ADDISON COUNTY — President-elect Donald Trump has made several promises of action he’ll take upon entering office next month. Among those promises — carrying out mass deportations of immigrants living in the United States without legal permission.

According to the Pew Research Center, there were around 11 million people living in the country without legal authorization in 2022. In Vermont, an estimated 1,000 migrant farmworkers — many of them potentially undocumented — work on dairy farms around the state.

So, what would Trump’s mass deportation plans mean for Vermont, a state that relies on migrant farmworkers to play a key role in its agriculture industry? And what would those plans mean for the state’s migrant community?

While it’s unclear to what extent Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportations will ultimately be carried out there’s already a lot of anxiety felt by Vermont’s migrant workers.

“I, and many in my community, feel a lot of fear around the new president that’s been elected,” said Cristian, who came to the United States from Mexico and previously worked on a dairy farm in Addison County. “Lots of people in the community are thinking about ways to isolate themselves, and some people are afraid to even go out to the store.”

Cristian, through an interpreter, spoke of why he came to the United States and why many migrants living around the country have made a similar choice.

“I came here because of the lack of opportunities in my country, especially when it comes to economic reasons, and for the work opportunities that are in this country,” he said. “That’s why thousands of immigrants come into this country; to do the work that can’t be done otherwise, like on farms and other kinds of labor.”

MIGRANT LABOR AND VERMONT FARMS

Many migrant farmworkers come to the United States to find work in the country’s dairy industry. As of 2021, 79% of the milk produced in the United States came from farms that employed immigrant workers, with immigrant workers making up an estimated 51% of all the labor in the country’s dairy industry.

A 2021 study by University of Vermont researcher Bindu Panikkar said immigrant labor is an integral aspect of the state’s dairy industry, particularly as it expands and modernizes. According to the study, there were around 1,000-1,500 Latin American migrant dairy workers in the state in 2016.

Surveys conducted with migrant farmworkers between 2009-2011 found that many of these migrant workers are potentially undocumented, come from Latin American countries such as Mexico, and worked an average of 64 and a half hours per week at $7.75 an hour. That is gross pay of a hair less than $500 per week, though local advocates have noted that today, most migrant farmworkers in Addison County make above that amount.

Asked how Trump’s mass deportation plans could impact the state’s agriculture industry, Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Anson Tebbetts said such disruption would be huge.

“Vermont is like many other states, we rely on foreign labor in every county, whether it’s milking cows or harvesting crops, so any big disruption in labor would be difficult for many families,” he told the Independent.

He emphasized that migrant farmworkers in the state are important and have been a part of our community for years.

“They help support our rural economy and have become important members of our community in every corner of the state,” he said.

Asked about what Vermont could do in responses to plans for mass deportations, Tebbetts said his agency is watching to see what Trump does,  but it’s too early to speculate.

BRIAN KEMP

Brian Kemp is the president of the Champlain Valley Farmer Coalition Board of Directors and manages Mountain Meadows Farm, an organic beef farm in Sudbury. He said while it doesn’t seem as though farmers are too alarmed by Trump’s plans, there’s definitely some concerns.

“I would like to think that the president-elect would really rethink this a lot, not only for agriculture, but a lot of our national labor force now is using migrant labor, and I personally would have concerns on what this could to do the country’s labor force for blue collar jobs,” Kemp said.

He noted that in addition to agriculture, migrant workers contribute to sectors such as construction and hospitality.

Kemp spoke of how mass deportations could impact Addison County and other parts of the state.

“A lot of the larger dairy farms are using this migrant workforce to milk their cows, and the general American public has kind of gotten away from wanting to work on farms, so it would be very, very challenging for these dairy farms to find help very quickly to take over that responsibility on the farm,” he said. “It would have a huge, negative impact on day-to-day operations on most of the larger dairy farms. By that I mean probably farms milking above 200 head, typically most of those farms have some sort of migrant labor on the farm.”

He noted that use of migrant labor is not isolated to Vermont.

“Nationwide is the same scenario,” he said. “Our neighbors to the west; New York, Pennsylvania, I’m sure those farms are utilizing migrant labor, and further west, also.”

Kemp suggested that the federal government could look at altering the H-2A Ag Guest Work Visa Program, which allows some employers in the United States to bring in workers from out of the country in order to fill temporary agricultural jobs.

The dairy industry cannot use that H-2A program because of the year-round nature of dairy production.

“If they maybe adapted that program so it could be year-round, I’d think you’d have a lot of the labor force would go through that program,” he said. “The fruit and veggie growers come into the country in the spring and work their way north, and a lot of times they end up here in Vermont for the apple season, and then they go home.

“I think if that was looked at and maybe redesigned to allow for either overlap or a longer term and (to) be able to have a rotation of employees, I think that could be an answer to some of the solution and alleviate some of the concern of all the undocumented labor,” he continued.

In the meantime, there are limited options for migrant workers like Cristian looking to work on the state’s dairy farms.

