With reports of more and more raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on migrant farm workers around the country, it would be a good time for Americans to learn about the labor that fuels our food supply — especially at a time when our current Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is making an unrealistic pledge to create a “100% American workforce” in agriculture.
One hundred percent American is a surefire applause line for the Trump faithful, as evidenced by the applause Rollins received at a recent press conference where she shared the idea. However, it shows an unfortunate lack of understanding of the current state of play for farmers who are struggling mightily to find a reliable workforce in all corners of America.
It shows an unfortunate lack of understanding of the current state of play for farmers who are struggling mightily to find a reliable workforce in all corners of America.
The numbers tell the story. There are more than 2.6 million people working on farms in the United States. That includes 1 million workers for hire who are primarily immigrants. According to recent KFF data, 1 in 10 workers are Hispanic and two-thirds are noncitizen immigrants. While a small percent hold work authorization or a green card with protective status, almost half lack formal work authorization.
President Donald Trump seemed to be aware of this when he said in June that he would give farms and other select industries a “temporary pass” from deportations. But Rollins appeared to reverse course last week when she made her 100% American announcement, in so doing adding a curious twist to the uphill challenge for finding workers in the field.
“Ultimately the answer on this is automation, also some reform within the current governing structure,” Rollins said. “And then also, when you think about it, there are 34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program. There are plenty of workers in America, but we just have to make sure we are not compromising today, especially in the context of everything we are thinking about right now.”
Rollins said there would be no amnesty for farm workers and that the mass deportations would continue “in a strategic and intentional way, as we move our workforce towards more automation and towards a 100% American workforce.”
Rollins also noted that given the number of able-bodied adults on Medicaid, “we should be able to do that fairly quickly.”
Unsurprisingly, members of the farming community have openly scoffed at this idea.
Michael Marsh, president and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, told Brownfield Ag News, “I just can’t imagine somebody from New York City wanting to take a job in New York to milk a cow in order to qualify for their Medicaid. To me that just doesn’t make sense.”
“If a Medicaid recipient is required to work I can guarantee you that farm work would be one of the last jobs a Medicaid recipient would seek,” said Tom Vilsack, who was the secretary of agriculture for 12 years under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. “It is physically demanding and at times dangerous. The notion … suggests a misunderstanding of who is on Medicaid and why. I think the secretary will find that being ‘able-bodied’ does not mean that any individual can work in the difficult conditions that farmworkers face with reference to the nature of the work and the weather conditions (both hot and cold) in which the work is performed.”
I caught up with former Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana and MSNBC contributor, while he was driving a tractor on his farm picking up hay. Tester said the 100% American workforce pledge is implausible and unfortunate because it distracts from a more productive and necessary conversation about immigration reform in an industry that so heavily relies on immigrant labor.
“If that was possible it would already be done,” Tester said. “The reason it is not possible is because there are better jobs to be had that require less physical labor. It is literally back-breaking work.”
Until the ICE raids started showing up on our news feeds on a regular basis, these workers were also largely invisible outside of the communities where they toil.
He wasn’t being facetious. The agriculture sector is ranked one of the most dangerous in America. Whether it’s picking melons, detasseling corn, harvesting sugar beets or yanking lettuce from the ground, farm work is grueling and perilous. The people who work in the fields face heat stress, pesticide exposure, the risk of chemical burns, repetitive motion injuries, joint damage and hearing loss. (That last thing might confuse city folks, but anyone who has been within earshot of a tractor or a combine harvester or the gigantic towers that dry grain or corn understands why the decibel level causes danger.) The machinery alone presents unique hazards, with tractor rollovers and gigantic blades and fast-moving conveyor belts. And the current uptick in ICE raids has only made agriculture labor more perilous, as we saw in reports over the weekend of the death of Jaime Alanis Garcia, a farmworker who fell 30 feet off a building when he was allegedly trying to avoid federal agents during a raid at a cannabis farm in Ventura County, California.
The people who do this work are largely itinerant, moving from harvest to harvest to pull produce out of the ground or pluck it off plants on a timely schedule before it wilts or rots. And until the ICE raids started showing up on our news feeds on a regular basis, these workers were also largely invisible outside of the communities where they toil.
Harvest season is fast approaching. For some crops it’s already here, and nature is not patient. Produce must be pulled on a timely basis before the bugs or the sun reduce its viability and value.
Farmers are responsible for making sure the laborers who do that work are duly authorized. They are supposed to check an I-9 Federal Eligibility form to make sure the workers have the proper documentation. But since an estimated 40% of America’s farm labor is not authorized to work in the U.S., that means something is breaking down in that system. And a 100% pledge backed by a desire to shift Medicaid recipients to the farm fields will not fix that. This is the result of almost 50 years of complicated, conflicting, unenforceable or poorly executed immigration policy from both political parties.
But instead of a solution, the current administration is offering a feel-good 100% American phrase that lands like a false promise.
Here’s one thing that has 100% certainty: With no realistic plan to replace the farmworkers who are being rounded up or who are too afraid to show up for work, we are all going to reap a rough harvest in coming months. The workers. The farmers. The retailers and the consumers. Think about that next time you’re in the produce aisle.
CORRECTION (July 16, 2025, 8:30 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the number of years Tom Vilsack served as secretary of agriculture. He held the position for a total of 12 years, not 16.