Farmers “will imminently face severe challenges accessing a sufficient and legal supply of labor to sustain current food production levels,” the department quietly conceded
Donald Trump’s mass detention and deportation policies are posing an “immediate” danger to our nation’s food supply by driving away skilled immigrant farm workers and threatening to drive up grocery costs even more – and that’s according to his own administration. Yup, you read that right.
In an “obscure” document filed with the Federal Register this month, Trump’s Department of Labor (DOL) appears to have “warned of a ‘current and imminent labor shortage’ on American farms that ‘presents a sufficient risk of supply shock-induced food shortages,’” Reason reports. “The shortage is being caused by the administration’s crackdown on undocumented workers,” which, in addition to targeting the essential workers who are the backbone of the agricultural industry and feed us every day in rain or shine, has also not spared U.S. citizens from its grasp.
Under this mass deportation agenda, farmers “will imminently face severe challenges accessing a sufficient and legal supply of labor to sustain current food production levels,” the DOL said. This resulting pain will hit working families right in the wallet.
“Without prompt action, agricultural employers will face severe labor shortages, resulting in disruption to food production, higher prices, and reduced access for U.S. consumers, particularly to fresh fruit and vegetables.” The document cites a study that found “that a mere 10 percent decrease in the agricultural workforce can lead to as much as a 4.2 percent drop in fruit and vegetable production and a 5.5 percent decline in farm revenue … The study further estimated that a 21 percent shortfall in the agricultural workforce would result in an overall $5 billion loss just in terms of domestic fresh produce alone for U.S. consumers.”
Recall that just this past summer, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins claimed that the agricultural industry would move toward “100% American participation,” asserting that there were literally tens of millions of Americans just waiting to get to work in the fields (she means you, Medicare recipients!) Not so, according to her colleagues at DOL. Not only is the agricultural industry hurting for more workers, U.S.-born Americans are simply not stepping up to the plate, the document says.
“Despite efforts to broadly advertise agricultural jobs … the most recent data confirm that domestic applicants are not applying for agricultural positions in sufficient numbers to meet the temporary or seasonal workforce needs of employers. Thus, based on the available evidence, the Department concludes that qualified and eligible U.S. workers, whether unemployed, marginally employed, or employed seeking work in agriculture, will not make themselves immediately available in sufficient numbers to avert the irreparable economic harm to agricultural employers who no longer have access to a ready pool of [undocumented workers] to fulfill their labor needs.”
It’s good to see the administration finally catching up with reality, we suppose. Back in 2010, United Farm Workers (UFW) kicked off a “Take Our Jobs” campaign that encouraged U.S.-born citizens to sign up for farmwork and even offered to link the unemployed with farm work anywhere in America. “Yet only 11 people responded to the offer to work in the fields from the UFW,” the union said. Around that same time, states like Alabama and Georgia copied Arizona’s notorious “Papers, Please” law and passed their own anti-immigrant legislation that cracked down on the undocumented workers who contribute to their communities daily.
Not only did crops rot in the fields, some of the U.S.-born workers promised by backers of the anti-immigrant bills quit after just one day in the fields, the AP reported in 2012.
The Trump administration’s document is also notable for admitting a badly-kept secret: U.S. businesses depend on undocumented labor, noting that agriculture “has long depended” on their skills. Ramping up the targeting of these workers will only throw more gasoline on the self-inflicted devastation facing the agricultural industry. “According to available studies, a hypothetical decision to heighten immigration enforcement actions could further reduce the supply of agricultural labor with an estimated loss of, at a relatively modest estimate, 225,000 agricultural workers.”
Of course, the warnings that this is exactly what was going to happen under the administration’s mass deportation fanaticism are not new and have already been confirmed prior to the DOL’s admission by economists and other experts.
In August, an analysis from a trio of leading economic experts noted that construction, hospitality, and the agricultural industries were already being harmed under the administration’s policies. Their study pointed to a massive drop in agricultural employment from March to July 2025, reversing two years of growth seen toward the second half of the Biden administration. “In addition, there are early signs that the labor shortages are starting to reduce production and boost food prices,” Michael Ettlinger, Robert Lynch and Emma Sifre of Economic Insights and Research Consulting said in their analysis.
It hits close to home for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and not just because she oversees ICE’s operations (at least on paper). South Dakota Searchlight reports that one dairy farm that’s just five miles from Noem’s residence lost 38 of its roughly 50 workers – some of whom had worked at the farm for decades – following a Trump administration audit. “South Dakota Farmers Union President Doug Sombke called federal dairy audits ‘stupid,’ because they needlessly displace workers,” the report said.
“Why the heck can’t we continue to use them there as an intern or apprentice or whatever you want to call it and make it legal? Why is it so important we grab them and call them a criminal? No one wants those jobs,” Sombke told the South Dakota Searchlight. “I don’t understand why you’d cripple or cause problems for a labor shortage when all you have to do is get them legalized.”
Of course, don’t think for a second that the DOL is arguing for a pathway to legalization for undocumented essential workers or even just a slowdown of ICE’s kidnappings. As we noted last week, ICE’s operations are raging on during the majority’s government shutdown. Observers are noting this may very well be a scheme to exploit workers, since the DOL’s new rule “seeks to bring in guest workers through the H-2A program at lower wages, potentially reducing wages across the spectrum for all farmworkers, regardless of legal status,” as The American Prospect commented.
Which is true? Either Trump’s Labor Department actually believes that immigration enforcement is threatening food security, or they are pretending the threat is real in order to crush wages for farm workers.prospect.org/politics/tru…
— United Farm Workers (@ufw.bsky.social) 2025-10-08T20:04:07.328Z
“Which is true?” UFW responded to the DOL filing. “Either Trump’s Labor Department actually believes that immigration enforcement is threatening food security, or they are pretending the threat is real in order to crush wages for farm workers.”
“We call it the ‘Deport and Replace’ strategy,” UFW’s Antonio De Loera-Brust told The American Prospect, “which is defined above all to make it easier for corporate agribusiness to exploit its workers, whether terrified undocumented residents or an unlimited pool of cheap foreign guest workers … The Trump administration would rather expand the abusive H-2A program than do right by the workers who are already here, feeding America for decades.” The administration’s ploy, however, is also making headlines for inadvertently admitting the truth about the importance of these essential workers. You gotta wonder who will be fired for that one.
