How farm work became the exception to Trump's border crackdown

Expensive berries and farm labor

0:00What's good, listener? So you've probably seen this, but lots of people are just much more open these days about going low contact or no contact with their relatives. Like maybe they cut them off because of irreconcilable differences over politics or religion or their identities or just because they needed to get free of the toxic relations that they had with their family. If you have made this tough decision for yourself, we want to hear from you for a combo we're working on for Code Switch.

0:34So holler at us. Please send us an email or voice memo to codeswitch at npr.org. And thank you.

0:43What's good, y'all? You're listening to Code Switch, the show about race and identity from NPR. I'm Gene Dembe. And I'm B.A. Parker. So, Parker, I was just reading this story last week, right? It was in the lifestyle section of a certain major news organization. I ain't going to say no names. It was about parents who were worried about going broke, trying to keep up with their kids' expensive berry habits. You know what I mean? Like, uh. But wait, like, berries are wildly expensive, though. They're wildly expensive. Like, kids might as well be asking for a steak that, like, $14. They just house them down. It don't last that long.

1:14Just, like, petty French despots, like, replete in expensive fruits. I hate it. Anyway. Well, like, weren't we supposed to be avoiding berries and lettuce? It's, like, not that long ago because of the whole, you know, explosive bubblegut situation. You're right. You're right. You're right. That's what I should tell these kids. Like, it's not a lie either. But, like, why? Respectfully, like, why are we talking about berries, though, Gene? You know, the show about race and identity from NPR. Oh, yeah. That's a good point. Okay. So, that story about berries was about the price of berries going up.

1:44The price of the antioxidant-rich brick is going up. And a lot of the reasons for that, you know, a big macroeconomic factors, you know, inflation, the war in Iran, surprisingly. Huh. But another part of that story is that we just might not have enough people to pick berries and lettuce as it happens. Because the Trump administration, as we know, has been cracking down on immigration, right? They're making it very hard for people who are not citizens to stay in the United States. They're making it very hard for people who want to move to this country to work to come.

2:16Except for white South Africans. Oh, yeah, yeah. Except for them. Except for them. And so, all those American farms are just having a hard time finding people to work the land, Parker. I mean, at the end of the day, 60% of all farm workers are without legal status. And that is a conservative estimate. That's Jimena Bustillo. Hey! I am the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration Policy Correspondent at NPR. Usually when Jimena comes through to Code Switch, you know, to kick it with us, it's to talk about ICE and Border Patrol, all that.

2:47But she's been deep diving on this workaround that more and more farmers are using. They just try and keep up with the American demand for berries and lettuce and produce. So increasingly, they are using these visas, which I've never heard of before, but they're called H-2As. And we know Trump is cracking down on everything, visas of all kinds, except for this one. This is the only federal visa program that is expanding right now. There's a common phrase in agriculture that you either import your food or you import your labor.

3:17And, you know, no one wants to be reliant on other countries for our food supply. And automation is nowhere close to replacing human labor. And so then a lot of farmers say, as much as they struggle with the H-2A program, they do see it as like a potential solution. But Jimena says, even though we need this labor, and I guess we need these berries too, everybody seems to have beef with this visa program, regardless of their politics. Farmers, labor groups, hard right, anti-immigration Republicans, these are not people who are usually on the same size of things.

3:51But I'm assuming they have beef with it for different reasons. Yeah, they're all arriving at the same station on different trains. And so that's what we're getting into on this episode, Parker, because Jimena says the anger around these visas from every direction gets at so many of the on-the-ground realities and the political realities of our country's increasingly strict border policy. Which, she points out, did not start with Trump. And this state of affairs is making for some unusual political frenemies and making it easier for a lot of undocumented farm workers to be exploited, sometimes in slavery-like conditions.

4:30Well, geez, this conversation about berries got real dark real quick. Yeah, I'm sorry. My bad, Parker. Oh, boy. Take it away, Gene.

The mechanics of H-2A visas

4:37All right, Amanda, so you said that nobody really likes this visa program. It's called the H-2A. And yet you say that the use of H-2As has exploded over the last decade or so. So the U.S. is very reliant on them. So what is this program for? Like, what's it supposed to do? Yeah, the H-2A visa program is one of many visas that the United States offers for people to come and work in the U.S.

