How 'no amnesty' for migrants impacts US farm operations

(NewsNation) — Migrants working on American farms and in other environments will not receive amnesty "under any circumstances," despite President Donald Trump saying immigration enforcement raids would be paused and that farmers would be put in charge of migrant farmworkers rather than face threats of seeing their workforces diminished.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Tuesday that Trump’s mass deportation mission will continue, but will need to be strategic to ensure farmers have the laborers they need and to keep the country's food supply from being compromised.

But the continued back and forth on the role of working migrants continues to create confusion for farmers and the migrant farmers they employ, Aaron Lehman, the president of the Iowa Farmers Union, told NewsNation.

Lehman said Tuesday that the Iowa Farmers Union supports a common-sense approach to migrant workers, who have long played an integral role across the state. Rollins and Trump both insisted Tuesday that amnesty is not on the table for migrants, but Lehman says the mixed messaging sent by the administration is not helping anyone within the farming industry.

“Not knowing the future of your workforce and what it will take to value your workforce in order to get your crops in, get your crops processed and get all of our products processed, it just adds a lot of uncertainty and a lot of stress to our rural communities,” Lehman said.

The role migrants play on farms across the United States

Like in other states such as California, Texas and Washington, Iowa has traditionally relied on migrants who work on family-owned farms. According to Iowa Legal Aid, thousands of migrants are hired temporarily each year as farm workers.

Data shows that as many as 75,000 migrants who entered the United States illegally live in Iowa and are part of an nationwide agricultural workforce of which 86% are made up of those born outside the U.S.

In Iowa, migrants arrive to work on farms from places such as Mexico, South Africa, Brazil as well as Texas and Florida to assist with harvesting crops, detasseling corn and other duties on farms that produce soybeans, dairy products and fruits and vegetables.

Trump appeared in Iowa last week and said ICE raids conducted on farms that take workers away from farmers “isn’t good." He said he was working on a plan in which farmers would not face losing valued employees to immigration enforcement efforts. The president added that he wanted to see "the farms do great."

But during a cabinet meeting Tuesday, Trump echoed what Rollins and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said that the administration would offer no amnesty to migrants. Chavez-DeRemer said Tuesday that the Department of Labor had developed a new office to work with farmers and ranchers, but did not provide more details.

The Department of Labor oversees the H-2A program, which offers temporary visas to migrants who work seasonally on farms. The American Immigration Council reports that in 2023, households led by migrants paid nearly $90 billion in local, state and federal taxes.

Trump said last week that under his plan, which would put farmers in charge of their workers, migrants would be able to continue to work and pay taxes.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Officials have said that a program designed to give migrants working in agriculture and hospitality a "temporary pass" was not a path to citizenship. But the plan allows them to keep working and paying taxes.

Yet, with the administration not backing down from workplace raids, Rollins said Tuesday that she is advocating for a workforce that is made up of 100% of Americans and for automation to play a bigger role in keeping farms operating successfully moving forward.

“They’re not helping us get to a long-term solution,” Lehman, the Iowa Farmers Union president, told NewsNation. “Iowans all want our borders to be secure, but we all think that a common-sense solution can be followed. But this toggling back and forth from one idea to the next without much consistency doesn’t get us to a common-sense, practical solution.”

Lehman said that the threat of ICE workplace raids creates incredible levels of uncertainty. That comes as farms across the state are also coping with trade tensions, uncertainty over the role of the USDA, and lower commodity prices.

Is a 100% American workforce possible?

In pitching the 100% American workforce, Rollins suggested there are 34 million able-bodied Americans in the nation’s Medicaid program as well as “plenty” of workers. However, farming remains among the industries hit hardest by work shortages, making the role of migrant workers even more vital, Lehman said.

He said Iowa and Iowa agricultural operations have never been able to sustain themselves without a large immigrant component. He said that moving forward, it would be devastating to “flip the switch” on not including migrants in the state’s farming workforce.

Lehman also pushed back on the idea of automation taking the place of real people doing jobs that are necessary to keep farms running. Lehman said farmers are already capitalizing on modern technology as much as any industry in the country.

But without people, he said, some jobs — in Iowa and across the nation — simply would not get done.

“We can’t replace real people on the farm and we can’t replace people to do some of the most essential jobs in our food system,” Lehman said. “We want to value those skills and that innovation that comes with people."

Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, a Texas-based immigration attorney, said that Rollins' assertion that Americans are willing to step up to fill jobs often done by working migrants misrepresents reality. She points to data that suggest that 80% of Medicaid recipients are either working or are unable to work for one reason or another.

That puts a focus back on migrants and the value they bring to the American workforce, she said.

"A lot of immigrants who work these jobs understand what they're providing to this country, and they know that they're doing hard work just to lift up their families and they're doing work that a lot of native-born Americans wouldn't do," Lincoln-Goldfinch told NewsNation.