Some dairy farmers worry that President Donald Trump’s immigration policies may be bad for business.
As KUT reports, immigrant labor is vital to many Texas farms and ranches, which have found themselves trying to determine how changes to immigration policy will impact their businesses and also how to deal with it when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shows up at their farms to check employment records.
Tiffany Lashmet, an agriculture law specialist for Texas A&M’s AgriLife Extension Service, said dairy farmers and others in the agriculture industry are concerned about a labor shortage.
Darren Turley, executive director of the Texas Association of Dairymen said ICE has been “looking at some dairies and looking at their employees” and that the association is “kind of in the middle of that right now.”
He said a lot of dairy farms rely on immigrant labor but that staying on top of their immigration statuses can be difficult.
“If I’m getting the right social security number and things like that, there’s no way for me to check that out," he said.
