Northern Maine farmers do not think that threats of workplace immigration raids will affect County farms employing a mostly seasonal migrant workforce for planting, harvesting and packing crops like potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower.
But there is no local workforce and in a worse case scenario, there would be no one to work at County farms if President-elect Donald Trump expands immigration crackdowns.
“I feel like everyone is holding their breath. It is a hard time to know what is coming our way and the specifics behind it,” said Amelia Lyons Rukema, CEO of the Maine Mobile Health Program, which works with the state’s farmworkers and is partnered with the national advocacy group FarmworkerJustice, Inc.
Farmworker trends are always unpredictable, affected by immigration, climate change, the need for workers and crop production, Rukema said. The Trump administration’s potential immigration policy changes add another variable to the mix.
Many Aroostook farms rely heavily on the federal H-2A agricultural guestworker visa program for staffing because there are no local workers. Issued through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the embassy of the country the workers are coming from, H-2A agricultural workers are in the U.S. legally for the period requested by the employer to cover their season, said Jessica Picard, a spokesperson for the Maine Department of Labor.
This fall, six area farms listed 53 seasonal openings at $17 or more per hour through the H-2A visa program. Nationally, there were 310,676 H-2A visas this year.
Most of Trump’s rhetoric has focused on removing immigrants lacking permanent legal status from the country. And while local farmers feel that the H-2A visa program is secure, some policy analysts warn of stricter approval thresholds for those applications under Project 2025 guidelines, which some believe is the blueprint for Trump’s second term.
Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, a 900-page Heritage Foundation conservative manifesto designed to overhaul the U.S. government. Nonetheless, Tom Homan, the recently appointed border czar, is listed as a contributor to the plan while a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Other recent Trump nominees — John Ratcliffe for CIA director and Brendan Carr for the Federal Communications Commission — have also contributed to the plan, according to the Washington Post.
Proposed immigration changes to the H-2A program in the Project 2025 blueprint include not updating the designated country list, which identifies the countries eligible for H-2A visas, as well as capping and phasing out H-2A visas, effectively crippling the program.
Without the designated country list, the legal standard for obtaining an H-2A visa would be much higher, leading to potential delays and barriers in receiving the workers needed, said Cecilia Esterline, senior immigration policy analyst for the Niskanen Center, a Washington D.C.-based think tank.
“Harvest seasons could be impacted by untimely staff shortages, and ultimately, American consumers may end up paying the price at the grocery store,” she said.
Historically, the list has been changed or updated annually based on threats or relationships with other nations. The 2024 list expired earlier this month and has not yet been updated.
Gov. Janet Mills is monitoring the President-elect’s plans, but at this time, the State of Maine has not received any communication from the incoming administration, according to Scott Ogden, a spokesperson for the governor.
“If the Trump Administration advances a specific plan or directive involving State of Maine assets or resources, the Governor will review it, assess its impacts on Maine people, and make a decision that she believes is in the best interest of the state and our people,” Ogden said.
Jamison Hagan of Hagan Farm in Houlton does not think the H-2A agricultural guestworker visa program will be curtailed by the incoming Trump Administration. In a worst-case scenario, if it is changed, he said there would be no workers.
“Every one of the jobs is advertised in the United States, they are all advertised and no one from the U.S. applies,” he said.
Currently, Hagan employs 11 H-2A workers, 10 from Mexico and one from South Africa. Some have been working for him for six years and have the long-term experience that does not exist in The County, he said.
Tara Smith of Smith’s Family Farm in Presque Isle said she is not at all concerned about the incoming administration touching the agricultural visa program.
“The people we employ on the farm are here in the U.S. legally on H-2A visas and there is no danger of having them deported,” Smith said.
The farm needs workers but they must be legal, she said, adding that the H-2A is expensive and challenging to administer, but it is the farm’s only option for legal migrant workers.
Farms using workers with temporary ag visas must pay for visa costs determined by the country of worker origin, with application fees that are more than $200. They must also complete a detailed contract for each position that guarantees housing, meals or a kitchen and transportation, and pay a federally determined salary for the exact length of time for the contract.
The process takes months, Smith said.
There are misconceptions about harvest labor, she added. It is not manual labor that just anybody can walk in and do. The workers farms hire are skilled produce workers, she said.
“We 100 percent love the people who come to work with us and our family, some have been coming for decades,” Smith said. “We know these people, they know us and we provide housing and transportation to and from work.”
Although Smith said the farm’s workers are not afraid of government deportations because they are here legally, the threat has created an element of fear for some farmworkers and farm families, said Portland-based Becca Young, director of programs for FarmWorker Justice.
Maine immigrant farmworkers fall into many categories, including H-2A visa holders, workers with or without permission to be in the country, and settled families that have been here for many years, according to Young. Nationally, the majority, 77 percent, of farmworkers are Latino and 44 percent are undocumented, she said.
The U.S. Department of Labor does not have immigrant labor numbers for Maine, said James Lally, a regional spokesperson.
While Young said she is not sure what the new administration’s vision for the H-2A program will be, the possibility of mass deportation is already causing psychological trauma among the communities FarmWorker Justice serves.
“These communities are living in fear of what might or might not happen, but that threat is out there,” she said.
Some farmworker communities are already mobilizing and gathering information about what to do, Young said.
“They need to have plans in place if they get forcibly detained,” she said. “These families already are feeling very palpable waves of fear around this issue.”
Attempts to reach migrant farmworkers were unsuccessful.
If there are mass deportations or significant changes to the H-2A, there are no other workers and there will be no one to harvest the fruits and vegetables, Rukema said.
“Without farmworkers there is no food,” she said. “Unless you live off the grid and harvest all your food, we are all reliant on farmworkers around the country.”
