U.S. and Canada, one word came up early and often: fear.

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“With this current administration that is going to be coming in, there’s a lot of fear and uncertainty,” Luis Jiménez, a dairy worker from western New York who is a founding member of Alianza Agrícola, said in Spanish through an interpreter. “I think it’s going to increase more. So, this is the moment to join together as workers, as allies.”

Back in March, Jiménez joined a group of farmworkers from six states and Ontario to testify about their experiences at the Bi-National People’s Tribunal on the Struggles of Farmworkers in North America in New York City. The tribunal was organized by the Food Chain Workers Alliance, a coalition that represents individuals working along the entire food supply chain, and the report released Wednesday summarizes the takeaways from farmworker testimony shared that day.

However, in the time between the tribunal and the report release, even more urgent challenges for farmworkers have arisen. A majority of farmworkers are immigrants, and anti-immigrant rhetoric and promises of mass deportations formed a key plank of the platform President-elect Trump ran on. Since his election, Trump appointed immigration hardliners to key posts. Last week, he confirmed that he plans to use the U.S. military to help carry out mass deportations.

“I believe that this country without immigrants’ hands wouldn’t be the same. We are not here to steal. We’re here to work.”

As a result, the struggles shared at the tribunal and the possibilities that came out of the solidarity established there are now being shared in a new light. Workers and allied organizers expect the incoming administration to slow—and in some cases reverse—progress they’ve made, but they are also working quickly to prepare defenses to protect the people who power the American food system.

In the report, farmworkers shared experiences that put their health and safety at risk, including broken windows and lack of heat in farmworker housing on New York dairy farms, injuries from malfunctioning equipment, sexual harassment, and pesticide exposure.

These risks are likely to continue in a second Trump administration: During his last term, Trump proposed weakening rules that protect workers from pesticide drift. Advocates also expect him to end a deferred action program started by the Biden administration that allowed immigrants to stay in the country legally in exchange for helping improve workplace conditions for all workers.

Other workers addressed the issue of what they call “freedom of movement.” Because they fear being apprehended by border patrol and local police, farmworkers are often reluctant to go to the grocery store or pick their children up from school. Jiménez talked about New York farmworkers’ successful efforts to let immigrants earn driver’s licenses as a crucial victory, but workers in Florida and Washington pointed to the fact that farms are increasingly using the H-2A program to hire foreign workers.

That can result in farmworkers being even more isolated and more vulnerable to exploitation on farms, since their ability to live and work in the U.S. is tied exclusively to a single employer who also controls their housing.

The H-2A program has grown exponentially over the last decade, and in the first Trump administration, his U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) proposed changes that would have weakened housing safety rules and lowered wages for H-2A workers. He was supportive of the program as a legal way for farmers to address their labor needs and many expect the program to continue to grow on his watch, although the conservative policy blueprint Project 2025 proposes phasing it out.

a drawing of a farmworker in a field burning behind him with the words

(Image courtesy of the Food Chain Workers Alliance)

Regardless of what happens to H-2A, immigrant farmworkers are already moving around with less freedom. At the event, Patricia Lopez, a farmworker in western Massachusetts, said rumors are circulating in her community about detainments and whether the Trump administration will once again separate families. In 2018, Trump’s attorney general instituted a policy of immediately detaining and prosecuting individuals crossing the border illegally and in the process, separated more than 5,500 children from their families.

“At this moment, all of us immigrants are feeling fear because we don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said in Spanish through an interpreter.

Finally, farmworkers at the event addressed challenges they face from increasingly extreme weather conditions caused by climate change. The report includes several testifying to seeing their coworkers faint due to extreme heat—from Washington state to Florida—while others have had to work in smoky fields as wildfires burn in California and elsewhere.

Biden’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) proposed the first-ever federal heat standard for outdoor workers in August, but the rules are unlikely to be finalized before Trump gets into office and experts say he will likely kill it. When the rule was introduced, some Republican lawmakers called it “idiotic” and said workers should “go get a different job” if their employers don’t provide accommodations such as shade, water, and breaks.

Perhaps even more significant are Trump’s stated energy policies, which emphasize increasing production of oil and gas. Scientists agree that without a rapid transition away from fossil fuels within the next decade, catastrophic climate outcomes will be unavoidable. Farmworkers are already being impacted by changing temperatures, the impacts of increasing dust storms, and more frequent, intense disasters such as Hurricane Helene.

Still, the farmworkers shared a vision for a future of “justice and liberation” that they created together in March, including food systems centered around community and cooperation, environmental protections, and better working conditions.

During his last term, Trump proposed weakening rules that protect workers from pesticide drift.

Lopez said participating in the tribunal and the subsequent report made her realize the shared nature of farmworker challenges regardless of location and crop, and that she appreciated being heard. But for now, they’re getting ready for the next four years. “We are organizing, and there are a lot of organizations that are getting together to protect us,” she said.

“We’re not criminals . . . we’re workers,” Jiménez added. “I believe that this country without immigrants’ hands wouldn’t be the same. We are not here to steal. We’re here to work.”

An Anti-Monopoly Roadmap. The Biden-Harris administration “put the first cracks in our consolidated food system in over 40 years, and we expect to start seeing the impacts of these new policies,” said Angela Huffman, Vice President of Farm Action Fund, at a post-election briefing last week. Now, the leading advocacy organization for breaking up corporate monopolies in food and agriculture is hoping President Trump will pick up the baton and keep running.

At the briefing, Huffman and Joe Maxwell, the organization’s president, detailed key policy asks in a new roadmap titled Securing America’s Food and Farm System created for the Trump-Vance administration. Some have historically had support on both sides of the aisle, such as curbing foreign farmland ownership, giving farmers the right to repair their own equipment, and reforming checkoff programs. Others are in direct conflict with Trump’s actions during his first presidency.

For example, Farm Action is asking the administration to finalize and safeguard historic progress the Biden administration made on finalizing Packers & Stockyards rules—although Trump threw out similar rules the first time around. Others, like getting more food from local farms into school meals and USDA purchasing, will require investments at a time when the Republican Party’s plans are mainly focused on cutting.

Maxwell, for one, was optimistic about continuing attention to antitrust efforts going forward. “We believe with the current environment, it is reasonable to have the perfect opportunity to get both parties pushing for antitrust reform and action within the next two years,” he said.

Antibiotic Apathy. According to a new report, most of the country’s top restaurant chains have either failed to meet earlier commitments to get medically-important antibiotics out of their meat or have backtracked on actions they had taken previously. Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT) gave 16 of the 20 chains C–F grades. The only straight-A grades went to Chipotle and Kentucky Fried Chicken. FACT has been periodically issuing the report cards since 2015. To determine the grades, it awards points to restaurants based on the strength of their policies on antibiotics, whether they’re implementing them across all meats or just certain menu items, and how transparent restaurants are about meeting their goals.

Tyson, the country’s biggest meat company, backpedaled on antibiotic-free chicken production last year, and Chick-Fil-A and Panera also weakened commitments. And despite years of attention to the issue from consumer advocacy groups, public health experts, and government regulators, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is still not tracking antibiotic use on farms and recent evidence shows some important drugs are still being used to fatten animals up—a practice that was banned by FDA.

“Antibiotic resistance and the spread of superbugs is getting worse, but public, government, and corporate attention to it has dropped off, putting millions of lives at risk,” said Steven Roach, lead author of the report and the Safe and Healthy Food Program Director at FACT. “The backtracking by Panera and McDonald’s on policies and commitments aimed at protecting the health of consumers is incredibly disappointing.”

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