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While the recent $100,000 fee for H1-B visas under the Trump administration has garnered significant media attention due to its potential implications for the tech and healthcare sectors, another policy shift regarding agricultural guest workers reveals the broader aims of the administration’s immigration reforms.
As predicted, after reforms targeted humanitarian parole, temporary protected status, and other immigrant workers, the administration is now loosening regulations for H2-A “guest workers,” a program often described as “close to slavery.”
Back in July, the administration introduced strict in-person interview requirements for various visa categories. Yet, just two months later, these requirements are being relaxed for agricultural guest workers. This could easily be seen as a recognition of past mistakes, especially given complaints about crops left to rot due to labor shortages. However, it’s more plausible this move aligns with the administration’s broader strategy—a point highlighted by warnings from workers about labor needs.
Could H2-B workers—those laboring in non-agricultural sectors that Trump’s enterprises depend on—soon follow this trend? It seems increasingly likely.
To grasp the administration’s expansive workforce management strategy, it is vital to examine whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) targets for deportation versus those who are welcomed into the U.S.
Identifying the Targeted Immigrant Workforce
According to estimates, roughly 40% of U.S. farmworkers are undocumented. Here’s a breakdown of the situation:
As of 2020, over 406,000 individuals held Temporary Protected Status (TPS), allowing them to live and work legally in the U.S. due to unsafe conditions in their home countries, often exacerbated by U.S. military interventions.
Additionally, the related humanitarian parole program included more than 530,000 participants. Research from FERN indicates:
Another 1.7 million individuals are employed in food processing facilities, with a significant portion being refugees. Approximately 19% work without authorization. In the meatpacking industry, it is estimated that 45% of workers are immigrants, with around 23% lacking legal status.
While the administration tightens its grip on unauthorized workers, it is also making moves to eliminate TPS and humanitarian parole. Trump has enacted a temporary halt on all refugee resettlement programs, save for white South African “refugees.” The Department of Homeland Security has also removed Afghanistan and Venezuela from the TPS list, along with plans to potentially eliminate Haiti from the program. This leaves over 9,000 Afghans, 300,000 Venezuelans, and 200,000 Haitians at risk of legal deportation.
Many TPS holders are concentrated in the meatpacking industry, with approximately 15,600 involved in agriculture or food processing. The United Food and Commercial Workers union warned months ago that deportations or threats thereof could result in food shortages and rising prices, although other factors are also contributing to the crisis (as noted here).
Increased enforcement by ICE has instilled fear among immigrants, legal or otherwise, causing many to avoid the workplace after the Supreme Court permitted ICE to racially profile.
For instance, many workers at a meat processing plant in Beardstown, Illinois, were legally residing in the U.S. under humanitarian parole, yet the Trump administration stripped them of their status.
Initially, the administration claimed it would focus on deporting individuals with criminal records instead of conducting mass workplace raids. However, it became clear that this strategy could not meet the ambitious goal of one million deportations by the year’s end.
Consequently, food production facilities became prime targets. While these raids primarily focus on unauthorized immigrants, they nonetheless disrupt the nation’s food supply chain.
A System Designed to Fail
The administration’s strategy not only aims to remove workers who have established lives in the U.S.—many fighting for better labor conditions through unionization—but also to eliminate so-called “loafers” from the system. This circular narrative presupposes that Americans would flock to farm and slaughterhouse jobs, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Here’s what Scott Morgenstern, a political science professor at the University of Pittsburgh, observed:
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has predicted an influx of U.S. citizens ready to fill farm jobs as a result of the new Medicaid work requirements included in the same legislative package as immigration enforcement funding.
However, farm industry groups have labeled this scenario as unrealistic. Most adults enrolled in Medicaid who are capable of working are already employed, while many others cannot work due to disabilities or caregiving responsibilities.
Few Medicaid recipients live in proximity to farms, and even those who do may find farm labor too strenuous. Previous attempts to place welfare recipients in agricultural roles in the 1990s failed miserably, as did a similar 1960s initiative that deployed teenagers to handle farmwork.
What remains clear is that the administration is not focusing on wage increases or better working conditions. Accordingly, federal data indicates a 7% decline in the workforce within agriculture between March and July—representing around 155,000 workers.
In response to these dynamics, the Trump administration has shifted its attention to H2-A guest workers.
In June, the U.S. Department of Labor established the Office of Immigration Policy, which aims to serve as a “one-stop shop” for employers to meet their labor needs.
Then, on September 18, the State Department announced that H2-A visa holders now have exemptions from in-person interviews for visa renewals within 12 months of their old visa expiring. It wouldn’t be surprising if H2-B workers are next to benefit from similar leniency, especially given the existing labor shortages in slaughterhouses—a situation that conveniently benefits employers like Trump, who utilizes guest workers at his establishments.
Industry advocates have praised the recent H2-A adjustments and are requesting additional measures, particularly longer work permit durations, which are still closely tied to individual employers and grant them substantial control over these workers.
What we are witnessing is a trade-off between people and exploitative labor. In the tech sector, while the AI bubble creates a storm, it also facilitates the replacement of laid-off workers with cheaper H1-B alternatives, as seen with Amazon’s practices.
In agriculture and service industries, the government is actively removing immigrants and refugees who are perceived as less exploitable, replacing them with H2-A and H2-B workers.
The Allure of Guest Workers for Capital
A significant distinction between H-2B and H-2A workers and those under Temporary Protected Status or humanitarian parole is that the latter categories do not tie individuals’ legal status to their employment. This lack of dependency makes them less susceptible to exploitation, as they can freely change jobs and unionize—likely a primary reason why they are being targeted for deportation.
Trump has hinted that unauthorized immigrants and refugees who have built lives in the U.S. might be able to return legally, yet specifics remain scarce, leading many to speculate about his true intentions.
