The Immigrant Workers Who Power Our Food System Face Growing Threats

Farm workers labor in the fields south of Bakersfield, in Kern County, California’s breadbasket, on April 9, 2025. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP) (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)

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The hard-working folks who power our food and agriculture systems—as farmers, food packers, processors, hospitality workers, and more—often don’t get the credit, fair payment, nor societal support they deserve.

And this is no accident, especially when these food system workers are immigrants, whether undocumented or documented.

Under the Trump-Vance Administration in the United States, work permits for more than 530,000 immigrants, including hundreds of thousands within the food system, are being terminated. Those people are now facing deportation. For some, a work permit in the U.S. is their escape from humanitarian crises or persecution.

And even when undocumented immigrants remain in the U.S., they’re being demonized in rhetoric and policy here. In July, the Trump-Vance Administration announced they would cut undocumented folks’ access to basic healthcare services at clinics that receive federal funding. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump told a TV news show, in talking about immigrants who work in the food system, that “these people do it naturally.” Comments and actions like these are, frankly, dehumanizing and racist.

Many people consider farm work to be labor that anyone could do, but “that is not true,” says Teresa Romero of United Farm Workers. “Farm workers are professional. They understand what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and how.”

I’m thinking about all of this as we approach Labor Day in the United States, which is Monday, September 1.

Two things are true at the same time. First, our food system would grind to a halt without our immigrant neighbors and friends who work hard to build livelihoods for their families. Immigrants, regardless of documentation status, account for more than three quarters of crop farm workers in the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center via the Minnesota Reformer.

Second—and this should go without saying—when we talk about uplifting the many ways undocumented immigrants contribute to food and farming systems and highlighting how anti-immigrant policies hurt food businesses, we cannot reduce immigrants to being valuable only for their labor. People are people, wherever they were born and wherever they live.

The real conversation we need to be having is bigger than labor and food systems: It’s about our shared humanity.

So I hope we’ll all use Labor Day as an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the invaluable lives of all people, across every stage in the food chain. As we’re seeing in real time, we all rely on one another to nourish ourselves and our families. As a result of these increased deportation efforts, the simple truth is that “you are now going to be left with not enough laborers in the fields to pick up and collect product as it’s coming to harvest,” says Phil Kafarakis, president of IMFA The Food Away From Home Association, which will drive up food costs and environmentally harmful food waste.

“It really has messed up our industry, and our [restaurant] owners are just really suffering because of these policies,” says Michele Corigliano, Executive Director of the Salt Lake Area Restaurant Association in Utah.

Labor Day, and every day, we need to fight for positive forces like unions, fair wages, safe working conditions, and freedom to live without fear of deportation—rights that go beyond the workplace and support all people’s humanity, dignity, livelihoods, and well-being!

“Farm workers are best equipped to address the injustices they face when they have a platform from which to voice their grievances and negotiate their working conditions,” says Baldemar Velasquez, President of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee.

Let’s all find ways to not only honor the contributions immigrants make to our food system but also to step up, protect our neighbors, and advocate for community-focused policymaking that recognizes our shared humanity.