A loss due to fear: What a crackdown on immigration could mean for agriculture

A tractor kicks up a cloud of dust in Gill. Pioneer Valley migrants and advocates say that a crackdown on immigration could lead to less of a selection of food and food prices increasing because a lot of what’s grown in Massachusetts stays here.

A tractor kicks up a cloud of dust in Gill. Pioneer Valley migrants and advocates say that a crackdown on immigration could lead to less of a selection of food and food prices increasing because a lot of what’s grown in Massachusetts stays here. STAFF FILE PHOTO/PAUL FRANZ

By MARA MELLITS

For the Athol Daily News

Published: 01-14-2025 3:00 PM

Modified: 01-17-2025 3:46 PM


For Patricia, a farmworker in Hampshire and Franklin counties, a typical day in the growing season starts at 4 a.m. A single mother who immigrated to the United States from El Salvador in 2003, she drops her child off at a babysitter’s house before going to work. She often doesn’t pick up the child until 6 or 7 p.m., or sometimes even later if she stays to pick vegetables.

Patricia, who didn’t share her last name and immigration status due to privacy concerns, is a seasonal worker like many other farmworkers in Massachusetts, working seven days a week during the growing season from May to November. However, since Donald Trump was reelected president, a new fear has emerged.

Patricia said farm owners have used the election to retaliate against farmworkers.

“What are we going to do when they can threaten to detain us?” Patricia said through an interpreter in Spanish. “We won’t return home to our families or our children.”

Patricia said this is a growing fear among mothers. She said it’s been hard to explain it to her own child.

Immigration legislation is up to the federal government. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has said she will not assist in mass deportations, but Trump has said he plans to carry out them out.

“Immigration enforcement is the job of federal authorities. Violent criminals should be deported, and they are,” Healey said in a statement. “I do not support rounding up millions of families who’ve lived here for a long time and who have kids here.”

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s administration will not renew a temporary humanitarian program that permits thousands of migrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua to stay legally in the country.

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Massachusetts can also choose to not activate the National Guard to engage in mass deportation and not have local police cooperate with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement if massive deportations were to occur, according to Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa D-Northampton.

“This is not the first time Trump has been president, and we know from the first time around, a lot of promises were made that, at the end, just turned out to be unfeasible,” Sabadosa said.

Maya McCann, a staff attorney at the seasonal migrant farmworker project at the Central West Justice Center, an organization providing legal aid to farmworkers, said she worries how migrants will be treated by their employers due to the Trump campaign’s anti-immigration language.

Claudia Quintero, also a staff attorney on the project and an assistant professor of law at Western New England University School of Law, said this will have a “chilling effect” on immigrant communities. She said it will be even more important for migrants to know their rights.

She said despite Massachusetts being “generally more protective of immigrants,” it’s important to not be too complacent in thinking deportations will not occur here because “we’re a Democratic state.” Despite the support from politicians in the state, some protesters opposed to that thinking gathered in support of Trump’s deportation plan at the Massachusetts State House soon after the election.

According to the National Center for Farmworker Health, 70% of agricultural workers are not born in the U.S.

Similarly in Massachusetts, there are 1,107 migrant farmworkers working on 201 farms, according to the 2022 Census of Agriculture collected by the United States Department of Agriculture. Of those workers, only 8% are hired through contract. There are 14,032 farmworkers total in the state.

Plymouth County has the most migrant workers — 244, working on 37 farms. Franklin County has the second most with 148 workers working on 17 farms. Worcester County has the most farms employing migrants with 38. A vast majority of farms in the state only employ one to four workers, because many are family run.

A crackdown on immigration could lead to less of a selection of food and food prices increasing because a lot of what’s grown in Massachusetts stays here.

“The economy is on the backs and shoulders of immigrant workers,” Claudia Rosales, a six-year farmworker, said through an interpreter in Spanish. “We are the labor force that make it possible for the economy in this country to grow.”

The Massachusetts agricultural industry represents 1% of the state’s gross domestic product (GDP), according to the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture.

Rosales is also executive director of the Pioneer Valley Workers Center, a grassroots organization in western Massachusetts that works to train immigrants to know their rights. Ariana Keigan, associate director of the center, said many members are concerned about the upcoming presidential administration and how they will be affected.

Keigan said the center is training its members to know their rights when it comes to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, helping them with getting documents in order and obtaining driver’s licenses. The center also supports policy initiatives like the “Fairness for Farmworkers” bill, which accompanied a study order on July 31 so it did not move forward, according to Sabadosa.

The bill aimed to increase the state minimum wage for farmworkers — currently $8 an hour — to mandate farmers pay overtime and establish a day off for workers every week.

A report done in 2020 found that farmworker families in Massachusetts live in poverty at more than twice the rate of other families. McCann said this has to do with farmworkers not making minimum wage or overtime. She also said farmworkers typically don’t receive raises, no matter how many years they worked.

Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, D-Springfield, said farmworkers are no different than any other employee in Massachusetts, which is why it is important to increase their minimum wage.

“They are essential workers that contribute to the economic success of our cities and towns,” said Gonzalez, a co-sponsor of the bill.

Because more than half of farmworkers in the state are seasonal, most rely on the growing season to make enough money for the winter. During the winter, Patricia works in snow removal.

The farming industry could also see an increase in H2-A visas “because our domestic workforce just won’t be there to do the work,” Quintero said.

H-2A visas are mainly meant for seasonal workers who leave the country and go back within the year. However they became popular in 2017, when the Trump administration began deporting undocumented workers.

Farmers used H2-A visas to recruit workers from other countries to work on a temporary basis for up to a year at a time. From 2016 to 2020, the number of H-2A visas grew by 59%, bringing in more than 200,000 foreign-born farmworkers.

“A lot of farmworkers have worked for years, decades, generations, in agricultural work, and bring a lot of skill and knowledge to it,” McCann said. “So if fear or other things keep them from returning to those employers that rely on them, that’s a loss.”

Nationally, the story is similar. Concerns with dairy farms in Wisconsin and Idaho highlight the relationship between farms and migrant workers.

“Immigrant workers, especially those from Latin America … are worried because of their immigration status and don’t know what will happen in the future,” Rosales said.

Among the issues plaguing the industry are the often brutal working conditions that come with it.

“We work under really high temperatures and they want us to work quicker,” Patricia said. “We aren’t machines. We are people working seven days a week.”

Rosales said workers are still “exploited” to this day. She said farmworkers often do not have access to a bathroom or clean drinking water. They are not provided with proper gear for heat or rain, nor gloves or masks.

When she worked on a tobacco farm in Connecticut, Rosales said she was fearful she would lose her job and her boss would call immigration on her.

“He humiliated us, called us names, told us that we needed to take care of the tobacco production and ... that if we don’t do the work quick enough, that he would call immigration on us,” Rosales said. “They took advantage of us.”

Mara Mellits writes for the Athol Daily News through the Boston University Statehouse Program.