Edgar Franks, the political director of Familias Unidas, effectively summarized the situation back in April, a sentiment echoed by unions like the AFL-CIO’s Department of People Who Work for a Living:
The goal appears to be silencing union organizing efforts, deporting as many individuals as possible, and importing a captive workforce through the H-2A program. This strategy aims to eliminate immigrant workers who are challenging oppressive conditions while replacing them with a labor pool devoid of rights.
Franks’ predictions are increasingly being validated. Many instances demonstrate that ICE and the administration are specifically targeting unauthorized or refugee workers who are involved in union activities. Here are some examples:
- A farm in upstate New York experienced both a May and August raid while the United Farm Workers labor union was organizing there, resulting in the detention of 14 workers, 10 of whom were ultimately deported.
The United Farm Workers union condemned these raids, arguing they are colluding with employers to undermine legal protections for workers with labor contracts.
- The administration terminated work authorizations for 200 union members at GE Appliances-Haier in Louisville, Kentucky.
- The administration revoked the visas of several members of the Graduate Workers Coalition at Indiana University.
- Amidst the controversy surrounding the deportation of Abrego Garcia—a man sent back to a notorious prison in El Salvador—it is noteworthy that he previously worked under the Sheet Metal Air Rail & Transportation Local 100 union.
- In March, ICE agents forcefully detained Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez, who, as a former guest worker, ended up founding Familias Unidas Por La Justicia, advocating for farmworker rights.
By 2024, there were around 384,900 H2-A and 215,217 H2-B workers in the U.S., with these numbers steadily increasing, particularly over the last decade, where the growth has surpassed fivefold since 2010.
Given the administration’s recent actions, these numbers could rise even further.
Theoretically, H-2A visa workers are meant to receive decent wages and provisions for housing. However, enforcement typically falls short, leaving these workers vulnerable to their employers’ whims.
Characterized as indentured servants, these workers are favored by Trump and many employers. Even agencies like the Departments of Labor and Homeland Security acknowledge that H-2B workers experience significant barriers to reporting abuse.
The Food & Environment Reporting Network elaborates:
…these visas often lead to the exploitation of foreign workers as they create a workforce that lacks independence. Unlike other immigrant categories—like TPS recipients—H-2 workers are tied to specific job sponsors, making it challenging for them to seek new employment even in poor conditions. If they resign, they face immediate deportation, which could threaten their and their families’ livelihoods.
H-2A workers also faced significant setbacks in their organizing efforts after a District Court Judge issued an injunction last year that barred unionization in 17 states. Furthermore, the program is plagued by labor trafficking, wage theft, and threats of retaliation are rampant, making it exceedingly difficult for workers to leave abusive situations. Mike Rios from the Department of Labor even characterized the H2 program as the “literal purchase of humans.”
However, it is not only the guest workers who bear the burden.
Consequences for All Workers
The guest worker model may serve individual employers well, but it extracts a toll on American society as a whole. From Investigate Midwest:
Undocumented immigrants contributed $100 billion in taxes in 2022, despite not receiving benefits like Social Security or Medicare. They bolster local economies as part of their communities, while temporary visa workers typically send most of their earnings back to their home countries.
This arrangement negatively impacts all workers, including American citizens who were meant to take the place of immigrants and refugees. The Food & Environment Reporting Network:
Employers often prefer to hire H-2 workers due to their lack of bargaining power, disenfranchising the very American labor force that Trump and Miller claim to protect. Legally, employers must demonstrate an inability to recruit American workers before hiring H-2 employees, yet many circumvent this requirement through visa fraud.
For long-term U.S. residents and workers, the unresolved immigration debate underscores their uncertain future. As highlighted by Michael Macher:
…the U.S. immigration system operates on selective nonenforcement of existing laws. Employers have depended on this framework to exploit undocumented labor while wielding the threat of deportation to tighten their control over all workers.
Trump’s current approach has the potential to upend this existing order, shifting the balance of power back to employers at a time when labor is already weakened by decades of setbacks in the class struggle.
Moreover, essential labor protections, such as those from the National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Labor, are being further undermined, culminating in a wider offensive against the interests of the working class through Trump’s national security directive that labels certain beliefs—including anti-capitalism—as “terrorism indicators.”
This development implies that any worker or union efforts to oppose conditions—like “illegal” strikes—could face severe consequences, treated as threats to the state.
Public sector unions are increasingly retreating, while immigrant workers—who often belong to communities and unions—are being displaced by a workforce lacking rights and often living in deplorable conditions.
Trump, in this context, plays the role of an accelerant to these degrading reforms:
The Biden administration had made strides in calculating H-2A wage rates, resulting in higher wages for some workers this year. Numerous agricultural groups are calling on Trump to reverse this change and extend the H-2A program to cover year-round positions, especially in dairy and livestock.
During Trump’s first term, the temporary work visa programs expanded by a total of 13 percent. He even used the COVID-19 pandemic to advance this agenda:
Throughout the pandemic, the administration introduced a series of measures that made H-2A and H-2B visas more employer-friendly, allowing foreign workers to remain longer and effectively freezing H-2A wages given their “essential” status.
Trump 2.0 is leveraging a crisis of his own making to bolster the guest worker program and attack labor interests. Instead of focusing on increased wages and improved working conditions to attract American workers, we are witnessing a surge in guest workers that will further depress wages and diminish worker rights. The state of labor—which has been in decline for decades—now faces additional challenges fueled by these policies.
The landscape for workers mirrors the immigrant experience, highlighting how all laborers must navigate precarious working conditions, accept minimal pay, and endure potential deportation or homelessness. Meanwhile, organized resistance faces further hurdles, especially with anti-capitalist sentiments now being categorized as terrorism.