5:08This one is specific for seasonal and temporary agriculture labor. So the visas typically are under a year in terms of how long someone can be here. It is very seasonal and it is temporary. So people have to go back once their term is over. And, you know, there are a lot of things that use H-2A. Lettuce sometimes uses H-2A. A lot of berries, a lot of what are called specialty crops, like your fruits and your vegetables, they use H-2A.

5:41Things like dairies, for example, that's a year-round job and they don't use H-2A. Ah, so I guess everything that goes in a salad probably is H-2A. Yes, exactly. And everything that comes from a cow probably not. Yes. Okay, so let's assume that I'm coming into this country, right? I'm a farm worker. I'm coming into this country to work and pick berries or lettuce. What do I have to do in order to get an H-2A visa in the first place? Like, who do I talk to? It very much depends. So, H-2A visas are tied to the employer.

6:12So, there needs to be someone in the United States, like a grower, a farmer, that says, I need labor. And then there are requirements that that grower and farmer needs to meet. So, they have to be able to show and prove that they were not able to hire someone domestically within the country first in order to post that job. They also have to fill out a lot of paperwork with the State Department, with the Department of Labor, with USCIS at Homeland Security, a lot of three-letter agencies involved in this process. And they have to commit to paying for that person's transportation, for their health care.

6:47And it used to be for their housing, but there's been some changes on that front. So, they have to do this for every single individual laborer? Yes. Now, what a lot of really big farms and growers use is they use something that's called a labor contractor. And a contractor is basically a firm that is the middleman between how someone in their home country, so let's say Mexico, for example, learns about a visa, gets recruited for one of these jobs. Sometimes it's word of mouth.

7:17You know, a lot of people in the same community might go and work at the same place season after season, and so then they'll tell other people about it. But the labor contracting side of it is very common as well. And so, if I get a visa, if I'm a farm worker and I get a visa to work on a farm, that visa is good for, you said, almost a year. So, then presumably I have to go back to Mexico and then re-up on that visa the next year? Or do I have to do this, like, every time I come back into the country to work the farms?

7:48Yes. Yeah. Pretty much every single time. You know, it does get easier. Like, once you've done it once, you can apply for the visa to do the exact same thing again. And it is very common to talk to farmers, for example, and even workers that go back to the same farm year after year after year for decades, even. Whoa. Okay.

Historical shifts in farm work

8:07So, the wild thing is you report that the use of these visas, these H-2As, has jumped 500% since 2012. But you also say that nobody likes it, but everybody seems to need it. So, if we go back to 2012, though, that means this uptick started during the Obama year. So, what was happening back in 2012 that kicked this sort of rise in the use of H-2As up? Well, the history is really interesting here. So, I did look at data starting back in 2012, but the growth and the reliance on foreign labor and agriculture honestly goes all the way back to World War II when the Bracero Program was originally put into place.

8:43And the rationale for that was, you know, a lot of, like, U.S. domestic-born people were leaving agriculture to go do other things in the war. And so, there was, like, a deal with Mexico to bring in foreign labor. And the Bracero Program was kind of the precursor to the modern-day H-2A program. Kind of after that, like, in just kind of history timeline, one thing that a lot of workers tell me is it used to be really easy to just cross the border, you know, come from Mexico, go to California, go to Arizona.

9:15And then you kind of got what became migrant seasonal workers. And migrant seasonal workers followed very particular patterns of migration even within the United States. So, they would come in from Mexico, they would start their seasons in Arizona, California, and then they would work their way up. So, you start early, like, March and spring is lettuce season in Arizona, for example. And then, as the summer goes on, you go up through California. And then, by the time it's fall, you know, you have your apple seasons, your berry seasons in Oregon and Washington and Idaho.

9:52And so, there were certain specific patterns across the country that a lot of workers used to take. And then, they could go back. They could continue migrating on. After 9-11, you know, of course, it became a lot harder to do that. And the border became tighter. We created the department now known as the Department of Homeland Security. And a lot of enforcement on immigration and particularly illegal immigration became a lot stronger. And so, what a lot of folks tell me is that kind of going into the Obama years, you did see an increase of enforcement.

