“The Trump administration’s whiplash approach to immigration enforcement is creating uncertainty all across rural communities,” said Sen. Tina Smith, the Democrat from Minnesota. “Families, farmers and food workers deserve stability, not political stunts that disrupt lives and hurt rural economies.”
Last week, Immigrations and Custom Enforcement agents detained 100 workers at a JBS meatpacking plant outside Omaha. In Worthington, Minn., home to a large pork slaughterhouse owned by JBS, the Brazilian-owned meat giant, residents reported ICE knocking on doors.
Of the 120,448 job openings in 2024, according to a state website, over 18,000 were in food preparations. Fewer than 500 were in farming.
When the HyLife pork plant in Windom, Minn., shuttered two years ago, roughly half of its 1,000-person workforce was on foreign labor visas, including many from the same hometown of Salvatierra, Mexico.
As of 2024, Minnesota has around 4,000 ag workers with H-2A visas, meaning they’re temporarily employed for seasonal work as farmers and ag concerns can’t find enough domestic workers.
H2A visa records in the state show Stevens County, home to mega dairy farms, as the largest recipient of H2A labor.
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