'What's my contingency plan?' Farmers and ranchers worried Trump deporting their workforce

08 July

President Donald Trump's agenda is hitting rural America particularly hard, with many farmers and handlers of livestock finding themselves in the midst of a labor shortage.

According to a Tuesday report in Politico, that worker shortage is primarily due to the Trump administration's immigration policy, which has ensnared many farm workers who are living in the U.S. both with and without legal status. Matt Teagarden, who is the head of the Kansas Livestock Association, told the outlet that "essential isn't a strong enough word" to describe how much ranchers rely on immigrants to do the labor necessary to care for large numbers of farm animals.

"It is some version of an immigrant, maybe not first generation, but second or third generation, that are just critical to that work," he said, adding: "Am I going to have enough crew around tomorrow to get the cows milked and cows fed and everything done? What’s my contingency plan to do the essentials, if not?”

Since his second term began, the Trump administration has detained tens of thousands of immigrants. That number is likely to go up significantly after Trump ended Temporary Protected Status (or TPS, which allows immigrants from unstable and war-torn countries to temporarily live to the United States) earlier this week for immigrants from Honduras and Nicaragua. That revocation could mean that many of the approximately 76,000 immigrants in the U.S. from those countries would no longer have work authorization, and could be placed in deportation proceedings.

Stuart Anderson — who leads the nonpartisan think tank National Foundation for American Policy — said that the ensuing deportations would be counterproductive to the economy. He pointed out that if an economy is to grow, the labor force needs to grow as well.

"The idea that you are just going to create more opportunity by having fewer workers available just doesn’t work in practice, because that’s not the way business runs," Anderson said.

The Trump administration is attempting to point to its recently signed budget law as a potential solution for a labor shortage in rural communities. Politico reported that U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins defended the legislation's new stringent work requirements for Medicaid recipients, saying that farm work could be a potential avenue for employment for those on Medicaid to keep their health insurance.

Click here to read Politico's article in its entirety.

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