The Department of Homeland Security on Monday told staff that it was reversing guidance issued last week that agents were not to conduct immigration raids at farms, hotels and restaurants.
Immigration Raids Targeting Ag Businesses Increase
Progressive Farmer’s Chris Clayton reported that “Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are starting to more aggressively target agriculture and food processing facilities around the country as reports over the past week from (Nebraska), New Mexico and California also highlight.”
“In Omaha, ICE agents hit a small meat processor, Glenn Valley Foods, rounding up as many as 100 workers suspected of being in the country illegally and potentially providing fake documents to gain employment,” Clayton reported. “ICE stated it was the largest enforcement operation in Nebraska since President Donald Trump took office. Nebraska is considered the country’s largest red-meat processing state with packing plants in towns and cities across the state, including multiple major plants in southeast Omaha where the raid occurred. Nearly every one of those areas also has a larger Latino population who make up the bulk of the workforce at these facilities.”
“Glenn Valley Foods processes and makes thinly sliced minute steaks, Gary’s QuickSteak, at its facility,” Clayton reported. “Gary Rohwer, owner and CEO of the company, told an Omaha TV station that federal investigators told him 97 employees had false identification. Rohwer told the TV station his company uses the federal E-Verify program.”
“The ICE raids on agriculture reflect the demands of President Donald Trump’s aide Stephen Miller who met with ICE leaders in late May demanding the agency increase its volume of daily arrests, the Wall Street Journal reported,” Clayton reported. “Agriculture is an industry ripe for aggressive actions given a high volume of undocumented workers in farming and in food processing facilities, going back decades. Agriculture groups have pressed for years for Congress to pass legislation that would legalize the workforce, but those bills have failed to pass.”
Roughly 40% of US Farmworkers Are Unauthorized to Work
The USDA’s Economic Research Service reported in January that “the share of hired crop farmworkers who were not legally authorized to work in the United States grew from roughly 14 percent in 1989–91 to almost 55 percent in 1999–2001; in recent years it has declined to about 40 percent,” the ERS reported. “In 2020–22, 32 percent of crop farmworkers were U.S. born, 7 percent were immigrants who had obtained U.S. citizenship, 19 percent were other authorized immigrants (primarily permanent residents or green-card holders), and the remaining 42 percent held no work authorization.”
“The share of workers who are U.S. born is highest in the Midwest, while the share who are unauthorized is highest in California,” the ERS reported.
“Legal immigration status is difficult to measure: not many surveys ask the question, and unauthorized respondents may be reluctant to answer truthfully if asked,” the ERS reported. “The U.S. Department of Labor’s National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) provides data on farmworkers’ legal immigration status. NAWS data, believed to be of high quality, is gathered by trained and trusted enumerators who conduct face-to-face interviews with workers at their job sites and with their employers’ permission.”
At the House Agriculture Committee hearing yesterday, Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins was asked about ICE targeting agriculture business and the ag labor industry more broadly. She told the committee that while President Donald Trump’s first commitment is to ensuring that all laws are followed, he also understands the challenges of finding labor and that his cabinet is “doing everything we can to make sure that these farmers and ranchers have the labor that they need.”
.@POTUS has directed me, and our team at @USDA, to work with my Cabinet Colleagues & Congress to ensure our farmers and ranchers have the legal workforce they need while upholding the rule of law. pic.twitter.com/Zy2xjKdIp2
— Secretary Brooke Rollins (@SecRollins) June 11, 2025
Agriculture-Related Raids Take Place in California and New Mexico, too
KOAT Action News’ Aliyah Chavez reported that “eleven people were arrested during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid at Outlook Dairy Farms near Lovington, (New Mexico) last week, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Federal officials said nine of those arrested, while ICE was executing a search warrant, were previously banned from the United States.”
In addition, Clayton wrote that “the Los Angeles Times reported, ‘Alarm spread through California agricultural centers Tuesday as panicked workers reported that federal immigration authorities — who had largely refrained from major enforcement action in farming communities in the first months of the Trump administration — were showing up at farm fields and packinghouses from the Central Coast to the San Joaquin Valley.'”
“ICE agents raided produce farms in Ventura County, California. The CEO of the Ventura County Farm Bureau cited that immigration agents visited five produce-packing facilities and farms in the area. Farms were also raided in Tulare County where farm workers had been picking blueberries, the LA Times reported,” Clayton reported. “Dozens of immigrant workers were detained. Video posted by a California TV station showed workers fleeing and ICE agents arresting them in the field.”