10:28You did see a tightening of the border. It did get a lot harder to just cross or to be as migratory throughout the country. And now, we have a completely different farmworking population. Different how? So, a lot more people are what is considered to be a lot more settled. You know, people don't migrate in that same pattern anymore. They get to the Yakima Valley in Washington. And then, they stay there. And they work there. And they raise their kids there. And maybe they'll go to Idaho or they'll go to Montana for a given season.

11:00But for the most part, they come back. They're not migrating in the same way. And they're not as transient as they were before. And so, this all kind of feeds into the demand and the needs for labor. And so, then what farmers will tell you is that it is really difficult to recruit people to work on a farm, to do the job, to do the job, and to have that skilled labor that it takes to work in their operations. And so, the H-2A visa program has, over time, really grown in its demand.

11:32I will also say that it is one of the few visas that's not capped. A lot of other visas have limits on how many people can come in with that visa, either from a specific country or for a specific purpose. The H-2A visa does not have a cap. And so, that has allowed it to just continue to grow and grow in demand. But to your point, everyone kind of hates it. You know, I talk to a lot of farmers who say that their farm exists because they were able to get H-2A,

12:05but it's also a very expensive program. And it's not, you know, always the most reliable either. I talk to a lot of labor advocates that say it's very exploitive. And then, you get people on the far right and the far left that will not come to an agreement on what to do with the existing farm labor population and how it is growing in the visa demand. But you also have a chunk of existing labor that is undocumented and doesn't even count the visa workers. So, yeah, so the existing labor force, you said, that, like, settles here.

12:39Those people, a lot of them, I imagine, are still undocumented. And there's also the sort of component of, and you report about this, is that those people are getting older. They've been here for, you know, a while. And so, this is just like a lot of manual labor, whether it's farming or construction. That's back-breaking work. And so, you sort of age out of being able to do it. And so, you probably need a younger, able-bodied or more able-bodied replacement population. Agriculture generally has an age problem, you know, both on the farming side and on the worker side.

13:09And the farm worker population is getting older, and a lot of them have kids at this point, U.S. citizen kids, if they're not citizens themselves, that have gone on and done other things. And some of them have continued to do some farm labor, but many of them have not. And so, then there is this question of, you know, your existing population is getting older. So, if you're not able to recruit, if you can't find other young people to do it, then the automatic solution is you need to bring in people from outside.

Generational change in farming families

13:44You talk to a young woman named Paula Mendoza, who is the child of some laborers. I grew up with one of my parents always working pretty much seven days a week sometimes, and that's pretty much all I've ever seen them do. Yeah, I met Paula Mendoza a few years ago when I went out to Washington State to do a reported series on how the farm industry and its labor force was changing. Both of her parents were and are farm workers, and so she grew up knowing that line of work.

14:16And a lot of children of farm workers go with their parents out to the farm, even as tiny little kids. It is important to note that federal regulations and federal law, the use of youth labor is pretty common. Yeah, I was reading that kids as young as 12 can work when they're not in school, so long as their parents consent to it and the work is not considered hazardous. But, I mean, that's really young. Yeah, pretty young kids. I believe Paula has gone on and pursued her college degree and actually wants to study agricultural sciences and has pursued agriculture in a very different way from her parents.

14:58And one thing that's really interesting is families that have done this for decades, they take a lot of pride in it. But, at the same time, there also is that kind of, like, immigrant mentality of, like, go and do something else so you don't have to do back-breaking labor to survive and to keep yourself afloat. They were working so hard to provide us with what they didn't have so we didn't have to end up, in the future, ending up like them and working in the fields every day, all day. Like, we're doing this so you don't have to down the line? Yeah, I think there definitely is a lot of that, but also a lot of pride in the work that is done, especially for the people who have been here for a really long time.

15:37For sure, for sure. So you talked to Paula before Trump came back into office, and now we have tightened border security, which means even fewer young people come to work on farms. So farm owners, they want these H-2A visas to offset this shrinking aging population. But how is the aging workforce combined with tighter border security changing the farming industry? I mean, it is one of the clear splits within the Republican Party when it comes to immigration enforcement and the future of immigration policy in this country.

