Without workers in the fields, food price will weigh on the American plate

Trump immigration plans cause fear in Ice’s operations, can paralyze the agricultural sector in California, leave empty fields and threaten food supply

Ice’s most intense fear of operations (immigration and customs control) is already negatively affecting the country’s agricultural sector, generating concerns that food prices can shoot in the near future as a result of Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies.

According to The New Republic in Bakersfield, California, there was a massive drop in the number of rural workers who attended work on Tuesday, while ICE agents in Chevy Suburban vehicles without identification had immigrants in the region, aiming at individuals who believed to be Rural workers reported Calmatters. The end result: hectares of oranges not harvested under the California sun at the height of the season.

Bakersfield represents a small part of California’s central valley, which produces approximately one quarter of the country’s food. KERN County, where Bakersfield is located, is among the top three US agricultural counties in recent years, largely thanks to the work of undocumented labor, which is estimated to compose more than half of the county’s workforce, According to Calmatters.

Indocumented workers have been targeted when entering and leaving gas stations, having breakfast, at home depot stores or while driving on the 99 highway, leaving many without an option but to stay at home.

“We are in the middle of the citrus harvest,” Casey Creamer, president of the California Citrus mutual industry group, told Calmatters. “This caused shockwaves throughout the community. People are not going to work and children are not going to school. Yesterday, about 25% of the workforce did not attend; Today, 75% did not appear. ”

Losing much of the US agricultural workforce overnight is a recipe for “absolute economic devastation,” according to Richard S. Gearhart, associate professor of economics at Cal State-Bakersfield, who talked to the news organization profitable.

“We are talking about a recessive level event if this becomes the new long -term standard,” said Gearhart, arguing that the end result of Trump’s policies will be felt in supermarket lines across the country.

The 47th president effectively promised a total repression of immigration over the next four years, including attacking citizenship by birth and sorting ICE high -profile operations across the country against undocumented immigrants.

But just two days after the beginning of the administration, it seems that anti-immigration efforts will be a kind of “all-voucher.” On Tuesday, the internal security department announced that it would revoke an Obama era directive, suddenly allowing the immigration agency to hold people in sensitive places such as hospitals, places of worship, courts, funerals and weddings.

“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in the schools and churches of America to avoid prison,” said an agency spokesman in a statement. “The Trump administration will not tie the hands of our angry law application, but will trust them to use common sense.”