Oxnard, California - Lisa Tate stands at the edge of her strawberry field, her gaze drifting across rows of ripe fruit glistening in the California summer sun - untouched, unharvested, on the verge of decay. "Normally, there would be hundreds of people here today," she says quietly. But since early June, everything has changed. Since Immigration and Customs Enforcement intensified its raids in Ventura County, the majority of the labor force has disappeared. "I estimate 70 percent of the people are gone. And if 70 percent of your pickers are missing, 70 percent of your crop rots - often in a single day." Tate is no newcomer to this business. Her family has been farming in Ventura County for six generations, in a region that produces billions in fruit and vegetables every year - almost entirely hand-picked, mostly by undocumented people. It's an open secret in California that agriculture depends on the quiet labor of hundreds of thousands of immigrants. But now, in the midst of President Donald Trump's renewed deportation offensive, the system is on the verge of collapse.
When you talk to farmworkers - some without legal status - you can feel the fear. One, 54 years old, has lived in the U.S. for 30 years and has a wife and children here. Now he avoids any unnecessary movement outside of work. "When you go to work, you don't know if you'll ever see your family again," he says. Another adds, "We wake up in fear. The sun, the heat - that used to be our biggest problem. Today, it's not coming back." A Mexican supervisor, who wants to remain anonymous, stands at the edge of a field soon to be planted with strawberries. Normally, 300 people would be working here. Today, there are 80. On a neighboring farm, the numbers are even worse: instead of 80 workers, only 17 showed up. Some fields remain entirely empty, others are only partially tended. Many of the missing hands will never be replaced. The consequences are not theoretical. They are visible in the fields, rotting under the sun or simply wasted. Greg Tesch, a farmer in California's Central Valley, puts it plainly: "If you don't harvest the bell peppers within two or three days, they're ruined - sunburned or overripe. We need this labor."
The economic effects extend far beyond California. More than a third of all U.S. vegetables and over three-quarters of the country's fruits and nuts come from the state. In 2023, California's farms generated nearly 60 billion dollars in revenue, according to the Department of Agriculture. But without farmworkers - no matter their passport - the sector simply cannot function. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and a Republican, estimates that around 80 percent of U.S. fieldworkers are foreign-born - nearly half of them undocumented. Their removal, he says, will lead to supply shortages, rising prices, and economic damage. Some aid organizations report that many workers return to the fields after a few days - out of sheer necessity, because they have no other way to survive. But they come back differently. More cautiously. More hidden. Many now send their U.S.-born children to do the shopping to avoid being seen. Others stop driving and rely on relatives with legal status to get to work. Some give up entirely. Donald Trump himself admitted in early June on his Truth Social platform that ICE raids had removed "very good, long-time workers" from agriculture and the hospitality industry - "jobs that are almost impossible to replace." In a later press statement, he said, "Our farmers are suffering. They have very good people. They're not citizens, but they've turned out to be great." So far, no political consequence has followed. A promised executive order to mitigate the effects has yet to materialize. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly nonetheless defended the president’s position: "He will continue to strengthen agriculture and boost exports - while keeping his promises to enforce immigration laws." The impact of the measures goes far beyond those directly affected. "Even people with papers don’t feel safe when they hear ICE," says Greg Tesch. "Everyone knows our neighborhoods are a mix - with and without documents. That uncertainty is everywhere." Economist Bernard Yaros of Oxford Economics agrees: American citizens are not filling these jobs. "Natives work in entirely different professions. This gap will not be closed." California's agriculture has long been a balancing act between economic necessity and legal grey zones. Now, the safety net is about to tear. "If this continues, a lot of farms will go bankrupt," says Lisa Tate. "And then? Then there won’t be any local strawberries left. Then they’ll come from Mexico. Ironically, picked by the same hands - just on the other side of the border."
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