As the crucial summer harvest season begins in California’s vast agricultural regions, farmers and their workers feel they have been whipped off by a series of contradictory signals about how the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration will affect them.
California grows more than a third of the country’s vegetables and more than three-quarters of the country’s fruits and nuts in the fertile spread of the Central Valley, Central Coast and other agricultural regions. According to a survey by the University of California, the industry produced roughly $60 billion in 2023.
Without workers, juicy beef steak tomatoes that must be ripe and harvested by hand will rot on the grapes. A delicate blend of sweets and tart falls to the ground, and the unreleased yellow peaches just arrive. Same goes for melons, grapes and cherry.
So, when federal immigration agents rolled into Berryfield in Oxnard last week and detained 40 farm workers, growers were worried along with the workers.
Farm workers, many who have lived and worked in the community for decades, feared that they would be rounded up and deported away from their families and livelihoods. Farmers worried that the labor force would either be trapped in detention centres or shoved into the shadows for fear of arrest would disappear. Whether the Oxnard raid was the beginning of a wider statewide crackdown that fundamentally disrupts the harvest season, everyone wanted to know if it was the time when most farm workers would make the most money, or a one-off enforcement action, or just an enforcement action.
The answers afterwards were not clear, according to farmers, workers’ advocates and elected officials.
“As a California farming community, we are trying to understand what’s going on,” said Ryan Jacobsen, CEO of the Fresno County Farm Bureau and almond and grape farmer. He added that “time is the essence” because farms and orchards “come at our busiest times.”
Following last week’s attack in Ventura County, growers across the country began urgently lobbying the Trump administration, claiming enforcement measures on farm operations could hinder food production. They pointed to Oxnard’s post-life farms where 45% of workers remained at home for the next few days, according to the Ventura County Farm Bureau.
It appeared that President Trump had received the message. On Thursday, he posted about the true society, along with “our great farmers,” with the hospitality industry leaders, complained that his immigration policy “is very good, keeping long-time workers away from them, and those jobs are nearly impossible.”
He added that it was “not good” and “change is coming!”
On the same day, a senior U.S. immigration and customs enforcement official wrote an area ice director who told them to fire farms along with restaurants and hotels, according to a New York Times report.
“Today, effectively keep all working sites enforcement surveys/operations (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,” the official wrote.
Much of California’s agriculture has captivated us.
Then came the news on Monday that the order to leave the farm, hotel and restaurant had been reversed.
According to the Washington Post, “There is no safe space for industries that embrace violent criminals or deliberately try to undermine ice efforts. “Workplace enforcement is the basis of efforts to protect public safety, national security and economic stability.”
In Hartland, California, when Jacobsen from the Fresno County Farm Bureau said for many farmers, “We don’t have a clue right now.”
On Tuesday, White House spokesman Abigail Jackson, who was asked to clarify the administration’s policies regarding migrant attacks on farmland, said the Trump administration is working on “enforcement of federal immigration laws.”
“The president is focusing on the immediate removal of illegal foreigners of dangerous criminals from the country,” Jackson said, “anyone here illegally has an obligation to deport him.”
Still, Jacobsen and others noted that, with the exception of last week’s rapid upheaval in Ventura County, farming activities in other parts of the state are largely spared from the massive sweep of immigrants.
Meanwhile, workers continue to show up for work, most have even returned to the fields in Ventura County.
Several people interviewed found that there was one notable outcome of last week’s attack. Employers are reaching out to workers’ rights groups and seeking guidance on how to keep workers safe.
“Some employers are trying to take steps to protect their employees as much as possible,” said Armando Elenes, secretary at United Farm Worker.
He said his organization and others are training employers on how to respond if immigration agents appear on farms or packing houses. Core messages should not allow agents on the property if they do not have a signed warrant.
Certainly, many growers whose facilities were attacked in Ventura County seem to understand that. Supporters reported that federal agents were pulled away from many farms because they had no warrants.
In Ventura County, Lucas Zucker, co-director at Central Cors Alliance United, is United for a sustainable economy, a group that is often at odds with growers over issues such as wages and protection for workers, highlighting the extraordinary alliances built between farmers and workers’ supporters.
Two days after the attack, Zucker read a statement on behalf of Maureen McGuire, the chief executive of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, an organisation representing growers, on behalf of a statement denounced the immigrant sweep.
“Peasans care deeply about their workers not as abstract labor, but as people who deserve dignity, safety and respect and important community members,” McGuire said in a statement. “The agriculture in Ventura County depends on them. The California economy depends on them. The American food system depends on them.”
Before reading the statement, Zucker evoked a light laugh when he told the crowd. [with] Ventura County, you may be surprised to see the cause read the Farm Bureau’s statement. We clash on many issues, and this is what we are united and literally speaking in one voice. ”
“The agricultural industry and farm workers are both under attack, and federal agencies are appearing at the door,” Zucker later said. “Nothing connects people like a common enemy.”
This article is part of the Times Equity Report initiative funded by the James Irvine Foundation, which examines the challenges faced by low-income workers and efforts to address economic disparities in California.
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