16:11You have far-right Republicans, members of Trump's base that don't want to see any visas at all of any kind. And then you have moderate, rural-based Republicans that understand that their economies exist on this labor force. And, you know, I think farming is one sector. You mentioned construction. That is another. Hospitality is probably a third. You know, hospitality relies on a thing called the H-2B visa, which is seasonal but non-agriculture labor.

16:49So, like, people who work in hotels, in resorts, in, like, food service. And there is a push and pull between kind of some of the more business-minded parts of the Republican Party and then the kind of more hawkish on immigration part of the Republican Party. Like, do you keep your businesses and your economic sector alive? Or do you stand for removing everyone without legal status and closing pathways for people to enter? And I think that's kind of where things have really combined under this administration is, as I think I've said before on this podcast, this administration is not just in the business of a mass deportation policy of anyone that entered the country without legal status.

17:32They are also in the business of limiting legal pathways. So, this visa is one of the ones that has continued to see some growth and demand even amid these policies and priorities. Okay. So, you just mentioned Republicans who are a little bit less hawkish on immigration. Let's call them, like, the Chamber of Commerce Republicans, right? So, like, you mentioned them as being like, hey, we need to make sure that we have a labor force because we represent these rural communities. There's a person you reported on. His name is Glenn Thompson.

18:02He's a Republican who represents a district in Pennsylvania. And he actually introduced an H-2A visa bill. And he says, I'm going to quote him here, that 92 percent of planted acres are in Republican districts, but 100 percent of people eat. So, what is this bill that he's introduced?

Legislative proposals and worker shortages

18:18What is it trying to do?

Legislative proposals and worker shortages

18:19Yeah, there have been a few different iterations of legislation in Congress that would essentially increase access to H-2A visas for some of those groups I mentioned earlier can't get it, like Derry's. Thompson is from Pennsylvania, big Derry state. So, this is very important to his constituency. And a lot of these bills would try and do something for people who are here without legal status. So, previous versions of the bill went as far as to create a pathway to legalization.

18:53This bill does not. This bill kind of grandfathers people who are here without legal status but can show that they've been working on a farm, I believe it's for 180 days, that they can enter the visa program. Which is, you know, conservatives call that amnesty because conservatives say that anything that takes someone who is without legal status and gives them a legal permission to be here is amnesty. It is like— Even if it's not a pathway to legalization. Even if it is not a pathway to citizenship.

19:23And at the same time, you have a lot of concern and fear from labor advocates who say that anything that is not a actual pathway is not enough. But interestingly enough, both conservatives and labor groups are really frustrated with visa programs and tend to say that, you know, they displace domestic workers. And so that is an interesting point of alignment. So, like, is there actually a significant enough population of people in the United States who have legal status to meet the demand of all the agricultural work out there?

19:57Like, if you kept these visas, would there be, like, a domestic American population that could just step in and do all this work? So, farmers would say no. Farmers would say that they post jobs and maybe get one applicant and the applicant will come in, work one day, and then quit. But this Trump administration has argued that there are Americans that could do that job. At one point, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said that— We must be strategic in how we are implementing the mass deportation so as not to compromise our food supply.

20:33Ultimately, the answer on this is automation, also some reform within the current governing structure. And then also, when you think about, there are 34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program. There are plenty of workers in America. I mean, at the end of the day, 60 percent of all farm workers are without legal status. And that is a conservative estimate. But those are people who are already here. It just depends on if you want those people in your workforce or not. And then it depends on what is happening with the rest of your eligible population.

21:05Are they aging out? Like, if they do have legal status to work, are you now competing your sector with, like, other sectors that might pay better or might be more reliable? Now you're competing with the rest of the labor force. So the question of, like, are there actually enough workers is, I think, pretty complicated to answer. Coming up, what happens when you work a back-breaking job, but the people who run that back-breaking job control whether you get to stay in this country? You are kind of just subject to whatever it is that they want to do with you.

21:37Keep it locked. Jean, just Jean for this part, code switch. Okay, before the break, we were talking to NPR's Ximena Bustillo, and she was walking us through this visa program that people on all sides seem to kind of hate. But that program is exploding anyway. It's called the H-2A visa. It's the visa program for the people who pick the fruits and vegetables in your grocery store. Okay, so Republicans, especially, like, hardline anti-immigration Republicans, are worried that these visas are one way for immigrants, for migrant farm workers, to get into the U.S. and stay.

