North Country dairy farms are getting caught up in Trump's immigration enforcement
There’s a culture of apprehension in dairy country right now. Rumors and reports are swirling about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, visiting farms and taking away workers.
"We've been hearing some different things out on the web and amongst the community," a New York State dairy farmer said. We’re not using his name because farm owners and their employees risk immigration crackdowns and deportations.
"The challenge to ourselves is to try to determine the difference between the rumors and what's actually going on," he said.
It’s not all just rumors, though. Last week, ICE picked up four adults and three children at a dairy farm in Sackets Harbor. ICE said it began conducting “enhanced targeted operations in parts of New York" on March 24."There's no doubt that there's increased enforcement. So there's a lot of smoke, but there's also some fire," said Richard Stup, the director of Cornell Agricultural Workforce Development.
Immigration enforcement ramps up
Stup said we’re seeing President Donald Trump’s promise play out: to deport millions of immigrants who are living and working in the US illegally.
Right now, the feds are primarily pursuing individuals who have a criminal record, Stup said. While immigration officers are looking for them, in some cases, they’re also picking up unauthorized workers they find along the way.
"The concern is, will that policy remain the way it is? Or will they start to pick up more people that may not have a criminal record, but in fact, may be unauthorized to be here?" Stup said.
Unauthorized workers fill the industry
The dairy industry relies on workers who are in the country illegally, mostly from Mexico and Central America. There isn’t a legal way for immigrants to work on dairy farms year-round.
Some estimates say unauthorized workers make up as high as 80% of the workforce, or as low as 30%. Stup says he thinks it’s somewhere in between, like 40-60%.
It became that way because farm owners couldn’t find local workers.
"It really became a situation where they were looking elsewhere for creative solutions," said Allyson Jones-Brimmer, vice president of regulatory and legislative affairs for the Northeast Dairy Producers Association, a group that advocates for dairy farmers.
Farmers started hiring migrant workers to fill in the gaps, and it’s worked out well for them. Many workers stay at a farm for years. They may move around to find better salaries and benefits. Some rise to management roles. Their employers depend on them to keep farms running.
"It doesn't really hurt the local, domestic workforce," Stup said. "Even if we were pushed to depend only on the domestic workforce, there just wouldn't be enough people to go around to fill the dairy farm jobs that are out there. We need some guest workers to fill those jobs."
The unheard push for reform
The industry and both Democratic and Republican lawmakers in the North Country and New York State have lobbied for decades for a legal year-round visa program. But Congress has failed to act..jpg)
Many dairy farmers and agricultural groups want to see the existing H-2A temporary guest worker program expanded.
Jones-Brimmer said the temporary visa is great for fruit and vegetable farms that are busiest during planting and harvesting, but cows don’t care what time of year it is.
"There are just some positions on a dairy farm that are not seasonal," she said. "They happen every day of the year, multiple times a day, to feed, milk, and care for the cows."
This labor issue is one of the factors that’s forcing some farmers to sell their herds.
The 2022 Census of Agriculture showed that while dairy is the largest sector of state agriculture, about 1,900 dairy farms in New York closed between 2017 and 2022.
New York Farm Bureau President David Fisher said that trend could continue if there isn’t reform.
"Where do people want to get their food? Do they want to import some workers or do they want to import all the food?" he said. "We have in the last couple years become a net importer of food in this country, which is concerning because that's national security. Once farmers are out of business, they don't start up very easily."
That could have a huge impact in the North Country, where dairy farming is one of the biggest economic drivers.
The top fear right now is that if ICE detains multiple workers from multiple farms, no one will be left to milk thousands of cows.
"What if inside of a county, six dairies are affected and then lose most of their workforce?" Richard Stup, with Cornell Agricultural Workforce Development, said. "Suddenly, our neighbors can't help us because they're also affected. If you start having widespread enforcement like that, it could quickly become a cascading effect that would be a really serious challenge for the industry to deal with."
For farmers, there’s still plenty of work to do. Most are keeping their heads down. The New York dairy farmer, whose name we’re not using, said this is taking up time and brain power.
"It's a lot of unnecessary turbulence right now that we're just trying to work through," he said.
The farmer said he’ll just keep working, like all farmers do, through any conditions.
