The Trump Administration’s anti-immigrant policies are unconscionable. He has deployed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents across the country to arrest, jail, and deport people, mostly those from South and Central American countries. This racist and violent program is tearing families apart and placing detainees in deplorable conditions. It’s impacting every corner of the country — including our food system. 

Immigrant workers play an essential role in growing the food we all eat, and yet they routinely face exploitation and dangerous working conditions. Now, Trump’s policies are harming them even more and threatening the stability of our food system. These policies are not only inhumane; they’ll impact farmers as well as food prices and availability for everyone. 

And while Trump and his allies attack and scapegoat immigrants, they’re blatantly ignoring the biggest threats to safe, sustainable, and affordable food — the massive corporations controlling our food system.

Immigrant Workers Are Essential to Our Food System

Besides deserving dignity and respect as we all are, immigrants play an essential role in U.S. food production. They make up an estimated 61% of farmworkers, doing everything from harvesting and processing crops to working in slaughterhouses and processing plants in the meat industry. 

Under Trump’s orders, ICE agents have raided processing plants and chased farmworkers through fields. They’re also targeting communities in which workers live. This fear campaign is leading to labor shortages. 

As Alexandra Sossa of the Farmworker and Landscaper Advocacy Project told Newsweek, “We are running into a problem where we do not have enough farm workers to grow the food we eat every day. Now we do not have enough workers to go to the meatpacking processing industries and factories to produce, to pack the food that we are eating.”

Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Will Lead to Higher Food Prices

Trump campaigned on affordability, but so far, he’s only sending prices higher. Grocery prices are rising at the highest rate since 2022, with experts attributing the spike to  Trump’s tariffs and immigration policies.

The uncertainty and fear around Trump’s policies will destabilize our already fragile agricultural system. When farmers can’t plan for their harvest because of labor shortages, they plant fewer crops. 

And the outlook is bleak for what’s already in the ground. Right now, crops are rotting in fields. CNN recently reported that one cherry farmer in Oregon will lose 30 acres of fruit because of immigration crackdowns. Meanwhile, family dairy farmers are selling off cows and closing up shop, unable to hire farmhands.

Farmworker labor shortages will have massive ripple effects through our food system, directly affecting all of us. We’ve seen similar impacts before. Studies have shown that such shortages led to decreased productivity and higher prices for consumers. Now, the USDA predicts that U.S. food prices will increase by 2.9% in 2025 and by another 2.2% in 2026. 

What’s more, corporations will exploit any crisis to price-gouge us, pushing prices higher than increases in their costs. We saw that during the COVID-19 pandemic, as many food giants’ profits rose. We saw that again with the bird flu epidemic, as egg producer Cal-Maine spiked its prices before the virus even touched their flocks. 

Trump is utterly failing to rein in these corporations, all but ensuring they’ll continue to use crises to fleece us.

Immigrants Are Integral to Rural and Agricultural Communities

Immigration has also been vital to the economic well-being of many rural and agricultural communities, especially in the wake of population declines in recent decades. While Big Ag has hollowed out these communities, immigrants have helped revitalize them.

Immigrants and their families support local economies. They spend their earnings in the community and support schools, businesses, and government services. Many serve as healthcare workers amid shortages of doctors and medical resources. 

Trump’s policies not only harm immigrants and their families; they harm the small towns and rural communities that they’ve become an integral part of.

We Need Real Reform of American Agriculture, Not Attacks on Immigrant Workers

Trump’s policies and ICE deployment are doing horrific harm to immigrants and their families and will impact farmers, communities, and consumers nationwide. Meanwhile, the corporations that control our food system go unpunished. In fact, the administration is slashing protections, allowing these corporations to endanger workers, our health, and our environment even more. 

For example, the administration has moved to greenlight faster line speeds and less government oversight at poultry and meatpacking plants. This will risk more worker injuries, as well as food contamination with fewer federal inspectors on the job.

Policies like this clear the way for corporations to cut corners and expand their profits. So while ICE agents round up immigrant food workers, Trump is handing more power to the executives running the companies responsible for our unsafe, unsustainable, unaffordable food system.

Our food system needs reform. It must be made more just for farmworkers, farmers, our families, and communities, and safer for our environment and climate. That must start with breaking up corporate control of agriculture. Violent and exclusionary policies against immigrants play no role in that reform.