Over two-thirds of farmworkers are undocumented in the nation’s largest agricultural-producing region.
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In California’s Central Valley, where some of the country’s tightest battles between Republicans and Democrats took place in November, tension over a second Donald Trump administration has only grown with the end of the election season.
As with the rest of the deeply divided nation, America’s breadbasket is grappling with a stark and sometimes contradictory, split-screen post-election. These two dueling realities of how Trump 2.0 will play out in California’s farmlands has a MAGA-friendly agriculture industry rejoicing while its heavily immigrant and Latino workforce fears the worst.
The president-elect’s ardent campaign promises to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” is the source of a mounting insecurity among farmworkers in the state, says Marco Cesar Lizarraga executive director of La Cooperativa Campesina, a nonprofit association of agencies that provides farmworker service programs.
“Right now, the most important thing is the psychological impact that it’s having,” Lizarraga said. “We deal with so many people — and personally, many friends — that are here undocumented, so we have a very close feeling for what they’re feeling, and the fear and uncertainty is humongous.”
Nearly one-third to half of all agricultural workers in the country reside in California.
Of the estimated 850,000 farmworkers in the state, approximately 75% are undocumented, and up to 90% were born in Mexico. The rest are primarily American citizens and temporary workers with legal authorization, and collectively, they make up the backbone of a $60 billion industry.
California is called the nation’s breadbasket for good reason, as it is responsible for much of the produce Americans consume daily. The state grows roughly a third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts, according to UC Merced’s Community and Labor Center, making it the top domestic producer and the world’s fifth-largest producer.
Giovanni Peri, professor of international economics at UC Davis, told CalMatters in November that a loss of undocumented immigrants in the state’s agriculture would “erase 10% of California production” and cost the state “hundreds of billions of dollars.” Other studies of the projected impact of Trump’s deportation plan from the American Immigration Council estimate it would cost at least $300 billion, and the agriculture industry could lose at least one in eight workers.
California’s farmlands are also the state’s Trump strongholds
Despite alarm bells ringing over the deportation plan and a new study warning of billions in losses should Trump ignite a new trade war with China, most of California’s agricultural centers sided with the Republican candidate in November.
Of the top-five producing counties of Fresno, Tulare, Monterey, Kern, and Merced, all but one went to Trump, three with double-digit margins. In the similarly agriculture-heavy Imperial, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Santa Barbara, and Kings counties, Trump also won majorities in all but one, with Monterey and Santa Barbara the only two outliers out of 10.
On its face, it seems like a paradox in which rural areas dependent on immigrant farmworker labor, many with significant Latino populations, voted for Trump. In most of California’s Latino-majority counties, many of them agriculture-dominant, Trump amassed more votes in 2024 than in 2020, though the extent of turnout and registration among eligible Latino voters is not yet clear.
“We are shades of blue and many communities of red,” said Mindy Romero, founder and director of USC’s Center for Inclusive Democracy, and in many rural and conservative swaths of the state, pocketbook issues took priority.
Despite indicators like unemployment numbers, wage increases, and GDP showing a healthy economy, Americans’ perception is far from rosy. Experts have pointed to inflation as a significant source of this malaise, but political jockeying and disinformation also play a role. Regardless, many California voters felt the same dissatisfaction with their finances as the rest of the country going into Nov. 5. A recent survey from the Public Policy Institute of California found that 70% of Californians across political and demographic groups think children will grow up to be worse off financially than their parents.
“People are telling us through surveys that bread-and-butter issues are the most important and tangible. It’s my kids’ immediate future, and the big policy stuff that you’re not sure about, might not be informed on, you’re hearing a lot of conflicting information about, that’s not what you’re going to vote on. It’s the candidate you think is going to help your bottom line.”
Trump and the Republican party campaigned hard on the economy, outperforming Democrats’ attempt to rally votes with the issue, with many voters associating the GOP and Trump policies with financial salvation.
Political bluster or an inevitability?
While a disconnect remains between macroeconomic indicators and everyday Americans’ dinner table finances, a similar gulf of expectation is also playing out post-election in California’s Central Valley.
That is, some say Trump is bluffing on his mass deportation threats, while others take him at his word. Romero says a widespread lack of confidence and trust Americans have in elected officials backdrops the prospect of extensive immigration reforms and plays into a sense of measured disbelief in some of Trump’s most extreme promises.
“I think if people want him to do the deportations, and there are a lot of Americans who do, they will be surprised if it happens,” she said. “I think back in 2016 — I don’t think most Americans believed him when he said he would build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it. But they liked the fact that he wanted to do that, that he was going to try to do it, that he’s gonna make some effort.”
Others, including activists and farmworker advocates, also point to the first Trump administration to make their case, arguing his aggressive family separations and border detentions, ICE raids and immigration ban on several majority-Muslim countries show he’s followed through once before.
“There’s a lot of people that are in this state of disbelief. They think it’s all rhetorical,” Lizarraga said. “History has told us very clearly, yes, they could do it. The methodology might change in the manner it’s done, but deportations in this country have been done before.”
This time, Trump has a GOP-led House and Senate and is tapping immigration hardliners Tom Homan and Stephen Miller to become his “border czar” and Homeland Security adviser, respectively. The pair were the architects behind some of the most controversial immigration actions in the president-elect’s first term, including the zero-tolerance policy that led to the separation of thousands of families at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Experts have suggested that his promise to carry out “mass deportation” of undocumented immigrants could be more feasible with stacked courts and administrators backing him in this presidency.
Lawmakers begin plans to ‘Trump-proof’ California
California Gov. Gavin Newsom opened a special session of the state legislature in early December to prepare for the incoming administration in partnership with a legal strategy led by the state’s Attorney General, Rob Bonta.
The deep-blue state became the leader of the Democratic opposition during Trump’s first term from 2017 to 2020, filing over 120 lawsuits against the administration, passing state measures rebuking its policies and becoming the political face of the “resistance” movement. Many policies were immigration-related, such as its “sanctuary state law” prohibiting state and local resources from being used to assist federal immigration enforcement.
However, with a GOP-led government and more aggressive immigration policies than in 2017, it’s unclear how much the state can step in. Lizarraga is worried about federal funding sources from the Department of Labor could end up on the chopping block, severely restricting resources his organization relies on for training and services to farmworkers.
He says he’s already seeing the effects of a climate of fear over deportation threats, leading some families to leave and return to Mexico, though no reliable data is proving it is a significant trend.
USA TODAY’S Melissa Cruz contributed to this report.
Kathryn Palmer is an elections fellow for USA TODAY. Reach her at [email protected] and follow her on X @KathrynPlmr.
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Publish date : 2024-12-29 20:09:00
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