As President Donald Trump’s administration pursues mass deportations across the country, Antonio, an undocumented farmworker in Cumberland County, New Jersey, faces an agonizing decision:
Which of his children will he and his wife choose to never see again?
“There are rumors that ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is coming to our doors,” said Antonio, 48, a farmer from Mexico who migrated to South Jersey with his wife 21 years ago. “Right now, I must get the children ready if we’re deported.”
Antonio’s four children, ages 20, 16, 15 and 13, are U.S. citizens, born in New Jersey. Speaking Spanish through a translator, he asked that only his first name be used to protect himself from deportation.
Triggering anxiety
While no undocumented New Jersey farmworkers are known to have been detained by ICE, videos of raids in Philadelphia, New York, Chicago and other cities are sparking fear among South Jersey field hands, many of whom have lived in the area without legal status for decades. The prospect of mass deportations is also unsettling to farmers, who worry that a shrinking labor force could devastate the growing season, causing economic turmoil.
Right now, though, picking vegetables isn’t Antonio’s main concern.
“We want to get paperwork ready so the older ones can stay,” he said, possibly with another family, and build their lives here. But should ICE come knocking, he and his wife believe they’ll take their 13-year-old back to Mexico with them.
“I came to make a better life for my family,” Antonio said, adding that he never thought that journey would end with him possibly saying “goodbye to three of my children.”
‘People guarding their lives’
When Trump accepted the Republican nomination last year, he promised to launch “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” The first weeks of his presidency have been marked by aggressive immigration enforcement.
Many Americans appear to support the policy. A January poll by Ipsos and The New York Times found that 63% favor removing undocumented immigrants who entered the country in the last four years, while 55% support deporting all those without legal status.
Among undocumented farmworkers, however, fear is rampant.
“People are jittery – talking so fast, crying, losing sleep, keeping kids out of school,” said Meghan Hurley, policy and advocacy organizer for CATA, a nonprofit aiding farmworkers and Latino immigrants in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Some immigrant farmworkers are obtaining passports for their children. Others are securing power of attorney documents so friends or relatives can care for their kids if they are deported, said Adam Solow, a Collingswood, New Jersey, immigration attorney.
“There’s also been an uptick in marriages” between undocumented immigrants and New Jersey citizens, he added, as a green card is a path to legal residency.
“People are doing whatever they can to protect the lives they built,” Solow said.
David, an 80-year-old farmworker who picks beets, cabbage and zucchini in Camden County during the summer, tries to avoid ICE by keeping a low profile. Speaking through a Spanish translator, he requested that his last name not be used.
To stay safe, David, who has lived alone in New Jersey since leaving a teaching job in Mexico 30 years ago, limits his movements.
“Before Trump took office, I would run errands, go to the post office or the dollar store,” he said. Now, he ventures out only at night.
“The first time, Trump wasn’t as bad. But this is the worst it’s been. I live in fear because it would be very hard to return to Mexico, which I don’t know anymore. And I’d be sad to leave my friends. They’re my family.”
Lori Talbot, a retired family practice doctor in Bridgeton, Cumberland County, who has treated undocumented farmworkers in South Jersey for 35 years, said they are “so woven into local farming, the economy down here can’t survive without them. And harvest would be a mess of unpicked crops.”
“Farmers have to stand up to this deportation idiocy, or they’ll be in deep trouble,” she added.
Laying low
Around 495,000 undocumented immigrants live in New Jersey, according to research conducted last week by the Center for Migration Studies, a New York think tank.
Most undocumented immigrants in New Jersey come from Mexico and Central America, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based nonpartisan think tank. The majority live in the region year-round, advocates said.
Nationally, about 42% of the estimated 2.4 million people working on farms are “unauthorized immigrants,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Economic Policy Institute.
Local advocates believe that number is too low. In South Jersey, as many as 70% of farmworkers are undocumented, according to Hurley of CATA.
Undocumented immigrants in New Jersey paid $1.3 billion in state and local taxes in 2022, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
Many farmworkers live on farms during the growing season, while others travel from Camden, said Gabily Gonzalez, founder of Cerrando La Brecha, a South Jersey nonprofit assisting migrants and refugees.
But now, many Camden commuters are staying home. “Everyone’s afraid to go to farms to work,” Gonzalez said.
Others have year-round jobs in greenhouses at commercial nurseries, advocates said.
Cumberland County has several large facilities producing the “lion’s share” of the state’s plants and flowers sold in big-box stores, said Timothy Waller, an agriculture and natural resources county agent at the Rutgers University Cooperative Extension of Cumberland County.
‘Possibility of spoilage’
At last week’s Vegetable Growers Association of New Jersey convention in Atlantic City, much discussion focused on corn tar spot and disease control in eggplants.
But in quiet corners, farmers expressed concerns about deportation.
“There’s genuine concern over this,” said Bruce Phillips, food safety manager at a cranberry operation in Pemberton, Burlington County.
Without enough workers in the cranberry bogs, harvesting could take too long, he said, creating “a looming possibility of spoilage.”
And don’t expect U.S.-born kids to step in, said Harvey Ort, a vegetable farmer from Long Valley, Morris County.
“U.S. kids do not want to sweat in a tomato field,” he said. “Ever.”
A Salem County farmer, who requested anonymity to protect his four undocumented farm managers of 20 years, praised their dedication. “They work year-round and are so good at everything.”
Beyond work, he said, “My kids went to school with their kids. If something happened to my wife, she’d call one of those men’s wives to watch our children before anyone else.”
The farmer pays inexperienced workers $17.92 an hour; managers earn $23. “They make life-changing money,” he said. “Where they’re from, they got $12 a day.
“One of the guys came back scared to death because ICE agents were at the Wawa.
“These men pay taxes, keep their noses clean, contribute to society. It’s a shame there’s not a way for them to just live and be OK.”
