Above photo: Eight dairy farm workers were detained by immigration authorities in Vermont. Migrant Justice.
Day laborers performing essential services across the country are facing massive ICE raids.
On Monday, April 21, US Customs and Border Protection raided Vermont’s largest dairy farm, detaining eight immigrant workers in the largest immigration raid in the state’s recent history. The next day, ten workers at a Home Depot in Pomona, California were arrested by immigration authorities.
Workers across the country are bracing for the possibility that many of their coworkers may fall victim to sudden kidnappings by federal agents in the name of carrying out Trump’s agenda of mass deportations. In a country where undocumented workers perform many of the most essential functions in the nation’s economy, escalating immigration raids could have enormous ripple effects.
Vermont’s dairy industry is one example: According to Republican Vermont Representative Richard Nelson, who himself is a dairy farmer with a herd of over 2,000 cattle, it is difficult to find non-immigrant workers to work in an industry where starting wages are so low. Since there is no visa program for year-round work that is essentially 24/7, farmers rely on hiring undocumented workers, Nelson told local Vermont news outlet WCAX.
Although Nelson is a member of Trump’s Republican Party, he told WCAX, that “If something were to happen and we didn’t have these people, divest your stock on Wall Street because if you think tariffs make the stocks go up and down, you wait and see what happens if New York City runs out of food.”
Essential And Exploited
Indeed, undocumented workers account for a large portion of the US food and agriculture industry. According to US Census Bureau data and analysis from the Pew Research Center, undocumented workers make up 5% of the total labor force but make up 16% of workers in the country’s food supply chain. According to the US Department of Agriculture, undocumented workers made up a whopping 41.2% of the country’s crop farmworkers in 2020. The Peterson Institute for International Economics said in a study that mass deportations could lead to a 10% increase in food prices in the US.
Undocumented workers are increasingly persecuted under the Trump administration, but also have faced constant superexploitation in the workplace. Data from the Bureau of Labor statistics reveals that industries that employ a larger share of undocumented workers pay less than the average wage across industries.
Immigrant rights activists have called for the release of the eight detained workers in Vermont, who are being held in detention and are at risk of deportation. Migrant Justice, which organizes migrant farmworkers in Vermont, held a rally on the evening of April 24.
In California, organizers are rallying to call for the release of the detained immigrant Home Depot workers, and call for an end to Trump’s mass deportation operation. “This is a targeted attack on our city’s immigrants, on the people who work tirelessly to power our cities,” wrote the Party for Socialism and Liberation – Los Angeles, in a post on social media. “We need to fight back. We demand an immediate release of those detained and an end to ICE collaboration. No more terrorizing and scapegoating our workers.”