How Trump's Immigration Crackdown Disrupts Food Supplies
In June 2025, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) intensified its measures to target “illegal immigrants” in the US under President Donald Trump’s migration crackdown.
Food supply chains are amongst the most heavily impacted, with agriculture, meatpacking and hospitality undergoing a mass exodus of workers.
As a result of these raids, the US is seeing a major disruption in its food supply chains, due to there not being enough workers to meet demand.
An essential workforce
California is seeing a particularly critical disruption to its workforce. A significant proportion of the state is dedicated to agriculture, responsible for a third of the US’ vegetables, and two-thirds of its fruit and nuts.
Bryan Little, Senior Director of Policy Advocacy at The California Farm Bureau says: “We recognise that some workers may feel uncertain right now, and we want to be very clear: California agriculture depends on and values its workforce.”
According to the former Director of the Congressional Budget Office Douglas Holtz-Eakin, roughly 80% of US farm workers were born outside of the US and nearly half of them are undocumented.
This is because agricultural jobs are generally unappealing - they’re seasonal, physically demanding and usually low-paying, so US citizens are less willing to take them.
US President Donald Trump posted to social media: “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.
"We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
Retail shortages at risk
Reports have shown between 25% and 45% of farm workers stopped attending work following the intense ICE raids in California, due to fear of arrest and deportation.
Maureen McGuire, CEO of Ventura County’s Farm Bureau comments: “When our workforce is afraid, fields go unharvested, packing houses fall behind and market supply chains, from local grocery stores to national retailers, are affected.
“This impacts every American who eats.”
One Mexican farm supervisor previously had 300 workers, until one day he had just 80. The ICE raids have instilled mass fear amongst farm workers - another supervisor said he usually has 80 workers in a field, only to be reduced to 17.
These effects are being seen throughout the US–some farms in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas were left completely empty for days. In some regions, up to 75% farm workers did not report for duty.
As a result, farms are seeing large percentages of unharvested crops, with supply drops by up to 20% in some regions.
This then results in processing delays in packinghouses and food processing plants, which are also being hit by the ICE raids.
“If federal immigration enforcement activities continue in this direction, it will become increasingly difficult to produce food, process it and get it onto grocery store shelves,” Bryan continues.
With a decrease in available workers, fresh food goes unharvested, resulting in delayed picking or food waste, resulting in widespread farm revenue losses.
As farms struggle to meet production demands and retailers begin to experience shortages, consumer prices will see a dramatic shift.
An entire food supply chain ripple is taking place, affecting everyone from the farm workers to the consumers.