Tag: Nominee

Farmers have begun raising concerns about the potential impact of President Donald Trump’s mass deportations on their operations, but the president’s nominee for agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, said any issues stemming from a lost labor force are “hypothetical.”

If farms are affected by mass deportations, she and other administration officials would “hopefully solve some of these problems,” Rollins said during her nomination hearing in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Thursday. When a senator remarked he hoped the issues caused by mass deportations were hypothetical, Rollins said, “I do, too.”

These comments stand in contrast with those of other Trump policy officials regarding mass deportations. In an interview with The New York Times in 2023, Stephen Miller, now a deputy chief of staff in the White House, said the deportations would have a major impact: “Mass deportation will be a labor-market disruption celebrated by American workers.”

Donald Trump says he’ll deport millions of undocumented workers, including many who work in the agriculture industry. Kamala Harris publicly supports a path to citizenship for farmworkers but espouses tough border policies.

Before Trump was elected, experts and farmworker rights advocates said mass deportations could lead to the agriculture industry’s collapse. Nationwide, an estimated 42% of farm workers were undocumented in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service.

Given how long farms have relied on undocumented labor, no other workforce currently exists that could replace unauthorized workers.

Rollins said Trump would not forget about farmers’ needs when implementing his deportation plans. While she agreed with the policies, she said she would listen to farmers and act accordingly, likely by augmenting the H-2A program, which brings foreign workers into the U.S. temporarily to pick crops. The program is run by the U.S. Department of Labor.

“The president’s vision of a secure border and mass deportation at a scale that matters is something I support,” Rollins said during Thursday’s hearing. “You may argue that is in conflict” with my duties to support agriculture, she added, but, “having both of those as key priorities, my job is to work with the secretary of labor on the H-2A program.”

The H-2A program is rife with well-documented abuse and wage theft. There have already been warnings that increased use of the program could overwhelm the government and negatively impact workers’ rights.

A new GAO report warns that rapid growth of H-2A program could impact workers’ rights. These workers might be even more important under a second-term Donald Trump, who supported the program in the past.

Rollins was also asked if she thought deporting farmworkers could increase food prices, as Trump campaigned on the high cost of groceries. She again said that was a hypothetical issue.

While food prices have outstripped the rate of inflation in recent years, one reason food has remained relatively affordable in the U.S. is because farm labor can be cheap. In the Times interview, Miller said Americans would replace the deported workers and “be offered higher wages with better benefits to fill these jobs.”

Rollins and Republican senators on the Senate’s agriculture committee emphasized her rural roots and her time in 4H, but Rollins does not have extensive experience in the agriculture industry. Multiple times, she told senators that she looked forward to learning more about an issue they asked about, including the increase in bird flu among poultry and livestock.

She repeatedly said Thursday she would rely on data to help drive decision-making. But, when discussing undocumented labor on farms, she said no one knew how many people might be affected by Trump’s mass deportations.

“We don’t know, first of all, who ‘they’ are,” Rollins said, putting air quotes around “they.” “We all throw numbers around. 40%, 50%, 60%. The answer is we just don’t know.”

While the exact figure may not be known, the U.S. Department of Labor publishes a survey with well-regarded and oft-cited data on the number of undocumented farmworkers. According to the survey, about 40% of America’s 2 million farmworkers are not authorized to work in the country.

Several agricultural industries rely on undocumented labor. For instance, dairy farms are not eligible for H-2A visa labor — often trumpeted as a labor solution — and often do not ask about employees’ statuses. The meatpacking industry, subjected to immigration raids under the first Trump administration, also uses undocumented labor.

One of the largest meatpacking companies in the country, Tyson Foods, told Investigate Midwest it would not be affected by any mass deportations, however.

“Tyson Foods is strongly opposed to illegal immigration, and we fully participate with the federal government’s E-Verify and IMAGE programs,” a Tyson Foods spokesperson said. “We employ 120,000 team members in the United States, all of whom are required to be legally authorized to work in this country and any enforcement against undocumented workers would not have an impact on our company.”

45% of hired farm workers were undocumented in 2017. Experts say the consequences of mass deportations under a second-term Trump could lead to lasting higher grocery prices and the collapse of the agriculture system. 

Near the end of Rollins’ nomination hearing, Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, asked Rollins how farms would replace their workforce if mass deportation plans materialized.

“Americans don’t want to do that work,” he said. “It’s frankly too backbreaking, so who is going to work the farms?”

Rollins responded by saying, “President Trump ran and was overwhelmingly elected on the priority of border security and mass deportation.” Trump’s margin of victory in November was the fourth-smallest since 1960, at 1.62%, according to PBS. “The American people have asked for a secure border and a system where they do not have to be concerned with the millions and millions that crossed here illegally and brought a lot of strife and unsafe communities to America.”

She added there might need to be changes made to the H-2A program to address a lost workforce. 

“I will work around the clock with our new labor secretary, if she’s confirmed,” she said. 

Then, Schiff asked, “If they’re gone, who’s going to do that work?”

“As these processes and programs are being implemented under this new administration and with the full support of the majority of Americans,” Rollins replied. “I think that we — as the leaders in agriculture, myself as the leader at USDA, you on this committee as well as others on the committee — that we will work together to understand and hopefully solve some of these problems. 

“The dairy cattle have to be milked,” she added, “but if we have a mass deportation program underway, then there is a lot of work that we need to do through the labor department and working with Congress to solve for a lot of this through our current labor programs that are already on the books.”

Schiff then asked about food prices. “If we deport a large percentage of our farm workforce, farm labor is going to be scarce,” he said. “Isn’t that inevitably going to push up food prices? And if so, isn’t that in sharp contrast with what the president said he wanted to do to bring down egg prices and food prices?”

“First of all, we’re speaking in hypotheticals,” Rollins said. “But, certainly, these are hypotheticals that we do need to be thinking through. It’s a very fair point. The president has made food inflation and the cost of food one of his top priorities. I have worked alongside him and have been part of his team for many years now. I believe in his vision and his commitment to America and to his promises, and in so doing, we will be able to find in our toolkit what we need to do to solve for any hypothetical issues that turn out to be real moving forward over the coming months and years.”

“I hope they’re hypothetical,” Schiff responded.

“I do, too,” Rollins said.

“I fear they’re all too real,” Schiff said.