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HOMER, N.Y. – Mike McMahon fears: If one of his undocumented workers gets a ticket, it could lead to an immigration check on his entire farm. If another person is stopped by immigration officers at a roadside checkpoint or in the parking lot of a supermarket, the others may run away. And if its undocumented numbers disappear overnight, there is no one to replace them.
"It keeps me awake at night," said Mr. McMahon, owner of a dairy farm south of Syracuse. "There are people who simply say," Send them all back and build a wall. "But they would face empty shelves at the grocery store if that were to happen."
For a long time, in northern New York state, it is common knowledge that the dairy sector has been able to survive only relying on immigrants without papers for his manpower. Now this region has become a national focal point in the debate over President Trump's crackdown on undocumented immigrants and their role in agriculture.
Tensions so intensified over the last year that Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has called federal agents careless, accusing Immigration and Customs Enforcement of violating farmers' rights to sue undocumented immigrants.
Cuomo was responding to a large-scale raid on a dairy farm, during which a farmer was briefly handcuffed after claiming that ICE agents were mistreating one of his workers. The farmer claimed that ICE had no mandate to enter his farm.
Mr Cuomo is a Democrat, but Republicans who represent northern New York State in Congress have also stood up for farmers.
The pressures here reflect the broader challenges faced by farmers in the country who depend on undocumented workers. Farmers are struggling with a dwindling labor pool, as fewer migrants enter the country illegally and long-term resident migrants become too old to work in the field.
This year, the labor shortage has been compounded by Mr. Trump's difficulties. commercial war and extreme weather conditions, forcing some small farmers to adopt higher value crops, reduce their acreage and consider selling their farms.
At best, the situation in northern New York State is more difficult.
The country's smallest dairy farmers have been among the hardest hit by the reinforcement of immigration legislation, as their workers are subject to tight control by the ICE and the patrol. borders, which are allowed to operate within 100 miles of the border – in this case, with Canada.
Agriculture contributes about $ 37 billion to the New York economy and generates nearly 200,000 jobs.
"We find that immigration enforcement has a huge impact on farm workers on farms," said Mary Jo Dudley, director of the Cornell Farmworker Program. "For many farmers, there is no alternative workforce."
To search for private property such as a farm, ICE needs a warrant that shows the reasons to believe that an undocumented immigrant in particular lives or works there. But if undocumented workers leave the farm to go to a grocery store, they can be approached by ICE agents in a parking lot or at a roadside checkpoint, detained and deported.
Lawyers for undocumented immigrants stated that CIE agents were targeting immigrants indiscriminately in these public spaces. But ICE disputes these claims.
"ICE continues to focus its limited resources first and foremost on those who pose the greatest threat to public security," said ICE spokeswoman Khaalid Walls. "ICE only applies targeted immigration procedures. The agency does not carry out searches or sweeps aimed at foreigners without distinction. "
Proponents of stricter immigration policies have been sensitive to the plight of small farms. But they pointed out that farm dependence on inexpensive and undocumented labor would hamper US agriculture in the long run.
They argue that if immigration enforcement measures could force farms to regroup and mechanize and could be difficult for individual farmers, they would make the industry more competitive globally. .
"The most productive policy response would be subsidized loans to invest in machinery for small farmers, rather than revising the way we import foreign workers and perpetuating the traditional way of doing business with high labor intensity. Work, "said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank favorable to the limitation of immigration.
Dairy farmers face particular challenges because without American workers they have no alternative to migrant workers. The government program that uses temporary temporary workers does this only for seasonal workers, and dairy production is a year-round activity.
In Washington, legislators representing high-density dairy districts have attempted to reform the legal foreign worker program to include dairy workers throughout the year.
But until now, efforts have been in vain. These legislators are trapped between fervent conservatives who are considering a form of amnesty and Democrats who want a more comprehensive immigration reform, which would also deal with the DPA program (Deferred Action for Child Arrivals) and immigrants enjoying a temporary protection status.