“I consider it a political system; that this government could solve it so that we wouldn’t come here as they say ‘illegally,’ but it’s a political system that doesn’t have an end,” Cristian said of immigrants coming to the United States to work in jobs like those on dairy farms.

‘VERY UGLY AND PAINFUL’

Cristian spoke of what it would mean for him and others in the migrant community if Trump’s large-scale deportation plans are carried out.

“It will be very ugly and painful for people, especially as it relates to separation of families,” he said. “Especially for people who recently have crossed because we pay such a large quantity of money to come here — what will those people do if they’re deported back? How will they pay this back?”

Cristian said some people are afraid U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials will go on to farms to try and deport people.

“We’re not only afraid of being deported, we’re also afraid of losing some of our rights,” he said.

For example, when it comes to work, fears about having salaries lowered or having a boss hit you or say you can’t leave the farm and not being able to do anything about it.

Cristian noted that the migrant community feels some security thanks to the efforts of Migrant Justice, a nonprofit whose mission is to “build the voice, capacity, and power of the immigrant farmworker community to organize for economic justice and human rights.”

He said laws that restrict local police in collaborating with immigration agents — such as through fair and impartial policing policies — have also made immigrants feel somewhat safer.

ANSON TEBBETTS

Falko Schilling is the Advocacy Director for the ACLU of Vermont. He said that fair policing policies are one way Vermont municipalities can work to protect migrant communities from mass deportation.

“Municipalities can make it clear that they do not want their law enforcement resources used to help facilitate immigration enforcement and put limits in place on what local police can do,” he said. “One way to do this is to adopt strong, fair and impartial policing polices, something we have already seen from many municipalities across the state.”

The Independent asked what options the state has for protecting migrant communities against any mass deportation efforts carried.

“Helping federal authorities tear apart our communities goes against Vermont values, and mass deportations will not be possible without the cooperation of state and local authorities,” Schilling said.

“One of the most effective things we can do to push back against the deportations promised by the president elect is to limit cooperation and resource sharing between federal authorities and authorities in Vermont. This includes putting in place laws and rules minimizing information sharing and any official cooperative agreements.”

Thelma Gómez, a member of the immigrant farmworker community and leader of Migrant Justice, also highlighted the state’s fair and impartial policing policies when asked how people can support immigrant communities and prepare for any mass deportations.

“We ask community members to show their solidarity with immigrant Vermonters under attack from the Trump administration,” she said in written responses to the Independent translated from Spanish. “Together, we need to maintain Vermont’s Fair and Impartial Policing Policies, to ensure that law enforcement officers in our state do not collaborate with federal agents to arrest and deport farmworkers.”

The Independent asked about Migrant Justice’s efforts to prepare for Trump’s deportation plans and protect immigrant communities in Vermont.

“Migrant Justice has organized the immigrant community in Vermont to resist attacks from immigration agencies, regardless of who is President. We know that these attacks will increase in the coming years and we are preparing to meet the challenge,” she said. “Immigrants in Addison County and around Vermont are going to stay united to defend the rights and protections that we have achieved over the years; we aren’t going back into the shadows.”

“We know that it is not only the immigrant community in Trump’s crosshairs,” Gómez added. “There will be attacks against the human rights of many different communities. We all need to be looking out and showing up for one another. The people united will never be defeated!”

Cristian said one of the best things Americans can to do support the migrant community is to stand with them in solidarity when they are protesting or standing up for their rights.

Even if Trump’s plans for mass deportations are not carried out to the extent promised, Cristian noted the migrant community has already been affected.

“At this point even just hearing that name ‘Donald Trump,’ among the community causes a level of fear and the knowledge that you could be taken without ever being questioned why you were here,” he said.

He added it’s not just undocumented immigrants who are afraid.

“It’s also the children of undocumented folks who might have been born here and are therefore Americans that are also impacted by this,” he said, adding that it’s not just immigrants who are impacted by Trump’s rhetoric, but all groups of people, particularly women.

For example, he said that a lot of migrant mothers who have had children born in the United States are now looking for people who could be responsible for their children if they were deported. Groups in and outside of Addison County, such as Migrant Justice, are working with lawyers to figure out what that process would look like, so that in the instance that there was a mass deportation raid somewhere, Americans could go to those places and take the children involved and later transport them to their parents, avoiding any possibility of children being placed in detention facilities.

Several organizations and community groups around Addison County are working in other ways to support the migrant community, including the local food shelves, the Catholic Migrant Ministries of Addison County, the Open Door Clinic and the Addison Allies Network.

Cristian pointed to another way Americans might be able to provide support should mass deportations take place. He explained that in some cases if immigration agents have someone in custody but are able to figure it out so they are not immediately deported, someone with U.S. citizenship or permanent residency would need to pick that person up from wherever they are in custody.

“People who are willing to do that would be a good thing,” he said.

Cristian also offered a call to action to fellow members of the migrant community.

“No matter where they work or what kind of work they might be doing, they shouldn’t isolate because staying inside will just cause them to lose the few rights that they’ve gained over the last several years, and now is the time to stand up,” he said.