Trump’s immigration crackdown straining labor force for Minnesota ag, food operations

As agricultural and canning operations are ramping up for the summer, they are trying to figure out the possible repercussions of stepped-up immigration enforcement.

Workforces for these businesses have become tighter over the past few years, and many were worried that the threat of raids coupled with increased security at the Mexican border would further deplete summer help.

“It’s kind of a freakout time [for the agriculture supply line],” said Fernando Quijano, economics educator with the University of Minnesota Extension office in Moorhead. “We’re talking about agriculture, man, some of the most serious business we have in the United States.”

Many farm groups and commodity associations are staying quiet about the latest guidance from the Department of Homeland Security. Just over a week ago, DHS reportedly paused raids on rural areas, after pressure from those same groups.

But last Monday, the Trump administration reversed course. DHS officials said there would be “no safe spaces” for companies using undocumented labor.

The policy whipsaw came after a meatpacking plant raid in Nebraska and heavy lobbying of U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and other officials by farm and food companies.

The contradictory signals carry another level of worry for those who rely on immigrant labor, say Minnesota rural economic experts.

Still, many believed last week the behind-the-scenes pleadings had softened the administration’s stance, Quijano said.

“It seems to me Trump is realizing that we need some sort of protections [for farm workers],” he said.

Tracking undocumented labor is difficult. Minnesota was home to anywhere between 50,000 to 70,000 unauthorized immigrant workers in 2022, according to estimates from the Center for Migration Studies and the Pew Research Center. A large share of them work on farms or in food and meat processing.

Those numbers are down significantly from estimates a decade ago. Immigration policies have affected the willingness of undocumented laborers to seek jobs in the state, and businesses are struggling to make up the difference.

“A lot of those industries have been dealing with a really tight labor market since 2017,” said Cameron Macht, a regional labor analyst manager for the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. “Constraining the number of available workers is a challenge. ... They’re already looking for more workers and so not having access to a portion of workers is going to create an extra challenge.”

“Depending on who you ask, you’ll hear different experiences — many migrant workers, documented or not, report fears of workplace immigration raids," she said. “Some operators are seeing this reflected in day-to-day labor availability, while some operators report this isn’t an issue.”

In southwestern Minnesota’s Lyon County, farmer Dennis Fultz, 78, said Trump’s change of course regarding the food and ag industries is another example of how inconsistent federal government policies have been so far in Trump’s second term.

“It’s frustrating,” said Fultz, who describes himself as a lifelong Republican who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in last November’s presidential election.

But he said that he and other farmers in Lyon County, home to a turkey processing site among other food operations, are finding the workers they need.

For areas in the state starting to see a tightening, though, the anxiety immigrants have felt this year is another barrier to finding enough workers.

“The Trump administration’s whiplash approach to immigration enforcement is creating uncertainty all across rural communities,” said Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat. “Families, farmers and food workers deserve stability, not political stunts that disrupt lives and hurt rural economies.”

Last week, Immigrations and Custom Enforcement agents detained about 80 workers at the Glenn Valley Foods meatpacking plant outside Omaha. In Worthington, Minn., home to a large pork slaughterhouse owned by JBS, the Brazilian-owned meat giant, residents reported ICE knocking on doors.

Of the 120,448 state job openings in 2024, according to a state website, more than 18,000 were in food preparations. Fewer than 500 were in farming.

When the HyLife pork plant in Windom, Minn., shuttered two years ago, roughly half its 1,000-person workforce was on foreign labor visas, including many from the same hometown of Salvatierra, Mexico.

As of 2024, Minnesota has about 4,000 ag workers with H-2A visas, meaning they’re temporarily employed for seasonal work as farmers and ag concerns can’t find enough domestic workers.

But experts say these populations often are different. H-2A workers may come from Eastern Europe or South Africa. Meanwhile, a majority of undocumented workers, often those employed at livestock operations, hail from Mexico or Central America.

Statewide business and community groups are lobbying for immigration and visa reform to bring in more foreign workers, arguing Minnesota won’t be able to continue growing without foreign-born labor.

A Minnesota Chamber of Commerce report in February highlighted how the state’s immigrant population is driving population and labor gains. Employment among immigrant workers increased by 7% between 2019 and 2023, compared with less than 1% for native Minnesotans.

“Over the past 10 years, half of the new labor force in the state has come from foreign-born workers,” said Macht, the DEED analyst. “The match with job vacancies and available openings in the state and the industries that they have helped fill jobs in is just incredibly important to the vitality of the state.”