President Donald Trump’s decision not to protect illegal immigrant workers from arrest and deportation is being met with dire warnings from small businesses and large corporations concerned for economic decline if millions of the workforce are targeted.
Groups that represent workers in hospitality, restaurant, and agriculture industries have not only called this past week for the Trump administration to prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from arresting workers without legal status, but they have gone on to predict economic downfall that would ensue nationwide if the country is purged of that workforce.
The national United Farm Workers union told the Washington Examiner that immigrant workers are the backbone of American farms and that the “agricultural industry would collapse without” them.
Emily Williams Knight, CEO of the Texas Restaurant Association, called the loss of immigrant workers in her industry a “very serious issue” that is already having a “direct impact” on the state’s labor force.
“Restaurants are not a nice to have, they are part of a critical feeding infrastructure,” Knight said in a virtual press conference Wednesday. “There is a massive economic impact when people are not coming to work, they’re not spending in their communities and restaurants aren’t generating the revenue that’s required for investment back to the community.”
But others, including Trump administration officials and associates, have promised better wages for U.S. citizens and legal immigrants if illegal immigrants are deported.
Arrests begin, stop, then continue
ICE began moving in on illegal immigrant workers earlier this month, angering small and large businesses alike.
On June 13, Trump told reporters at the White House that he planned to take action to ensure farm workers were not the focus of arrest efforts by federal authorities.
However, Trump walked back that statement despite Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins urging against it, effectively putting major industries on notice that the surprise raids would continue and spread.
ICE has been pushed by White House Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller to round up 3,000 illegal immigrants daily, nearly double the number of arrests as of late May. Since most large cities will not turn over illegal immigrants in jails on criminal charges to ICE, the federal agency has resorted to trying to boost arrest numbers by going after dozens to hundreds of immigrants at job sites rather than individual criminals at large.
Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist during Trump’s first term, said on Wednesday that the “big argument” against the deportations of immigrant workers would be that it will negatively impact Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, Bannon maintained that doing so would “raise wages” for Americans.
“The entire business community hates mass deportations. The capitalists on Wall Street hate it. Why?” Bannon said at a breakfast with reporters in Washington hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “Because the capitalists on Wall Street and the commercial interests in the Chamber of Commerce understand that a flood of low-skilled workers drives down wages.”
Trump signaled to reporters on Friday that he was weighing a solution for farmers to protect certain immigrant workers who have been in the United States before the Biden administration.
“We’re looking at doing something where in the case of good, reputable farmers, they can take responsibility for the people that they hire and let them have responsibility because we can’t put the farms out of business, and at the same time, we don’t want to hurt people that aren’t criminals,” Trump said, adding the farmers know “the good and the bad.”
“I never want to hurt our farmers. Our farmers are great people. They keep us happy, and healthy, and fat,” he added.
House Agriculture Chairman G.T. Thompson (R-PA) warned last week that the Trump administration ought to “knock it off” as far as going after workers.
“Let’s go after the criminals and give us time to put processes in place so we don’t disrupt the food supply chain,” Thompson told reporters in Washington on June 12.
Those in industry anticipate a very different reality if that is attempted.
Impact on workers and businesses
ICE has not only continued to carry out raids targeting workers on the job, but it has expanded those locations.
The national United Farm Workers union told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday that it has recently identified workers in Georgia, Louisiana, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington who were arrested or deported, going beyond the known arrests in California, New Mexico, and Nebraska reported last week.
Matt Teagarden is CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association, which boasts 5,700 individuals and businesses that work in all segments of the livestock industry. For members, a loss of even 10% or 20% of workers would cause major problems.
“We’re not like a factory or another business. We can’t just turn off the lights and close the doors for a few days while we sort things out. Cows don’t turn off,” Teagarden said in a phone call. “Feeding those cows, milking those cows, continuing to manage everything has to continue. And so those dairy farmers, if they faced [a] 20% reduction in their labor force, would be scrambling to get everything done.”
The UFW said workers are determined to show up because they depend on their paychecks.
“The only reason farm workers wouldn’t show up is if they physically can’t because they’ve been detained or deported. … Even with the fear, farm workers are too economically desperate to stop showing up to work — which is itself a great injustice that the UFW seeks to address by raising farm worker wages,” a UFW spokesperson said in a statement. “But the workers who feed us shouldn’t have to be going to work in fear, worried today will be the day they don’t get to go home to their families.”
Effect on consumers
The Dairy Producers of New Mexico’s executive director, Beverly Idsinga, said the loss of workers can lead businesses to crumble, during a virtual press conference on the ICE raids on Tuesday.
“When we lose a dairy [farm], it’s millions of dollars for the community that’s lost because you’re not only losing the dairy itself and what it produces, you’re losing that set of employees and how much they bring back to the community,” Idsinga said. “You’re losing out on all of those other jobs that go along with it when you speak of construction, mechanics, hoof trimmers and truck drivers and everything down the road.”
The American Business Immigration Council’s CEO, Rebecca Shi, said immigrant contributions in certain industries was greater than those by U.S.-born workers, meaning that the impact of losing those workers would be dramatic.
“There is significant fear among immigrant workers and businesses, since immigrants comprise nearly 70 percent of the total farmworker workforce. These immigrants harvest crops, milk cows and participate in other downstream processing,” Shi wrote in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
In a further breakdown, data provided by ABIC showed that illegal immigrants make up 22% of restaurant staff, 51% of dairy and cattle workers, and 72% of workers in the horse-racing industry.
“Losing them will harm the industry, resulting in less food production and increased costs for Americans,” Shi said. “But the concern doesn’t stop there. When the workforce is destabilized so abruptly, it raises serious questions about what else might slip through the cracks when an essential workforce is disrupted, including food safety.”
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris (R-MD) insisted this week that the grave concerns about workforce numbers was indicative of a need for immigration reform, particularly expanding visa categories like H-2A and H-2B, and even creating a new visa program to meet workforce demands.
ICE SWEEPING UP ‘ESSENTIAL WORKERS’ AS RAIDS SPREAD NATIONWIDE
Teagarden, of the Kansas Livestock Association, agreed that more needed to be done.
“There’s a choice here. We can use imported workers or we can import our food. I think ultimately, it really does boil down to that. And so from a national security standpoint, food security is critical to that,” said Teagarden. “I think we have an opportunity … to secure real reform and address this broken system, because it really is broken.”