This series is supported by funding from the Chicago Region Food Systems Fund.
Over the last several months, Investigate Midwest has been reporting on how the Trump administration is reshaping the agriculture industry through the rollback of immigration programs and a mass deportation campaign.
Read This series
Immigrants helped save this Illinois meatpacking town. Trump cut hundreds from its workforce.
Threat of ICE raids shadows every shift in Chicago’s food warehouses
Trump’s deportations are causing farm labor issues. He hasn’t presented a viable, long-term solution.
Here are seven takeaways from that recent series:
Chicago-area raids have created fear among food warehouse workers
Undocumented immigrant workers in Chicago’s food warehouses face heightened fear of ICE raids and mass layoffs. This climate of anxiety has disrupted workplace routines and led to some workers leaving their jobs. The raids and policy rollbacks have also meant that the temp workers fueling much of this work have become even more vulnerable to exploitation, as they are now less likely to seek help.
The Trump administration is challenging state efforts to protect immigrant workers
Illinois lawmakers and worker centers have attempted to pass new laws and provide resources to protect immigrant workers, including education rights, driver’s licenses and legal support during ICE audits or raids. Despite these efforts, ongoing federal lawsuits and budget cuts at labor enforcement agencies have hindered progress, creating additional vulnerabilities within the workforce.
Policy reversals have created mass layoffs at meatpacking plants
Not only has the Trump administration deported thousands of undocumented residents, but it has also created more undocumented workers by rescinding various programs. This includes a humanitarian parole program, which allowed individuals to enter the U.S. temporarily to seek safety or escape political persecution. Many of those immigrants found work in meatpacking plants, but were recently fired, including at a JBS plant in Beardstown, Illinois.
Mass deportations are creating an agricultural labor shortage
Large-scale deportations and the rollback of programs allowing immigrants to work in U.S. agriculture legally have significantly reduced the available workforce for farmers and the broader food system. Efforts to fill these vacancies with U.S.-born workers have largely been unsuccessful, leaving vital sectors like farming and meatpacking facing acute labor shortages. About 750,000 immigrants have left the labor force since January, according to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan organization.
Deportations are likely to expand the use of temporary foreign worker visas
The Trump administration’s aggressive deportation agenda is pushing the agriculture industry to rely more on temporary visa programs, such as H-2A and H-2B, rather than recruiting U.S.-born workers as Trump intended. Dairy, meatpacking and crop operations have increasingly turned to foreign labor to fill jobs vacated by deported or deterred undocumented workers.
Expansion of the H-2A visa program offers only short-term relief
In response to those labor shortages, the administration has modified the H-2A visa program, which allows some agricultural employers to hire foreign nationals for extended periods. However, this is widely considered a stopgap rather than a systemic fix — dairy and other year-round operations remain largely ineligible, and full-scale reforms have stalled without congressional action.
“The H-2A program is not the sustainable solution, but it is a short-term solution,” said John Walt Boatright, the director of government affairs at the American Farm Bureau Federation, the leading farmer advocacy group. “I do foresee the H-2A program continuing to increase in use, but by no means is that a measure of its popularity.”
Political and administrative inaction hinders long-term solutions
Despite acknowledgement from both government officials and industry leaders that labor shortages threaten farm viability and the nation’s food supply, there has been little legislative movement. A federal government shutdown and a lack of hearings in Congress have delayed substantial immigration and labor reforms, leaving small farms especially vulnerable while favoring larger, industrial producers that are better equipped to navigate visa complexities and automation.