(Bloomberg) -- Florida tomato grower Tony DiMare is all for President-elect Donald Trump slapping tariffs on the Mexican farmers who undercut him by paying workers a fraction of what he does.
He wants to stop illegal border crossings and likes the idea of deporting migrants convicted of serious crimes. But when it comes to Trump’s broader promises to expel all 11 million undocumented people living in the country, DiMare thinks it would be a disaster for American farmers.
“We have to secure our borders south and north, but you have to have a workforce in this country,” said DiMare, whose family has 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) of tomato farms in Florida and California. “There’s no doubt that is going to restrict and put pressure on farming and many other industries that rely on this workforce.”
That’s because US farms run on an army of more than 850,000 crop workers, almost half of whom the Department of Agriculture estimates are undocumented. Some 160,000 of them move with the seasons, harvesting vegetables during Florida’s winter before moving north to pick crops such as snap beans in North Carolina or blueberries in New Jersey.
This complex system that sustains America’s relatively cheap food supply is now at risk as Trump promises the biggest deportations in US history, surpassing the notorious 1954 operation that forced 1.1 million people to return to Mexico.
A nationwide crackdown could drive labor costs higher for farmers already struggling to compete against cheap imports and reignite the kind of inflation that tanked Joe Biden’s presidency. Fresh fruit and vegetable production has been moving to Mexico and Canada in recent years, in part due to lower labor costs.
Florida, America’s largest producer of fresh-market tomatoes, offers a glimpse into how Trump’s plans may play out.
Since Governor Ron DeSantis pushed through one of the nation’s strictest state immigration laws in July 2023, more farmers have been forced to pay far higher wages for guest workers to replace undocumented laborers — a federally mandated $16.23 an hour instead of roughly $10 in cash for picking tomatoes.
DiMare, who voted for Trump, has 85 guest workers from Mexico plucking plump tomatoes at his family’s fields near Homestead, south of Miami on the edge of the Everglades. He brought them into the US with H-2A temporary farmworker visas, used by about a third of crop workers in the US. They’re paid a lot more than undocumented workers typically earn, and labor makes up roughly 40% of a tomato grower’s costs. But at least he’s secured a dependable, legal workforce.
The impact of the Florida law was palpable one morning in late December in Immokalee, two hours northwest of Miami, as Rene Trujillo tried to get work picking tomatoes. Some farm crew bosses told Trujillo, “No.” Others asked, “Tienes papeles?” — do you have papers? He didn’t. So, by 8 a.m., he gave up.
“Ever since they made that law, almost no one will hire you without papers,” said Trujillo, 37, who says he paid smugglers to get him from Guatemala to Immokalee in 2016, joining two brothers.
The law, SB1718, requires businesses to use a federal system called E-verify to confirm that every employee can work legally in the US — or face $1,000-a-day fines. On Jan. 13, DeSantis proposed toughening the laws further by requiring county sheriffs to help federal agents arrest and detain migrants.
There’s a shortage of people willing to harvest fruit and vegetables — known as stoop work — and farmers fear it will worsen if Trump imposes a Florida-style crackdown across America.
“A lot of people left Florida for Georgia, north, scared,” DiMare said as he walked one of his fields this week. “Farmers had to let their crops rot.”
And rising farm labor costs will be passed on to consumers, affecting the cost of American icons like the cheeseburger. For now, the sliced tomatoes contribute 41 cents of the average $3.28 it costs to make one at home.
“We of course have concerns about impacts to the farm sector,” said Dave Puglia, the chief executive officer of the Irvine, California-based farming advocacy group Western Growers.
He’s hoping the deportations will focus more on rounding up criminals. But the architects of Trump’s immigration crackdown, incoming deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and border czar Tom Homan, say workplace raids will be part of the strategy.
There are signs the roundups are already beginning: On Jan. 7, Border Patrol agents raided businesses where migrant orange pickers congregate around Bakersfield, California, in what was dubbed Operation Return to Sender. Other migrants scared of being caught stayed home from work for several days, stranding crops, CalMatters reported.
“I don’t recall hearing of no-shows or a lot of worker fear prior to the president-elect’s threats,” said Michael Marsh, president of the National Council of Agricultural Employers.
In 2023, as the state law went into effect, Florida farms secured a record 52,000 guest workers via the federal H-2A visa, which traces its roots to the Bracero program that brought waves of guest workers from Mexico during World War II. The US approved 385,000 H-2A guest worker applications in fiscal 2024, up 50% from 2019.
Brad Johnston, a lawyer for Nevada onion and vegetable grower Peri & Sons Farms, the state’s biggest user of H-2A workers, hopes Trump will make sure farms can get workers. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, in an interview in Washington, said there are already discussions on how to expand visa programs for agriculture workers and he wants to do more.
“Agricultural workers ought to be allowed in this country year round instead of seasonal,” Grassley said. “And that's something we ought to be able to accomplish, because that's legal immigration.”
Securing guest workers can be onerous — taking 90 days or more. A farm must first ask the US Labor Department to certify the need for workers they can’t find in America, then find foreign workers, pay to bring them to the US, and cover housing. It adds up to $21,250 per H-2A worker for 125 days of harvest work, according to Philip Martin, a University of California, Davis, professor.
“It’s the same work as in Mexico, but you have to work much longer hours to make the dollars we make here,” Jonathan Lara, 26, an H-2A crop worker from Morelia, in central Mexico, said as he took a break from picking tomatoes on DiMare’s farm. “It’s good work, and I can send almost all of it home to my wife and baby.”
Shay Myers, a third-generation Idaho farmer whose family plants 10,000 acres of onions and other food crops, said that depending on immigration agents to harvest crops is risky. He lost his entire asparagus crop several years ago when guest workers were delayed at the southern border.
It’s already getting hard to find workers in Mexico willing to leave their families for months at a time because of rising wages and employment at home, said Myers, who hires about 90 H-2A workers a year. If farmers “had to replace every falsely documented worker with an H-2A worker, it wouldn’t happen.”
The H-2A system is also rife with abuse. The Labor Department has banned dozens of labor brokers for illegalities ranging from charging fees for a visa spot, piling on debts for transport and meals, and subjecting workers to modern day slavery.
Fear of breaking the Florida law pervaded the dimly-lit parking lot outside the Azteca supermarket in Immokalee last month, during the winter tomato harvest.
Before the law, hundreds of men and women would gather each morning looking for day work, needing only a social security card and identification, which are easy to fake. On Dec. 17, there might have been 50. Seven people who identified themselves as undocumented migrants said that most farming crew bosses wouldn’t hire them anymore.
The crackdown has turned life inside out for Trujillo, the Guatemalan-born migrant worker. Last year, he skipped going to North Carolina for the summer harvest with his brothers for fear of getting caught in an immigration stop.
One of his three brothers was deported years ago, and Trujillo is worried he’s next. He’s sending less money home to his parents to cover food and medical bills.
“Without the money I send, they just can’t make it,” he said, standing outside the Azteca market, his daily earnings destined to be zero. “I just don’t know what I will do.”
--With assistance from Ilena Peng, Shawn Donnan, Kim Chipman, Simone Foxman, Alicia A. Caldwell and Isis Almeida.
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