American agriculture has so far been largely insulated from President Trump's aggressive immigration enforcement campaign, but that sense of protection may be wearing thin. In Idaho, one of the nation's most productive dairy states, farmers are watching the ongoing wave of detentions and deportations with growing unease. Many say they already struggled to find enough workers before enforcement ramped up, and they worry their industry could be next.
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. The 500-foot-deep, quarter-mile-wide gorge is a local landmark, and remnants of Evel Knievel's failed 1974 attempt to jump it on a steam-powered rocket can still be spotted in the distance. That stunt helped put Twin Falls on the map decades ago, but today the region is better known for something else: the fertile river plain that has turned it into a national agricultural powerhouse, anchored by Idaho's multi-billion-dollar dairy sector.
That success rests heavily on undocumented immigrant labor, a reality that is an open secret even in deeply Republican Idaho. Naerebout estimates that roughly 90% of the workers at the state's approximately 350 dairies may lack legal status. It is a figure that underscores just how dependent the industry has become on foreign-born workers, and how exposed it would be if immigration authorities turned their attention to farms.
Naerebout pushes back firmly on the argument that these jobs could simply go to out-of-work Americans. He describes the positions as physically demanding and performed outdoors in the elements, conditions that he says hold little appeal for domestic workers. "We're not taking jobs from Americans," he said, pointing instead to a structural labor shortage that has persisted for years.
That shortage is not new. Even before the recent surge in immigration enforcement, farmers across the country reported difficulty filling positions. The tightening labor market has forced many operations to scale back, mechanize where possible, or rely on the same workers year after year. Now, with ICE sweeps continuing across the nation, that fragile arrangement feels increasingly precarious.
So far, farms have largely escaped the president's aggressive crackdown, a dynamic that has given producers a measure of relief. But Naerebout warns that any deliberate enforcement push inside agriculture could carry severe consequences. A concerted effort to detain and deport farmworkers, he says, would seriously undermine the nation's ability to produce food to feed itself.
His concern reflects a broader anxiety spreading through the heartland. Farmers in Idaho and elsewhere are not only worried about losing employees they already have; they are also uncertain about how they would replace them. The pipeline of new workers has been shrinking, and few Americans appear willing to take on the grueling, often low-paid jobs that keep dairies, fields, and packing plants running.
Idaho's dairy industry illustrates the stakes with unusual clarity. The state routinely ranks among the top five in the nation for milk production, and its output feeds a sprawling network of processors and cheese plants. One such facility in Burley, Idaho, stands as a visible reminder of how far the region's milk travels before reaching consumers. Any significant disruption to the workforce would ripple through that supply chain quickly.
The industry's reliance on undocumented labor also creates a political paradox. Idaho is reliably Republican territory, and many farmers there support Trump's broader agenda, including tougher border enforcement. Yet those same farmers depend on the very workers that enforcement targets. That tension has left many producers caught between their politics and their payrolls.
For now, farmers say they are operating in a kind of limbo. They have been spared the worst of the crackdown, but they cannot be sure how long that will last. Every new round of detentions elsewhere raises the question of whether agriculture's exemption is a policy choice or simply a matter of timing and resources.
The implications extend well beyond Idaho. If enforcement were to intensify in agricultural regions, economists and industry groups warn of higher food prices, reduced domestic production, and greater reliance on imports. Dairy in particular is a perishable product with little tolerance for interruption; cows must be milked on a strict schedule regardless of who is available to do the work.
Naerebout and other industry leaders are not asking for blanket immunity. What they want is a workable legal framework that allows their employees to stay and labor legally, a solution that has eluded Congress for years. Until that happens, they say, farms will remain vulnerable to both labor shortages and enforcement actions.
For the dairymen of Twin Falls and the surrounding Snake River plain, the coming months will be a test of whether Washington's immigration push continues to spare the barns and fields, or whether the industry's long-standing reliance on undocumented workers finally draws the attention of federal agents. The answer could shape not only Idaho's economy but the nation's food supply.
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