‘Our staff is scared to come to work’

“What we’re trying to do is find a way to come up with a system of communication. We have three different sites. The minute that ICE is on the premises, how do we navigate that?,” asked Maria Caicedo at the January meeting of the Chester Agricultural Center’s member farms.

In the shadow of raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, farmers and allies nationwide are having talks like these, to make plans if worst comes to worst.

“We haven’t had any of that happen, at least not yet, but there is concern,” said Caicedo, farm store and community relations manager for the Chester Agricultural Center. The daughter of a former sharecropper, Caicedo is an Ecuadorian by birth and a New Yorker by migration.

ICE has been spotted in the nearby Newburgh area, conducting raids before 6 a.m. targeting laborers, reports a local source. There are farmer-owners in danger of being swept up in raids who, out of fear, have not been frequenting their farms.

The uncertainty is pervasive, affecting many farms that have appeared in this column. According to the 2022 National Agricultural Workers Survey, nearly three-quarters of farmworkers are Hispanic, and about two-thirds are noncitizen immigrants.

“This season, I’m scared of ICE showing up at any moment at the farm,” commented a farmer anonymously, on a database compiled by the Hudson Valley chapter of the National Young Farmers Coalition of small farms impacted by the upheaval of federal grants. “Our workers are all immigrants, and most of our local customers are immigrants; I am an immigrant. This season, we’ve lost $42,000 in federal grants, and our staff is scared to come to work. I am scared that 2025 may be our last season.”

The Chester Agricultural Center – a non-profit comprising small farms that are predominantly women- or BIPOC-led – is developing “Know Your Rights” workshops and training for member farms.

The Center is not itself at risk, though it has felt the sting of government grants being canceled or delayed. Federal funding doesn’t comprise a large portion of the Center’s budget, which relies on private funding. Funders like the NoVo Foundation, co-led by Jennifer and Peter Buffet (the youngest son of Warren Buffet), are helping support the Center’s next phase of development involving affordable farmworker housing. That puts the Center in a unique position: to be an ally and source of assistance for underserved farmers.

The Trump administration issued a directive in mid-June ordering ICE regional offices to hold off on raiding agricultural sites, restaurants and hotels, the New York Times reported. At a news conference, President Trump acknowledged the harm being inflicted on farmers by the crackdowns. “Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers, they have worked for them for 20 years... We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have maybe what they’re supposed to have,” he said.

Though frightening, this is not new territory for many farmers.

“Since we were children, we were developing resilient practices — otherwise, you disappear,” said Mildred Alvarado, the Futuro en Ag coordinator at Cornell Small Farms. Alvarado grew up on a small subsistence farm in western Honduras, an experience she said “turned me into a woman of agriculture.”

Many of the farmers Alvarado works with are immigrants with various levels of documentation and little to no English. Many came to the United States – from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil, Kenya, Vietnam or Puerto Rico – because of the difficulties and lack of opportunities in their home countries. Alvarado recounts the stories of farmers she works with who started with absolutely nothing to their names, and now, after 20 years, are earning their living selling organic produce at the market.

It’s been three years since Alvarado began building the Futuro en Ag project with Cornell Small Farms, focused on helping LatinX farmers overcome linguistic, cultural and technical barriers. Their monthly Futuro meetings provide an opportunity for knowledge exchange and resource sharing, and their bespoke programs provide hands-on guidance on everything from building business plans to securing grant funding and land.

Alvarado is grateful that she had a “head start” on this work, building the network over time so that it was in place for this moment of crisis. “People are very creative, innovative. We need to continue fighting, creating a positive model to inspire new generations. Otherwise, the future is going to be worse,” she said.

Immigration crackdowns are going to have a ripple effect, predicted Alvarado, that will eventually hit consumers in the wallet. “This isn’t just going to affect farmers; it will affect supply chain,” she said.

While small family farms depend on family and friends, they also rely heavily on H-2A visas, which allow foreign-born workers to come to the United States to do seasonal farm labor. But as of late spring, many of those visas had not yet arrived, said Alvarado. That means farms are understaffed – another pressure squeezing farmers right now.

For Alvarado, the goal is uplifting all farmers. “Doesn’t matter what race. What size. All deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. This situation is complicated, and we know we have something special to overcome it.”