ICE raids and their uncertainty scare off workers and baffle businesses
[June 19, 2025] By
PAUL WISEMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — Farmers, cattle ranchers and hotel and restaurant
managers breathed a sigh of relief last week when President Donald Trump
ordered a pause to immigration raids that were disrupting those
industries and scaring foreign-born workers off the job.
“There was finally a sense of calm,’’ said Rebecca Shi, CEO of the
American Business Immigration Coalition.
That respite didn’t last long.
On Wednesday, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security
Tricia McLaughlin declared, “There will be no safe spaces for industries
who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine (immigration
enforcement) efforts. Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our
efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic
stability.’’
The flipflop baffled businesses trying to figure out the government’s
actual policy, and Shi says now “there's fear and worry once more.”
“That’s not a way to run business when your employees are at this level
of stress and trauma," she said.
Trump campaigned on a promise to deport millions of immigrants working
in the United States illegally — an issue that has long fired up his GOP
base. The crackdown intensified a few weeks ago when Stephen Miller,
White House deputy chief of staff, gave the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement a quota of 3,000 arrests a day, up from 650 a day in the
first five months of Trump’s second term.
Suddenly, ICE seemed to be everywhere. “We saw ICE agents on farms,
pointing assault rifles at cows, and removing half the workforce,’’ said
Shi, whose coalition represents 1,700 employers and supports increased
legal immigration.
One ICE raid left a New Mexico dairy with just 20 workers, down from 55.
“You can’t turn off cows,’’ said Beverly Idsinga, the executive director
of the Dairy Producers of New Mexico. “They need to be milked twice a
day, fed twice a day.’’
Claudio Gonzalez, a chef at Izakaya Gazen in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo
district, said many of his Hispanic workers — whether they're in the
country legally or not — have been calling out of work recently due to
fears that they will be targeted by ICE. His restaurant is a few blocks
away from a collection of federal buildings, including an ICE detention
center.
“They sometimes are too scared to work their shift,” Gonzalez said.
“They kind of feel like it’s based on skin color.”
In some places, the problem isn’t ICE but rumors of ICE. At
cherry-harvesting time in Washington state, many foreign-born workers
are staying away from the orchards after hearing reports of impending
immigration raids. One operation that usually employs 150 pickers is
down to 20. Never mind that there hasn’t actually been any sign of ICE
in the orchards.
“We’ve not heard of any real raids,’’ said Jon Folden, orchard manager
for the farm cooperative Blue Bird in Washington’s Wenatchee River
Valley. “We’ve heard a lot of rumors.’’
Jennie Murray, CEO of the advocacy group National Immigration Forum,
said some immigrant parents worry that their workplaces will be raided
and they’ll be hauled off by ICE while their kids are in school. They
ask themselves, she said: “Do I show up and then my second-grader gets
off the school bus and doesn’t have a parent to raise them? Maybe I
shouldn’t show up for work.’’
The horror stories were conveyed to Trump, members of his administration
and lawmakers in Congress by business advocacy and immigration reform
groups like Shi’s coalition. Last Thursday, the president posted on his
Truth Social platform that “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel
and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy
on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them,
with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.”
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Farm workers plow the land for a strawberry field in Oxnard, Calif.,
on Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
 It was another case of Trump’s
political agenda slamming smack into economic reality. With U.S.
unemployment low at 4.2%, many businesses are desperate for workers,
and immigration provides them.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, foreign-born workers made up
less than 19% of employed workers in the United States in 2023. But
they accounted for nearly 24% of jobs preparing and serving food and
38% of jobs in farming, fishing and forestry.
“It really is clear to me that the people pushing for these raids
that target farms and feed yards and dairies have no idea how farms
operate,” Matt Teagarden, CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association,
said Tuesday during a virtual press conference.
Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, estimated
in January that undocumented workers account for 13% of U.S. farm
jobs and 7% of jobs in hospitality businesses such as hotels,
restaurants and bars.
The Pew Research Center found last year that 75% of U.S. registered
voters — including 59% of Trump supporters — agreed that
undocumented immigrants mostly fill jobs that American citizens
don’t want. And an influx of immigrants in 2022 and 2023 allowed the
United States to overcome an outbreak of inflation without tipping
into recession.
In the past, economists estimated that America’s employers could add
no more than 100,000 jobs a month without overheating the economy
and igniting inflation. But economists Wendy Edelberg and Tara
Watson of the Brookings Institution calculated that because of the
immigrant arrivals, monthly job growth could reach 160,000 to
200,000 without exerting upward pressure on prices.
Now Trump’s deportation plans — and the uncertainty around them —
are weighing on businesses and the economy.
“The reality is, a significant portion of our industry relies on
immigrant labor — skilled, hardworking people who’ve been part of
our workforce for years. When there are sudden crackdowns or raids,
it slows timelines, drives up costs, and makes it harder to plan
ahead,” says Patrick Murphy, chief investment officer at the Florida
building firm Coastal Construction and a former Democratic member of
Congress. “ We’re not sure from one month to the next what the rules
are going to be or how they’ll be enforced. That uncertainty makes
it really hard to operate a forward-looking business.”
Adds Douglas Holtz Eakin, former director of the Congressional
Budget Office and now president of the conservative American Action
Forum think tank: “ICE had detained people who are here lawfully and
so now lawful immigrants are afraid to go to work ... All of this
goes against other economic objectives the administration might
have. The immigration policy and the economic policy are not lining
up at all.’’
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