Trump’s ICE raids leave California crops unpicked as workers vanish
Immigration raids are deterring farmworkers in California, causing crops to rot, as experts warn of supply chain issues and price increases
Lisa Tate is a sixth-generation farmer in Ventura County, California, an area that produces billions of dollars' worth of fruit and vegetables each year, much of it hand-picked by immigrants in the US illegally.
Tate knows the farms around her well. And she says she can see with her own eyes how raids carried out by agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the area’s fields earlier this month, part of President Donald Trump’s migration crackdown, have frightened off workers.
“In the fields, I would say 70 per cent of the workers are gone,” she said in an interview. “If 70 per cent of your workforce doesn’t show up, 70 per cent of your crop doesn’t get picked and can go bad in one day. Most Americans don’t want to do this work. Most farmers here are barely breaking even. I fear this has created a tipping point where many will go bust.”
In the vast agricultural lands north of Los Angeles, stretching from Ventura County into the state’s central valley, two farmers, two field supervisors and four immigrant farmworkers said that the ICE raids have led a majority of workers to stop showing up.
That means crops are not being picked and fruit and vegetables are rotting at peak harvest time, they said.
One Mexican farm supervisor, who asked not to be named, was overseeing a field being prepared for planting strawberries last week. Usually he would have 300 workers, he said. On this day he had just 80. Another supervisor at a different farm said he usually has 80 workers in a field, but today he had just 17.