Last week President Donald Trump sent mixed messages to an agricultural community strained and stressed in the wake of the administration's immigration crackdown. On Thursday, Trump acknowledged the impact of ICE raids on agriculture and the hotel industry, saying an order to address the situation would come “pretty soon,” but a day later the Washington Post reported that no such order was in the works. On Saturday, Reuters reported the Trump administration had directed immigration officials to largely pause raids on farms.
From families broken to rising food prices to reduced access to fresh food and food waste, the ripple effect of ICE raids on agriculture could be far reaching, says Kevin Kelly, CEO of Emerald Packaging, the largest flexible packaging supplier to the leafy greens industry. Based in Union City, Calif., the company has been in the packaging business for 62 years, supplying major produce brands from Taylor Farms to Foxy with packaging for their fresh salads and more.
To learn more from the front lines in California, The Packer spoke with Kelly via Zoom on Friday, June 13.
What's been the impact of recent ICE raids in Southern California across the farms that Emerald Packaging serves and at your company in Northern California?
Kelly: I would suspect, if we're really seeing the kind of reduced production our customers are telling us they're seeing [with] folks losing about half of their farm crews, in some cases, we'll see a turnout in the prices.
Where we've seen it more personally is rumors going through our factory or our community, and people not turning up to work because family members are frightened or family members are on the run. We've had employees who've had family members deported, who've had family members arrested and are somewhere in the deportation process — very often unable to find them — and we lose them.
Our experience is frankly more firsthand in the factory and in the front office, where with such a diverse workforce — we're heavily Asian and Hispanic — we're seeing this push around deportations affect our productivity.
The price report [that comes out with fob pricing on Fridays] will tell no lies. I was just checking the price of a 24-count of iceberg lettuce this morning, but it doesn't seem to have moved much from last week, although the price range of what a box is going for is much wider than normal. So that might indicate some static in the system.
Are the immigrant workers who aren't showing up for work here in the U.S. legally? And if so, are they simply too afraid to come to work?
I think a lot of folks are feeling uncertain and afraid. We've certainly heard that folks aren't turning up to work in the fields, and we've seen it in our facility. And we verify everybody, so we know everybody in our facility is documented and can legally work in the United States. In our case, it's brothers and sisters being deported, and other family members being afraid, and our employees staying home to help their family members move, to take care of them or to take them to see an attorney, that kind of thing.
There's a certain irony here. I know that some of our employees voted for the current administration thinking this wouldn't happen or that only criminals would be targeted, and that's clearly not what's happening. And I don't see it helping a company like ours, where we're talking about a legal workforce that's being impacted by a policy meant to impact criminals.
You mentioned food pricing. What's the potential ripple effect of ICE raids on food pricing and availability?
I think that's what the farmers worry about — the direct line from supply to price. Right now, supply is pretty plentiful and demand is fairly moderate. Life is good for the consumer. It's a little bit hard on the farmer. But this can flip in an instant. It can flip inside a week.
Because if suddenly there's no supply because suddenly no one is turning up to work or you're losing 25%, 30% of your workforce in the fields, it'll turn up overnight and flow through the consumer fairly quickly.
I don't see Kroger able to control pricing if supply gets completely out of whack. If [they] were to lose 30% or 40% of their supply, [prices] would flow through [to the consumer] within seven days, if not sooner. So, we'll definitely be keeping an eye on that.
The government's goals of keeping prices low for consumers and deporting undocumented workers who just happen to be farmworkers ended up having the effect of rising prices, largely not because [they're] deporting people but just because they aren't turning up to work. And that certainly wouldn't seem to be what most of us intended when we thought of a crackdown on undocumented workers who were criminals, part of gangs or were in prison for violent crimes.
The rumor mill is moving even in wealthy communities like Fremont, [Calif.] where a large Indian population exists, and they are worried. They're all here with documents. They're all here legally. Many of them are naturalized citizens, but they're worried and they're worried for their kids. They're worried about being harassed.
