Since our organization, the Family Farm Defenders (FFD), began in the early 1990s, we knew that the fate of food and farm systems around the world are

“No Hate in the Dairy State” – Family Farmers and Farm Workers Unite to Defend Immigrant Rights at WI State Capitol.

Since our organization, the Family Farm Defenders (FFD), began in the early 1990s, we knew that the fate of food and farm systems around the world are inexorably linked to one another. We witnessed how free trade deals uprooted people globally, depressing prices for all farmers thus destroying rural communities worldwide. Visits our members have taken around the world, including to Mali, the European Union, Brazil, and Mexico, among other places, have helped us understand the realities of farmers and farm workers, and how the health of our planet and one another are intricately linked.

This knowledge grounds our strong opposition to the Trump administration’s program of mass deportation. Facts and reporting show that the administration’s claim that they are “going after the worst first,” is a lie. We know that the mass, indiscriminate arrests of migrants, including of farm workers and day laborers, silences workers by terrorizing them. Not to help the country, mass arrests and detention lines the pockets of executives in the private, for-profit immigration detention complex, led by corporations like Geo Group and CoreCivic. Always central to Trump’s racist and dehumanizing rhetoric concerning migrants, his administration’s plans are different this time for their scale and intensity.

Meanwhile, most farm groups also denounce the plan to engage in mass deportations, because they view migrants – particularly farm workers – as critical inputs to their businesses as well as the food processing and distribution industry. We, too, understand that representation. It is a fact that there are more farm workers now than there are farmers (between 2 to 3 million of the former, under 2 million for the latter), and that without these laborers, about half of whom do not have legal authorization to be in the country, US farming would be in dire straits. Accordingly, some organizations promote visa reform, including plans to increase the H2A program, while others seek legal pathways for fish processing workers, and some advocate for undocumented people to receive driver’s licenses so that they can get to work safely.

But we emphasize that farm workers are more than inputs for businesses. Workers are members of our communities who have families and children. We share a common humanity regardless of where we were born, or the color of our skin. As people born in this country, citizens have done nothing to gain that privilege. We have passports that allow us to travel the world, while most others on this planet risk their lives to come here to work in dangerous, poorly-paid jobs just to have a chance of making a better living for themselves and their families. To tell migrants to “do it the right way,” or “like our ancestors did,” simply doesn’t make sense, because most do try to “do it the right way”.

We know the reasons why migrants, many of whom lack legal status, come to the US – global economic shifts and violence that they are not responsible for. The immigrants picking lettuce in California or milking cows in Wisconsin did not sign NAFTA when it came into force in 1994. Still, they felt its impact as their domestic markets were flooded with cheap goods, losing their way of life and ability to farm and feed their communities. To speak of law and order in this context is nonsense; the laws migrants break when they cross the border – many of whom came in the 1990s and 2000s – were passed in the 1950s and 1960s, at a time when migration to the US was virtually nil. The lack of real legal reform since then is the fault of our politicians, not immigrants.

A comparison to the Fugitive Slave law of 1850 is apt – just prior to the civil war, Congress’ passing of this law required that escaped slaves had to be returned to their owners if they made it to free states. As part of the abolition movement, many immigrant farmers and workers, along with local officials, actively resisted federal agents who were kidnapping people in their community. Similarly today, FFD supports the right of private citizens and government officials to NOT cooperate with ICE or other federal entities who are engaged in abusive and violent deportation activities.

Slavery and farm work in the US are not the same, although at times that may be the case. Instead, the larger point is that our laws need to be reformed. The reason people are in the US is not some nefarious plot to commit crimes, but to improve their economic realities. Moreover, the US depended on importing farm labor for over twenty years with the Bracero program (1942-1964). Before that, workers crisscrossed the border freely, as did Indigenous people. With the US’s system’s roots in the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, the H-2 program only really begins with the 1986 Immigration and Reform Control Act when then President Reagan created the H2A program for farm workers. But since its inception, this program has woefully understaffed farms – with just under 400,000 workers coming in 2024. Moreover, this program is rife with abuse, as various farm worker organizations have researched and noted. Farm workers also have their pay determined before arriving, with no rights to form a union or complain about working conditions.

Various legal reforms are possible in this context, including:

  • provide a path to citizenship for undocumented workers

  • reform visa programs and the asylum process to end abuse, and give the right to workers to form unions and collectively bargain over wages and improving work conditions

We also know that migrants crossing borders are not individuals seeking to commit crimes, but instead people trying to escape from a combination of social factors. Accordingly, we:

  • call for ceasefires at places where wars are currently waging, including with ending the use of food as a weapon

  • demand trade deals, global and/or regional, that respect worker and farmer rights, giving people the chance earn a dignified living where they live, rather than being the victims of corporate globalization.

Our organization respects the principles of food sovereignty, which includes striving for dignified work conditions for everyone in agriculture. Our government violates these principles when they terrorize workers with the threat of deportation, family separation or a return to the violence they hope to escape through migration. As our changing government policies show, they do not care either about the dignity of workers or farmers (as their export-first, slapdash agricultural policy makes clear). We will do everything within our power to defend the dignity of both farmers and farm workers.

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