What’s at stake?
The quick 180 from the Trump administration gave some agricultural industry groups whiplash and heartache, but others weren’t surprised. While waiting for Congress to pass immigration reform bills for the first time in almost 40 years, farmworkers continue to live and work in fear.
After flip-flopping from the Trump administration over immigration raids on farms, industry groups in the central San Joaquin Valley are looking to Congress to solve the problem in the long term.
But they’re not all looking at the same solutions.
President Donald Trump had briefly teased some reprieve from immigration raids for select businesses — agriculture, as well as the “Hotel and Leisure” industry — in a Truth Social post June 12.
Four days later, The Washington Post broke news of the Department of Homeland Security’s reversal on that guidance, instructing agents to continue raids at farms, hotels and restaurants.
The complete 180 left employers feeling whiplash, and some even feeling dismayed. But not everyone was surprised to see the Trump administration quickly reverse course.
“If it was a genuine policy shift, it would have been a good thing,” said Daniel Larios, a spokesperson for the United Farm Workers Foundation, “but we were, of course, skeptical.”
In the absence of any short-term relief from Trump, Central Valley groups are shifting their focus back to getting comprehensive immigration policies passed.
On the one hand, there’s the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, a bill that creates a path to legal status for agricultural workers as well as their spouses and minor children.
Previous iterations of the bill have passed through the U.S. House of Representatives twice, but the act has yet to make it through the Senate. The legislation’s bipartisan authors are trying again this year, having reintroduced the bill in May.
Some farmworker advocacy groups like the UFW — though not all — have thrown their support behind the bill. So have several industry groups.
“I think that’s been the ultimate goal for now going on 25 years,” said Daniel Hartwig, president of the California Fresh Fruit Association, “to actually get legislation that’s going to take care of our workers.”
But not everyone in California’s agriculture industry is satisfied with the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, or thinks it goes far enough.
That includes Manuel Cunha, president of the Nisei Farmers League in the Central Valley, who called the bill “one-sided.”
“It doesn’t meet the needs of industries,” he said. “It doesn’t even include packing houses, processing facilities, all of that.”
He’s working on building a coalition of industry leaders — not just in agriculture, but also construction, hotels, restaurants, landscaping and healthcare — to support another immigration bill with protections that go beyond the farming industry.
That bill is the Dignity Act, another bipartisan piece of legislation that lawmakers have promised to reintroduce this year.
The bill, previously introduced in 2023, offered paths to legal status for undocumented immigrants — not just farmworkers — who have been in the U.S. for more than five years and maintained a clean record.
“We need to develop a guest worker program for industries: construction, hotel, restaurants, manufacturing, maintenance, healthcare — the people that care for the elderly,” Cunha said. “We need to have guest worker programs that fit those industry needs”
Cunha acknowledged that not all agricultural groups may agree with him, however, “because they want to just do ‘ag,’ and nobody else.”
But while Congress takes another swing at what could become the first comprehensive immigration policy reforms in 40 years, many immigrants in the Central Valley and beyond continue to live and work in fear.
“There will be repercussions for the local economy, small businesses, working individuals, families with school children,” said immigration attorney Jesús Ibañez. “People are afraid to go out in the streets.”
Worker advocates also question whether farmers in California’s nearly $60-billion agriculture industry or across the U.S. — many of whom backed Trump in 2024 even while he campaigned on mass deportations — will get behind greater protections for a vulnerable workforce.
“One can only speculate that the same owners who are donating funds for anti-immigration policies may be interested in protecting their net profits over human rights,” said Rubi Gutierrez, a community organizer for the Fresno region with the Dolores Huerta Foundation. “It is difficult to remain a billionaire without the labor exploitation of immigrants.”
How Trump’s back-and-forth affects Valley agriculture
Prior to Trump’s now-reneged announcement, reports of immigration raids on California farms were primarily coming out of Southern California — though workers and advocates reported sightings near fields in Tulare County’s Richgrove and Fresno County’s Kingsburg, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Faith in the Valley, a Central Valley nonprofit, runs a hotline for community members to report immigration enforcement sightings and has confirmed dozens of reports since Border Patrol operations began in Kern County in January.
