Current federal immigration policies are creating vulnerabilities across the food supply chain. When skilled workers are pushed out by worksite raids and fear of deportation, the consequences compound to create higher risk of foodborne illness outbreaks.
Background
Over the past year, U.S. headlines have been plagued by reports of foodborne illness outbreaks such as Cyclospora, Salmonella, and Listeria. The Cyclospora outbreak, linked to Taylor Farms de México, led to 12,883 cases and 570 hospitalizations. While these outbreaks can be difficult to trace and are not a new phenomenon, stricter immigration enforcement may be one factor leading to higher risk of foodborne illness outbreaks.
In his second term, President Trump has dramatically increased immigration enforcement through tactics such as quota-driven mass deportations, restricting pathways for legal authorization, and aggressive worksite raids. These tactics have caused major disruptions across food-related industries, leaving food products nationwide vulnerable to spoilage, contamination, and inadequate safety measures.
Ultimately, worker absenteeism, resulting from deportation or fear of deportation, compounded with reliance on immigrant labor raise the risk of foodborne illness outbreaks for Americans.
Why Enforcement Creates Lose-Lose Scenarios
Approximately 86% of agricultural workers are foreign-born, with about 45% being undocumented. Around 23% of meatpacking workers are also undocumented. In the hospitality industry, one third of employees are immigrants, including over one million undocumented individuals. These workers are integral to these industries because they reduce turnover, keep businesses running, and fill jobs that are important for food safety and sanitation.
These industries thus rely heavily on immigrant labor, yet employers in the agricultural sector have historically used threats of deportation to keep immigrants working under poor conditions and low wages. Since those conditions have become standard for many immigrant workers in these industries, the positions are difficult to fill with domestic workers, unless employers increase wages. Still, even if employers could attract domestic workers with higher wages, they would likely have less skills and training for the job.
A 2014 report about Taylor Farms, now associated with the recent Cyclospora outbreak, demonstrates how this abusive dynamic can backfire once mass deportations are underway. The report alleged that immigrant workers for Taylor Farms were threatened with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) calls and E-Verify if they complained about their working conditions.
Threats to call la migra may work to exploit vulnerable workers, but both sides lose when ICE actually shows up. Once jobs are left vacant by workers who were exploited and subjected to poor conditions, businesses struggle to find domestic workers willing to take the jobs without higher pay, better conditions, and benefits. Thus, mass deportations and worksite raids create losses for the workers, employers, and all Americans once food industries are disrupted.
Disruptions to Food Industries
Mass deportations cause considerable disruptions to the agricultural industry. Since ICE faces a quota of over 2,000 daily deportations, worksites such as farms have become subject to aggressive raids. Regardless of whether workers are undocumented, fear of being profiled at work has led many to hide at home. Farmers across California have reported that up to 70% percent of workers have been missing since the increase in raids. At a plant in Nebraska, an employer lost 107 employees in a single raid, making it nearly impossible to continue business because many of the deportees were supervisors in charge of operating machinery and ensuring safety.
With a loss of workers, farmers either must allow crops to spoil and bear financial damage or continue operations with dangerously insufficient labor. In California, unharvested produce has led to a loss of five to seven billion dollars. Farmers in New York and New Jersey have lost millions of dollars as a result of spoiled milk caused by disrupted milking schedules.
Further still, it’s difficult for farms to adapt to alternative options for labor or operations. With domestic labor being hard to obtain for these jobs, the H-2A program allows U.S. agricultural employers to bring foreign workers to do farming jobs that cannot be filled by domestic workers. However, the H2-A program puts a lot of burden on employers because they have to provide housing, pay, transportation, and workplace protections. The program has also been investigated for passport confiscations, trafficking, and slavery.
Another way farms could adapt to stricter immigration enforcement is by using mechanized systems. However, this adaptation is difficult for small and medium-sized farms, putting smaller businesses across America at a disadvantage.
Threats to Food Safety
One of the main ways in which stricter immigration enforcement can threaten food safety is when farms attempt to operate while understaffed or under-trained. Mass deportations and the fear they cause create overall less worker presence and productivity. Therefore, important safety measures would either be performed with less supervision, less frequently, or by workers who don’t have adequate training.
When farms cannot continue working and struggle to meet domestic demand, the nation increasingly relies on imports, which raises prices and creates more risk of unregulated food and outbreaks. For example, the recent Cyclospora outbreak was traced back to Taylor Farms de México in Guanajuato, where food safety monitoring is more difficult to enforce.
As imports increase, the U.S. will have to outsource quality and safety monitoring to other countries, exposing domestic consumers to inconsistent food safety standards.
Bottom Line
Aggressive immigration enforcement destabilizes the entire U.S. food system, causing major disruptions in food production, sanitation, and worker continuity. Ultimately, these factors combine to expose Americans to higher risk of foodborne illness outbreaks.
Jacob M. Monty is an attorney with Monty & Ramirez LLP in Houston and can be reached at jmonty@montyramirezlaw.com.