Immigration Continued from Page 14 on June 11. With the season finishing, he said the strawberries being picked were destined for jam and preserves and that he could afford a day or two of delay, as “it’s less of a problem if they overripen a little.” But other crops grown on the Oxnard Plain, such as raspberries and certain veg- etables, could spoil this month if labor dis- ruptions interfere with harvest, farmers said. “It’s peak season for all commodities,” McGrath said, with planting, weeding, harvesting or processing of crops such as celery, cilantro, cabbage and radishes. More than a third of U.S. farmworkers live in California, which produces many of the nation’s labor-intensive specialty crops such as fruits, nuts and vegetables. Farmers have cautioned that deportation of California farmworkers, more than half of whom are estimated to be undocument- ed, could imperil farms and threaten the country’s food supply. “The current approach to federal immi- gration enforcement is having a disruptive effect on California’s rural communities and the farmers, ranchers, workers and families who live and work there,” Bryan Little, California Farm Bureau senior di- rector of policy advocacy, said last week in a statement. “If federal immigration enforcement activities continue in this di- rection, it will become increasingly difficult to produce food, process it and get it onto grocery store shelves.”
The raids in Ventura County received widespread media coverage, and they ap- peared to capture the attention of lawmak- ers in Washington, D.C. “They need to knock it off,” Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., who chairs the House Committee on Agriculture, told re- porters, referring to workplace immigra- tion enforcement on farms. On June 12, during a press conference at the White House, President Trump discussed the possibility of sparing farm- workers from his administration’s depor- tation efforts. “We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have maybe what they’re supposed to have,” Trump said. “We’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.” The following day, a senior official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued new guidance to regional leaders of Homeland Security Investigations, the ICE division that typically conducts workplace enforcement operations, asking them to “hold off on all worksite enforcement” at farms, processing facilities, restaurants and hotels, according to The New York Times. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions from Ag Alert ® about details related to its operations in Ventura County or about the department’s immigration enforcement priorities. Caleb Hampton is assistant editor of Ag Alert. He can be reached at champton@cfbf.com.
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20 Ag Alert June 18, 2025
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