22:15We understand that. But what is the issue that labor organizations have with farm workers? That's kind of surprising. Yeah, labor groups and unions are pretty opposed to visa programs because they make almost a similar argument that it replaces domestic and American workers. And for organizations like the United Farm Workers, you know, the visa program replaces the workers that are already legal and are already here, as well as those who might be working without authorization but are also already here.

22:50And they say that those workers have the skills and already have the specialization and have been doing this job for decades and are at risk of being replaced with increased visas. Huh.

Vulnerability and labor exploitation

23:02And then I would say, like, the last thing is with the H-2A visa program, the visa is tied to the employer and, like, in a way, at times, the labor contractor. And so individuals' ability to speak up and say, I have a problem with this or I have been treated badly or I had an issue with my paycheck, like, anything like that, there's a lot of fear with that. Because if the employer gets upset, like, there goes your job and your ability to be in this country. And so a lot of labor advocates say that this really puts workers in a very vulnerable position where it's like they just kind of have to trust that the system is going to work.

23:38And so, you know, of course, farm advocates say there are bad apples everywhere. Most growers are not like this. Most people are good bosses. But there are also a lot of studies that show that when there are labor complaints filed, like, 80 percent of the time they do find violations. But being able to file a complaint to begin with is really difficult. I mean, you reported on this a while back, but you said that, like, for a lot of the kind of workplace labor protections, even around things like overtime pay, farm workers specifically were excluded from the federal laws that allow people to make claims for things like that, right?

24:12So you're talking about exploitation. And, you know, that made my racism spidey sense tingle a little bit because I was like, OK, farm workers are excluded? That feels like there's a history there. Yeah, so federal regulations have really left, you know, a lot of farm workers behind on things like overtime pay, heat exposure rules, the age someone can start working legally. And a lot of agriculture workers are excluded from protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act. And that really is a relic of Jim Crow era compromises that were made.

24:48Now, we have seen some states independently do their own laws. I spent some time in Washington. California is also a leader in, like, ensuring that overtime pay, that heat rules are put in place, even sometimes raising the age of how old you need to be to work on a farm. But, again, I go back to the idea that it is really, really hard to regulate this industry. I mean, there are just simply not enough state or federal regulators to be able to go out into these very vast, very rural areas and make sure that people are getting the water that they need to be getting, that they're living in housing that is appropriate, that they are getting the health care that is necessary.

25:31And so even if we had the laws, which some states do, the implementation and the regulation is very difficult to see. You also said that one of the things that people who work around labor policy wanted was protections for migrant workers to be able to claim overtime pay. And so the states, like you mentioned, Washington and California, that did do that, they had this sort of unintended consequences, which is like, OK, now, instead of paying overtime, we're just going to hire more people to do these jobs. And so a lot of the people who would have stood to benefit from this overtime pay are just seeing their hours cut by farmers who don't want to pay out overtime because they're just going to hire more people.

26:06Yeah. You know, I have spoken with many growers that say that it would be more expensive to use the H-2A program. And so instead, they have scaled back their operations. There, I believe, is a record number of farm foreclosures in the United States as well. So some people choose to shut down because they just simply cannot afford to participate in this program. Not to mention that farming has very, very high overhead costs. One of the biggest expenses is always labor. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's a very large math problem that determines whether or not you have a visa worker or not and whether or not you can even stay in business.

26:47So we've been seeing these large-scale immigration raids since Trump got back in office. The federal government says about half of people who work on farms are undocumented. You said the conservative estimate is actually like 60%. But rural voters, like the people who live where these farms are, like the people who run these farms, they're a big part of Trump's coalition. So how many of these raids have been directed at farms in these rural areas where farm work is just a giant part of the economy? I'd say few. Few have been.

27:17We've seen a little bit in states like California, like the farming areas outside L.A., upstate New York. I mean, some of the testing ground for this enforcement famously has been the late Biden administration raids in Bakersfield that were led by Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino, who later became the face of a lot of the surges, including leading operations in Chicago and Minneapolis.