"We will have detractors on both sides," said Rep. Chris Collins, a Republican from west New York.
Nevertheless, said Collins, it is urgent to find a solution to keep dairy farms afloat, while the political stalemate around a complete immigration package is long overdue. "There is not one person representing the dairy who does not understand that it is a crisis, a real crisis," he said.
He plans to introduce legislation in the coming weeks that would provide temporary employment permits to farm workers throughout the year in dairies as an alternative.
Deportations have been a concern for farmers and farm workers in New York since the early 2000s, when the sudden application of immigration laws led to a wave of immigration applications on farms of State. After the Obama administration had reduced the number of immigrants granted by ICE to deportation, a sense of security returned to the farming communities of the north of the state, which was broken by the entry into office of Mr. Trump.
"We had heard that things were starting to go wrong, some wineries in the area and many in the Finger Lakes started losing workers. It was almost immediately after Trump came into office that ICE started to harbad people, "said Kelly Raby, owner of a vineyard in Lewiston.
Last fall, Victor Pacheco, a foreman on Ms. Raby's family farm for 23 years, was arrested by ICE agents and deported to Mexico.
Ms. Raby has struggled to find a foreman competent enough to manage her vineyard, where the vines are now sprinkled with a light layer of snow and need a size in the winter. This leaves her uncertain about the future of the family farm and the president, she helped to vote for the job.
"I still agree with Trump in so many ways, but I'm more discreet about it now," Raby said. "I do not want to lose the immigrants who work here and grow our food."
Over the last 50 years, US farms have used two labor forces: migrants who settled in the United States during the migration wave of the 1960s and 1970s; and those who have stayed temporarily, cross the border illegally for each harvest season. But today, permanent migrants who settle are turning 60, fewer and fewer seasonal migrants are coming to the United States, and law enforcement is chasing away the few migrants who have left the country. state.
"Today, you go to work and you do not know if you will come home and find your family," said Eladio Beltran, a Mexican immigrant working in an apple orchard in Albion. He is currently awaiting an eviction procedure after being arrested by state soldiers and placed under the custody of the ICE.
"Being undocumented and living in the state of New York is no longer worth it," he said.
For dairy farmers like Mr. McMahon, even if one of his migrant workers left, this absence had a considerable effect on his 2,300-acre farm. It depends on having enough workers to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They have followed this schedule all year, he said, to make sure that his 800 or so cows are milked three times a day, their calves are fed and all cows are provided with medical care.
"What we really want is a method of getting foreign workers into the law," McMahon said from his farm in Homer, about 30 km south of Syracuse.
Owners of orchards and vineyards, who have the means, have also begun to look to H-2A, the legal foreign worker program that brings agricultural work to the United States for temporary work.
Critics of the program say that employers often exploit workers and risk deportation if they complain of abuse. Farmers complain that it is expensive, complicated and laden with bureaucracy.
"We did not really have a choice, but to use H-2A," said Mark Nicholson of Red Jacket Orchards, who adopted the program last year. "When the system works, it responds to one of our biggest challenges in staying in business: having a reliable source of skilled farm labor. But when it does not work, it leaves us the same risk as before. "
If the issue of undocumented farm workers is not resolved, there will be an impact on the entire supply chain. "There will be long-term consequences for our farms, but also for consumers," said Steve Ammerman, Senior Assistant Director of Public Policy at the New York Farm Bureau.
Without a legal alternative to informal migrant labor, competition between dairy farms for retaining migrant workers is so fierce that farm owners, once known for Underpaid and abused workers are now improving working conditions and wages to encourage employees to stay on their farms, workers said.
Victor Cortez is an immigrant who has been working for 18 years on a dairy farm in western New York. A few years ago, farm owners "did not let us leave the farm," he said, adding, "They would not pay us as much as they promised."
"But the good thing about it now," he said, "is that we are better paid and this farmer is good for me."
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