The Big Deportation Push Could Backfire

Jun 23, 2025

Trump’s disgusting deportation push has slammed into an economic and social reality: Key industries rely heavily on workers living in the U.S. illegally, many of them for decades.

This has been proven over and over again over the last few months.

In Tallahassee, Florida, federal agents swarmed the construction site for a 220-unit student housing development, arresting 100 of the 175 workers, while they were pouring the concrete foundation. Without these workers, much of the concrete work was ruined, and eventually had to be redone.

In early June, federal agents fanned out across California’s vast agricultural area. The raids spread chaos where most of the nation’s vegetables, grapes and delicate fruit, like peaches and strawberries, are starting to be harvested. Growers reported that 30 to 60% of workers stopped reporting to the fields in the days after the raids and warned that without these workers the food would not be picked on time, leading to possible food shortages.

In early June, federal agents raided Glenn Valley Foods in Omaha, Nebraska, arresting 75 workers, roughly half the assembly line. The work ground to a halt … and not just at Glenn Valley Foods. Word of the raid spread so quickly that many workers at other meat processing companies, fearful of additional raids, also walked off their jobs. “Without immigrant workers, there wouldn’t be an industry,” concluded a Glenn Valley Foods executive.

Undocumented immigrants play an important role in the running of the entire U.S. economy. They may account for only about 4.4% of the U.S. workforce. But their share of the workforce in key industries is much higher. More than 40% of all agricultural workers in the U.S. have no legal immigration status, the Agriculture Department has estimated. Goldman Sachs also estimates that 19% of all workers in landscaping services, 16% in meatpacking and 13% in construction are undocumented.

But these employers don’t hire undocumented workers out of the goodness of their heart. They take advantage of the workers’ legal status by paying the workers less, while working them longer and harder.

Once the raids began, and the workers deserted the work sites, industry groups and corporate executives, many of whom are important donors and supporters of Donald Trump, pressured the Trump administration to exempt them from further raids. The Trump administration then did a big flip-flop. At first, Trump relented, posting a message on Truth Social that seemed downright friendly toward the very immigrants he has spent much of his political career demonizing, calling immigrants in the farming and hospitality industries “very good, long-time workers,” in order to entice the workers back to work.

Trump quickly reversed himself and confirmed that the worksite raids would continue. He did so in order to threaten and discipline the working population in the face of much higher prices, and big cuts in social programs and government employment. The administration needs this in order to fund big tax breaks and other giveaways for the big corporations and the rich.

But these attacks could very well backfire, not just on Trump, but the capitalist class which he serves. For by staying away from work, immigrant workers demonstrated not just how vital their work is, but the fact that their vital role in the economy gives them power to fight to defend their own interests.