The consequences of the immigration hardening are already being felt: fruits and vegetables rotting in the fields, restaurants without staff, collapsed hotels and paralyzed constructions.
President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant crackdown is beginning to take its toll on the U.S. economy. Massive raids, targeted deportations and widespread fear are sweeping through agricultural fields, construction sites and factories, crippling sectors that depend almost entirely on immigrant labor.
With his “law and order” rhetoric and a “zero tolerance” policy promoted from the White House, the Republican president has unleashed a climate of persecution and panic in cities, towns and countryside where for decades millions of migrants -many undocumented- have sustained the economy from the shadows.
The consequences of the immigration crackdown are already being harshly felt: fruits and vegetables rotting in the fields, restaurants without staff, hotels collapsing and construction paralyzed.
In the words of farmer Lisa Tate, from Ventura County, California: “If 70% of your labor force doesn’t show up, 70% of your crop is lost. This is not sustainable. The workers are afraid. Farmers, assured ruin.”
The impact, however, is not just rural or isolated. In industrial cities like Pittsburgh, St. Louis or Buffalo, the reduction of the migratory flow has set back the fragile economic dynamism that recent immigrants had helped to revive.
According to Oxford Economics, net immigration fell at an annual rate of just 600,000, a more than one-third-per-year decline from the last months of 2024. This drop is almost exclusively due to the plunge in unauthorized immigration, a direct result of the repressive ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) machine.
Trump himself, despite admitting that the agricultural sectors “are being severely affected,” has defended the raids. “They are not citizens, but they turned out to be great workers,” he said in an ambiguous tone.
More than 75% of the fruits and nuts consumed in the United States are grown in California, where 80% of the agricultural workers are immigrants, and almost half of them are undocumented.
Today, according to testimonies gathered by Reuters: Entire fields are empty, companies that used to employ 300 people now operate with only 80, and authorized workers also fear being arbitrarily detained.
“Today we are more afraid of the migra(ICE) than the heat of the sun,” said a Guatemalan day laborer quoted by U.S. media. “If they catch you, you may never see your family again.”
The Washington Post and Reuters report raids in car washes, meat packing plants, construction sites and even textile workshops. In cities such as Los Angeles, reconstruction work after the wildfires has been slowed by a lack of labor.
The horse racing industry in Louisville, Kentucky, has also been affected. “Scary times,” summed up one local trainer.
Although Trump has promised to punish companies that employ people without papers, the vast majority of the raids have focused on the workers, not their employers. According to the Washington Post, only one company has been formally charged after dozens of raids.
The analysis of Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute is blunt: “This is not an offensive against employers, but a campaign to inflate deportation numbers.”
Economist Bernard Yaros warns that Trump’s policies will cause a 0.25% drop in long-term GDP, rising inflation and structural brakes on productive sectors. “Natives will not replace migrant workers. They do different jobs. Without them, the system collapses.”
Donald Trump’s immigration policy not only criminalizes the workers who feed, build and clean America, it undermines the very foundation of the economic model it claims to protect. Under the banner of “border control,” it hides a class war that attacks the most vulnerable while shielding the interests of big employers.