If that's the [sentiment] among people with means, [think about] folks like farmworkers, who feel completely vulnerable, who really have no ground to stand on — literally, and imagine their feelings at a moment like this and maybe why they wouldn't turn up to work.
Is there also a food-waste/food-loss piece here as well? If you don't have workers to harvest the food and put it into boxes so it can get to stores, what happens to that food?
It ends up going to waste. You end up just turning over fields or letting fields go. I mean, we know that happens when prices get really low. This would be something entirely different — letting it happen because there's no workforce. So, there would be a great deal of food waste.
You've said that American businesses need to get realistic on immigration issues. What do you mean by that?
The nation's farm labor is half undocumented. The nation's construction labor is half undocumented — they're the electricians, the plumbers, the welders that we all rely on, and now it's suddenly occurring to us that we rely on them?
It's obvious the program that we're embarking on right now is not a realistic program that will allow us to continue to be a productive, low-cost country. We've got to do something about the workers who are here doing the work we need.
And we've talked about a pathway to green card or pathway to citizenship for workers who are here. I think we're inevitably heading back into that conversation. I'm not sure it'll happen in the next year, but we're clearly in need of some conversation.
Farmers have, for years, fought for an expansion of the work visa program, which is an easy, short-term solution; create more spaces, create more visas. Let's get this taken care of right now, and then we can deal with the longer term.
This taking a hammer to an issue that needs fixing, but with screwdrivers and wrenches and a much defter touch, doesn't make sense. Hopefully, as an industry — and I include myself in the produce industry — we're getting a better sense of what's possible and what's needed and what we should be advocating for in Washington.
Sure, there's people we have to deal with who are criminals, and we need to get [them] out [of the country], but that's not the people working in the fields. I don't know many criminals who want to work in fields. It's bending and chopping [lettuce] heads with a machete. It's not too different today than it was 20, 30 years ago, and it is literally backbreaking work. We're lucky we have people who actually want to do it. We should be handing them gold stars, not throwing them out of the country.
If the Trump administration continues its immigration crackdown, what's at stake for agriculture?
I think deeply about that because whatever happens in the fields ends up affecting us. So, we're being very cautious with spending. We were going to buy a new printing press this year, and that's on hold. We're driving our cash up, and we're not spending on anything.
I really do worry about plant crops getting picked and harvests happening. And not just here, but down in Yuma, [Ariz.] [where] this could go on for weeks. We're in June. I know Yuma is October, but my head is already in October. We'll start to see the orders for Yuma coming in in September. So, if this doesn't get resolved within a week, then I think the [situation will] continue to spiral with real, unpredictable consequences.
I do take some comfort in the fact that produce companies are, as we are, coaching all of our managers around this. We have a written standard operating procedure; here's what you do if ICE turns up on the property.
First, they're not allowed on the property, obviously, without a warrant. It has to be a judicial warrant. Most of the farms that ICE turned up at this week demanded a judicial warrant, which they didn't have.
Who advised you on ICE raid protocols and do you recommend that all ag businesses have an ICE raid plan in place?
I have all sorts of plans in place now that five years ago, I never thought I would. COVID plans, this plan, that plan, pandemic plans, and now I have an ICE plan.
We went to our HR attorney said, “OK, what do we do and what should we be telling our managers?” He laid out how to handle an ICE visit, and we put the steps into a proper procedure. Then we trained all 40 managers and supervisors and office people on what to do if ICE knocks on the door or what to do if they show up in the parking lot or what to do if they try to access the factory without going through the front office.
Everybody knows exactly what to do, and we trained everybody. It's written down. It's posted in the factory and in the front office, and I keep a copy on my computer at home and at work.
Walking onto a field is walking onto private property. They're not allowed to be there, and your supervisors in the field should know that, and they should know what to do and whom to call, and those people need to be accessible to get out there and deal with the situation so that you're not asking farmworkers themselves to deal with it.
And one clear thing is: Don't run. Do not run. We've told our employees, I don't care how scared you are, do not do the instinctual thing, which might be to run. You're all here legally, A, and B, we can handle this. Running communicates guilt. So, just stay put and let the company deal with it.