OMAHA (DTN) -- When Zippy Duvall took the stage at Minnesota FarmFest last week for a radio interview, his primary concern wasn't the farm bill. Instead, he highlighted the issue he hears about most from farmers as he travels across the country: Labor.
"The biggest issue I hear about everywhere I go is farm labor," Duvall said. "That's the No. 1 thing on people's minds long-term."
Since becoming president of the American Farm Bureau Federation in 2016, Duvall, a Georgia farmer, has consistently advocated for increased access to guest workers on a year-round basis. However, he and other farmers remain critical of the federal government's approach to setting wages for its H-2A guest-worker program. And when it comes to the federal government deporting people, Duvall said there should be a difference between people who just came into the country versus those who work on farms.
"Well, the deportation problem has come about because we have a broken immigration system," Duvall said. "We've had so many people come across the border in the last three or four years that didn't really come here to work on a farm and they're not going to work on a farm."
Duvall added, "The ones we're concerned about are the ones that have been on our farms for decades, that have become part of our communities, part of our families and doing the right thing, abiding by our laws and doing the right things as Americans but don't have the right to be a citizen."
Duvall advocates for workers who have been employed on farms to be allowed to stay. "Let's make sure we can get them a green card and they can stay here, work and provide for their families."
The total number of undocumented farmworkers nationally is hard to pinpoint, but the Pew Research Center estimated that around half of all U.S. farmworkers are in the country illegally. It's a problem agricultural groups have tried repeatedly to convince policymakers to fix.
"This is a story ag has been telling for a long time -- well over a decade -- to both Republican and Democratic administrations," said Chuck Conner, CEO of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives. "The fact is that a large percentage of the full-time labor on our farms and ranches consists of people who could not pass a current E-Verify test, and that's not anything new."
This stance puts agricultural groups in opposition to former President Donald Trump and the national GOP platform on immigration. In his interview this week with Elon Musk on the social platform X, Trump said, "They have to come here legally. They have to be checked."
Trump added, "We're going to have the largest deportation operation in the history of this country, and we have no choice."
Trump's running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, said in an interview on ABC's This Week, that one way to reduce illegal immigrants is to pressure the businesses that hire them.
"You make it harder to hire illegal labor, which undercuts the wages of American workers," Vance said. He added, "I think it's interesting that people focus on, well, how do you deport 18 million people? Let's start with 1 million. That's where (Democratic presidential nominee Vice President) Kamala Harris has failed. And then we can go from there."
Vance and other Republicans have criticized Harris, saying she failed as a "border czar," though border crossings this summer are only about one-third of what they were during last December's peak.
At a rally last week in Arizona, Harris said, "We know our immigration system is broken, and we know what it takes to fix it -- comprehensive reform -- that includes strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship." Harris also declared that Trump "has no interest or desire to actually fix the problem. He talks a big game about border security, but he doesn't walk the walk." Harris is running TV ads declaring her support for more border agents.
STATES WITH DIFFERENT APPROACHES
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a bill into law in April that would authorize police to arrest people based on their federal immigration status. The law also required state judges to deport people or have them jailed if they are in the country illegally. A federal judge in June blocked the Iowa law from taking effect, a decision Reynolds criticized.
"With this injunction, states are left defenseless to the ongoing crisis at our southern border," Reynolds said in a statement. "Plainly, the Biden administration is failing to do their job and enforce federal immigration laws allowing millions to enter and re-enter without any consequence or delay. I signed this bill into law to protect Iowans and our communities from the results of this border crisis: rising crime, overdose deaths, and human trafficking."
In contrast, the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce held a conference in June aimed at recruiting more immigrants and refugees to the state, as Nebraska faces a shortage of somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 workers, the Nebraska Examiner reported. That conference drew 200 people.
The conference was held in Fremont, Nebraska, a city that has an ordinance barring undocumented migrants from renting property in the city. But Fremont also needs to fill jobs, said Mayor Joey Spellerberg. Fremont is home to a poultry plant that processes chickens for Costco.
"Absolutely things have changed in Fremont," Spellerberg told the Nebraska Examiner, although others note some lingering resentment against unauthorized immigrants.
On the same day as the Chamber conference, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen was asked at a town hall meeting in Holdrege -- about 200 miles farther west -- about using the National Guard for deportations. Pillen, a major hog producer in the state, said he would focus on "terrorists."
"As Commander in Chief of our Army (and) Air National Guard, if we had a boatload of immigrant terrorists here, I would be totally supportive and getting those people out because there's a lot of bad people that have come through," he said, according to Nebraska Public Media.
But when asked about people in general, including meatpacking workers, Pillen stuck to his first answer. "I said I'd take care of the terrorists," he said.
Spokespersons for Reynolds and Pillen did not respond to questions from DTN about their views on proposals for mass deportations or how that could affect agriculture.
PAST ENFORCEMENT EFFORTS
Poultry processing and meatpacking plants are often a focus of immigration raids.
Five years ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided seven chicken processing plants in Mississippi and addressed 680 undocumented workers. Dozens faced federal charges and were deported.
In December 2006, ICE raided six meatpacking plants that were then part of Swift & Co., located in Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas and Utah. About 1,300 workers at that time were taken to federal detention centers, and around 240 workers were charged with immigration violations. The raids were partly attributed to Swift's eventual sale to what is now JBS SA.
Seven years earlier, in June 1999, Nebraska politicians from both parties complained about ICE's predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and its "Operation Vanguard." INS reviewed Social Security numbers for 26,000 packing plant workers and found 4,500 to be questionable. More than 3,000 packing plant workers in Nebraska quit rather than show up for interviews with investigators. INS interviewed more than 1,000 workers and arrested 34.
The raid was felt by livestock producers as well. The Omaha World-Herald reported, "Meatpackers and livestock producers have complained that the INS program has led to a labor shortage at some packing plants, which in turn led to lower bids or slower bidding on livestock for slaughter."
Former Gov. Ben Nelson was hired by farm groups in the state to lobby for changes.
"It was ill-advised for Operation Vanguard to start out in a state with such low employment and an already big problem with a shortage of labor," Nelson told the World-Herald at the time. "There has been an adverse economic impact on agriculture because of this."
RELIANCE ON H-2A GROWS
In June, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack visited Colorado to roll out a $50 million grant program to help connect farmers with legal migrant workers. He noted that in the last 20 years, the H-2A program has gone from providing 20,000 migrant farm workers in 2005 to more than 378,000 guestworkers last year. A lot of farms simply couldn't function without these farmworkers.
"They are the backbone of fruit and vegetable and dairy production in this country," he said. The secretary added, "They come here willing to do extraordinarily hard work -- work that people do not appreciate and understand."
Citing the Hatch Act, which prevents government officials from talking about politics, Vilsack declined to answer questions from DTN about mass deportation plans.
DON'T DISRUPT FARMING, FOOD PRODUCTION
Duvall and Conner both pointed out there are undocumented workers who have been employed on the same farm for decades.
"They are helping provide food and fiber for Americans," Conner said. "It's a pretty noble cause, really."
Conner added that farmers and rural Americans are probably some of the strongest advocates for increased border security.
"That would get a pretty overwhelming vote of support from farmers, ranchers and people in rural America. Having said that, the problem has been around for a very, very long time. We openly acknowledge it. We remain anxious to work on a solution. Generally speaking, I think people recognize there's value here in terms of providing food and fiber for Americans, and we don't want to be disruptive of that, and we're going to make that case very strongly."
Chris Clayton can be reached at Chris.Clayton@dtn.com
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