American agriculture has so far been largely insulated from President Trump's aggressive immigration enforcement campaign, but that sense of protection is wearing thin among farmers in Idaho, where the dairy industry depends heavily on undocumented workers.
Rick Naerebout, chief executive of the Idaho Dairymen's Association, works from an office in Twin Falls with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Snake River Canyon, a 500-foot-deep gorge that first put the area on the map in 1974 when stunt motorcyclist Evel Knievel tried — and failed — to leap it on a steam-powered rocket. These days, the region is better known as an agricultural powerhouse, anchored by a dairy sector worth billions of dollars to the state.
It is also, as Naerebout acknowledges, an open secret even in deeply Republican Idaho that the farms driving that economy rely on immigrant labor. He estimates that roughly 90% of the workers at the state's approximately 350 dairies may lack legal status.
Naerebout pushes back on the argument that these operations are taking jobs from American citizens. The work, he says, is physically demanding and takes place outdoors in harsh conditions, making it unattractive to domestic workers. The jobs simply do not appeal to Americans, he argues.
That reliance on undocumented labor has become a source of growing anxiety as Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps continue across the country. Farms have largely escaped the president's crackdown so far, but producers in Idaho and throughout the heartland are uneasy, particularly because many were already struggling to find enough workers even before the recent wave of detentions and deportations.
Naerebout warns that if enforcement efforts were deliberately aimed at agriculture, the consequences could be severe. A concerted campaign of raids and arrests on farms, he says, would seriously undermine the nation's ability to produce food for its own population.
Idaho routinely ranks among the top five states in the nation for milk production, a status built on the fertile river plain surrounding Twin Falls and the broader agricultural infrastructure that has grown up around it, including processing facilities such as a cheese plant in Burley. The state's dairy industry is valued in the billions of dollars.
The tension in Idaho reflects a broader national dilemma. The Trump administration's immigration push has focused heavily on urban areas and workplaces outside agriculture, leaving farms in a kind of uneasy limbo. Farmers know their operations have not been targeted so far, but they also know that could change at any moment as enforcement priorities shift.
The workforce problem predates the current crackdown. Even before the recent escalation in detentions and deportations, many farms across the country reported difficulty filling positions. The physical nature of dairy work — early hours, heavy lifting, exposure to the elements — has long made it hard to attract American workers, even when wages are competitive.
For dairy operations in particular, the stakes are high because the work cannot be paused or outsourced. Cows must be milked daily, and animals require constant care. A sudden loss of labor would not simply slow production; it would disrupt a supply chain that feeds millions of Americans.
Naerebout's estimate that nine in ten dairy workers may be undocumented underscores how deeply the industry depends on immigrant labor and how vulnerable it would be to a change in enforcement policy. It also highlights the political sensitivity of the issue in a state that is reliably Republican and generally supportive of the president's broader immigration agenda.
Farmers are not asking for blanket amnesty or sweeping immigration reform, according to the concerns voiced by industry representatives. What they want, at minimum, is predictability — an assurance that their workforce will not be swept up in enforcement actions that would cripple their businesses and, by extension, the nation's food supply.
The tension between enforcement priorities and agricultural reality has no easy resolution. The administration has emphasized cracking down on illegal immigration, while farming interests argue that the food supply depends on workers who are already embedded in rural communities and essential to daily operations.
For now, Idaho's dairymen are watching and waiting, hoping that the relative calm they have enjoyed continues. But as ICE sweeps persist nationwide, the fear is that agriculture's exemption — whether formal or de facto — may not hold, leaving an industry that already cannot find enough workers facing an even deeper labor crisis.
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