27:48He is no longer with the federal agency. But, you know, Bakersfield is a pretty conservative area. And like you saw that be kind of the canary in the coal mine for how this administration was going to kick off its enforcement. But it hasn't been a major sector targeted by this administration. There have been a few other moments where they pushed the envelope to, I think, show that they could. But we really haven't seen a lot of things like that.

28:19You reported that these visas, these H-2As, leave workers really vulnerable to exploitation, even, you know, putting workers in conditions that have been compared to modern-day slavery. Can you tell us about why that is and how enforcement of these kinds of conditions has changed or not changed under Trump? Yeah. So the H-2A visa program is unique in that the person that has the visa has that visa to work for that very specific employer. So it's not just the sector or the industry.

28:51And so labor advocates say that that will make someone more hesitant to raise their voice about, you know, if they have an issue with their paycheck, if they're not getting enough water, if their housing conditions aren't up to par. And then since their legal status is connected to basically the good graces of the person that they're working for, that means there might be a little bit more inclined to go where they're told to go. And when you have these, like, third-party labor contractors, that is where things get really messy.

29:23And workers might not know that they just cross state lines from Idaho into Washington and have more rights in Washington than they do in Idaho or that they maybe shouldn't be working on a certain type of farm because that employer, their visa is not connected to it or those crops are not even H-2A eligible. And so that makes the workers vulnerable. Their legal status is connected to the specific person they're working for. There are potentially language barriers. And, you know, you are kind of just subject to whatever it is that they want to do with you.

29:58Hmm. So, I mean, you have been reporting on this for a long time. You live in this world. And I'm wondering how you think we should be thinking about those of us who consume, you know, we consume vegetables and fruits all the time. Those of us who eat. Yeah, those of us who eat, basically, right? Like, I just saw the story in the New York Times not too long ago about, like, how parents of young children are going bankrupt buying berries for their kids because kids just, like, wolfed down berries, right? Talking to you, we're like, look, even these berries sit on top this very complicated web of labor and exploitation

30:31that we are all really removed from, for the most part. Yeah. So I wonder how you think we should be thinking about the way we're consuming food and the people who get that food for us.

The politics of the food supply chain

30:42I really, once upon a time, I covered food and agriculture policy a lot more closely. And it's a very digestible beat, no pun intended. Oh, hiss. At the end of the day, whether or not you eat, how often you eat, and what you eat can be a political decision. There are a lot of politics around food regulation, food access, nutrition access, and the ecosystem in which that entire industry lives in.

31:19Even farmers and ranchers and their workers live on very tight margins. They are very susceptible to climate changes, to economic changes, to tariffs, to, you know, international relations. And so, of course, labor. Labor is always one of the top issues in this big supply chain of problems to get something like a berry to your kid's table. And there are just not often easy solutions, and compromise is very few and far between, even if it is like G.T. Thompson says, and 100% of all constituents and voters eat.

31:57And so I think, you know, for me, people often don't think about how their food is made or where it comes from. I think because as Americans, we have so much access to it. We can go to the grocery store any day of the year, for the most part, and find a raspberry. And it did not always used to be that way. And, you know, I think just kind of remembering that a little bit, like remembering what access we have. And then at the end of the day, there are so many politics and policies that go into that access.

32:27And the kids might be picking the berries that other kids are eating. Yeah. And sometimes it is very slow-moving policy. It is very slow-moving change. But there's a lot that goes into it more than people think. Amanda Bustillo covers Homeland Security for NPR. Thank you, XB. Thank you.

32:48And y'all, that is our show. If you like what you're hearing, please rate and review us on whatever platform you're listening on, because we'd love to hear from you. And also, it helps people find us. Mm-hmm. All right. This episode was produced by Jess Kung. It was edited by Courtney Stein. Our engineer was Jimmy Keely. And we'd be remiss, remiss if we did not shout out the rest of the code switch masks. That's Christina Calla and Xavier Lopez and Leah Dinella and Dahlia Mortada and Barton Girdwood and Yolana Sanguini and Maya Dangerfield. As for me, I'm Gene Demby. I'm B.A. Parker.

33:18Be easy, y'all. Hydrate.