The organization doesn’t track employment information from the people they speak with, said Elizabeth Lopez, Faith in the Valley’s communications and development coordinator. But given the “increasingly discriminatory nature of ICE’s practices,” she added, “it’s safe to say that a large portion of people being targeted work in farming, hospitality, restaurant, and construction industries.”
Still, escalated enforcement in California hasn’t yet resulted in broad absences on Central Valley farms, industry groups said — and nothing like the labor shortages growers reported following January’s surprise raids from Border Patrol.
But that doesn’t take away the fear workers face daily.
“They’re scared,” said Larios of the UFW Foundation, “but the work has to continue, and they need to do it to provide for their families.”
A directive from Trump to stand down on raiding farms could’ve helped with that anxiety — and alleviated worries for farmers of what agricultural raids could mean for their crops, Cunha added.
The back-and-forth, on the other hand, has eroded trust.
“When a president starts to flip-flop or waffle back and forth,” Cunha said, “trust of a president begins to be lost.”
But others questioned how effective a new directive would have been in the first place.
“This announcement about lowering raids on farms is more of a political statement,” said immigration attorney Olga Grosh, “because whether a person is detained in the field, or while dropping a child off at school, or at the supermarket, the effect is the same: that detained or deported immigrant won’t be showing up to work.”
What do these proposed immigration policies include?
Larios said the UFW Foundation “wholeheartedly” supports the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which he called a “compromise piece of legislation,” due to its path to legalization for farmworkers.
In addition to that, the bill also lays out reforms for the H-2A temporary visa program for farmworkers.
The H-2A program allows employers to hire workers from other countries for temporary agricultural work if they can demonstrate there are not enough U.S. workers to fill the positions and that hiring guest workers won’t adversely affect U.S. workers’ wages.
Among those reforms to H-2A included in the bill are adjustments to wages for H-2A workers based on different types of work, like crop workers versus machine operators — a provision Hartwig said is valuable.
But the Farm Workforce Modernization Act’s proposed expansion of H-2A has drawn criticism from some farmworker advocates at least with previous iterations of the bill, who say that expansion could negatively affect farmworkers already here in the U.S.
The H-2A expansion is also part of Cunha’s qualms with the Farm Workforce Modernization Act.
The Dignity Act, in its 2023 iteration, doesn’t offer legal status for immigrants based on any particular industry of employment.
Instead, it offers pathways for undocumented immigrants who have been in the country at least five years. It also promises immediate legal status for “Dreamers,” the nickname given to beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA offers protection to undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, providing work authorization and social security numbers.
A previous version of the bill also came with several provisions aimed at securing the U.S.-Mexico border, such as requiring the hiring of thousands of new Border Patrol agents and officers.
Other groups that have historically supported the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, including the California Farm Bureau, said they’re “interested and appreciative of all serious and bipartisan efforts” at agricultural workforce reform, according to Matthew Viohl, the Bureau’s director of federal policy.
“We’ll be doing a full review of the Dignity Act when it is formally introduced,” he said in an email, “as I suspect they will again make some changes compared to its previous iterations.”
Cunha said he’s working with other industry representatives to propose amendments to the Dignity Act. He plans to share them with California congressmen as well as one of the legislation’s co-authors, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Florida Republican.
What should immigrant workers, employers know
In the absence of a directive from Trump, Cunha is telling growers to be on alert in case immigration authorities stop by their farms.
“If they do come to your operation, they must have a warrant — a federal warrant, a judiciary warrant,” Cunha said he’s telling growers. “Not just an open field, go get everybody you want with no names — no, they have to list the names.”
As for immigrant workers’ safety and rights, Lopez, with Faith in the Valley, said their team will continue to monitor credible immigration enforcement threats.
Faith in the Valley also can connect those affected with attorneys for immigration cases, help determine eligibility for immigration relief, and accompany individuals to court dates or ICE check-ins so they don’t have to face them alone.
Grosh, the immigration attorney, said the best thing immigrant workers can do right now is know their rights and explore all available immigration options.
She urged people to consult an attorney or accredited representative, apply for any eligible forms of immigration relief — ideally more than one — and have a backup plan in case of detention, including who to call, who to notify, and child care arrangements.
“Know your rights,” she said, “know your options, and be prepared.”
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