President Donald Trump’s own Labor Department is warning that his administration’s tough immigration enforcement could trigger a food crisis, citing “immediate dangers to the American food supply” caused by a collapse in the migrant farm labor force, The American Prospect reported.
In a Federal Register filing, the Department of Labor said that stricter immigration enforcement and deportations have severely disrupted the nation’s agricultural workforce, leaving growers without enough workers to harvest crops.
The agency’s new rule on farmworker wages argues that without swift action to expand the foreign guest worker program, the U.S. risks “supply shock-induced food shortages.”
“The near-total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce results in significant disruptions to production costs and threatens the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers,” the filing states. It adds that “this threat will grow” as new immigration funding takes effect under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The rule focuses on the Adverse Effect Wage Rate, or AEWR, which sets the minimum pay for foreign farmworkers under the H-2A visa program. The Trump administration’s revision replaces the previous system with a new wage formula based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one that critics say will significantly lower pay across the agricultural industry.
According to the United Farm Workers, the change could slash farmworker pay by $2.46 billion annually. “The Trump wage cut is a catastrophe for American workers in agriculture who growers intend to replace with cheap and exploitable foreign guest workers,” said Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers.
Critics argue the administration is effectively using its own immigration crackdown to justify wage cuts. “They’re sort of, I guess, refreshingly, explicit about how this is going to go down,” said Daniel Costa of the Economic Policy Institute. “It naturally means the wages are lower.”
The Labor Department filing cites a 93% drop in illegal border crossings and warns that “employers are facing a structural, not cyclical, workforce crisis.” It also states that American workers “do not have the skills” or willingness to replace missing migrant laborers, a claim at odds with public statements by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins that the farm sector could soon be “100% American.”
The new rule also allows employers to charge foreign workers for housing, further reducing their take-home pay. Critics, including farmworker advocates, call the move a “deport and replace” strategy that benefits agribusiness at the expense of both American and migrant workers.
Still, the Labor Department insists the measure is needed to avoid major disruptions to the food supply. “Without swift action, agricultural employers will be unable to maintain operations, and the nation’s food supply will be at risk,” the filing concludes.
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