SANTA PAULA, Calif. (DTN) -- Immigration raids at California farms have largely paused since last summer, but Ventura County farmer Lisa Tate said the fear hasn't, as daily reports about federal immigration officers keep both farm workers and area residents on alert.

"Our county has an organization that sends out notification and keeping track," Tate said. "I'm still getting alerts every single day that ICE is somewhere in the area, so they are still here and active. That hasn't stopped. I get them pretty much every day -- on the weekends, nighttime, morning -- all of the time."

The deaths of two American citizens and protests in Minnesota have intensified pressure on President Donald Trump to change his administration's policies on immigration enforcement. Farmers and agricultural groups again are looking for some support for agricultural immigration workforce reform as well.

"When you see things like Minnesota and Oregon, that's terrifying, you know," Tate said.

Tate operates a sixth-generation farm in Ventura County -- just north of Los Angeles -- where her family grows lemons, oranges, avocados and coffee. As a local farm leader, Tate began speaking out last summer when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began raiding farms and other businesses in the county.

"There was no point to it. It was only doing harm," she said. "I'm not for criminals being here or anything like that. But this was just randomly coming into a farm, scooping up people, and I didn't see any benefit to that. There was just harm being done and it was stressing me out."

Tate has since become part of a campaign, "Grow It Here," which is trying to bring attention to increasing farm labor shortages that are being compounded after the year-long deportation campaign.

As a farmer, she felt she was suddenly in the position of having to become a gatekeeper to protect workers if immigration officers show up on her farm. At the same time, Tate said she learned federal agents actually don't need a warrant in her county because her farm is within 25 miles of the coastline, which qualifies as a border.

"It's a well-kept and well-known secret, but there is this labor here, and yeah, and it's been used, and it's just built into the infrastructure. It's built into the entire system," Tate said. "So, you can't just start dismantling it without coming up with a solution."

FARM LABOR IN CALIFORNIA

Unlike other states, California farms don't rely heavily on the federal H-2A guest worker program even though roughly 800,000 people work on farms across California at some point in the year. In comparison, the H-2A will bring into the country about 350,000 workers nationwide. Only about 7% of California's farm labor comes from H-2A.

"They (H-2A workers) tend to be used like a bucket brigade," said Brian Little, senior director of policy for the California Farm Bureau Federation. "When you're suffering from some sort of acute shortage, the farm labor contractors that are in the H-2A business have the capacity, on a short-term basis, to get you a labor force that you need as a bridge to get past an acute need."

At the American Farm Bureau Federation meeting in mid-January, Little said immigration and border enforcement ramped up last year in a few farms and triggered a pattern of incidents, though worksite enforcement on farms has been limited. People would get texts that ICE or Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents were in the area, and everything temporarily shuts down.

"Our workforce is terrified," Little said. "They didn't want to go out, they didn't want to go to work, they didn't want to let their kids go to school."

Little added, "So the result has been, while we have had some isolated disruption of agricultural production in various places in California, and we have had producers who have lost production as a result, there hasn't been a huge disruption in the availability of the workforce."

HIGH-DOLLAR CROPS DEMAND CONSTANT ATTENTION

Tate highlights some of the challenges of farming in southern California, where the climate may be perfect but nearly everything else is complicated and expensive. Looking for a higher-end revenue crop, Tate and some partners started the California Coffee Collective nine years ago to grow Geisha coffee, a rare Ethiopian heirloom variety that can sell for $1,000 or more a pound, though a typical price is about $60 for five ounces.

"We realized that as California growers -- where everything is so expensive here -- we really have to have a high-end coffee variety," she said. "So, Geisha is super-high-end specialty coffee."

At the same time, taking care of heirloom coffee trees and harvesting such high-end coffee also is labor intensive and almost non-stop. Harvesting coffee beans requires going through the tree by hand to look for fruit with the color of bright-red cherries when picked. "It has to be perfectly ripe, which means we're doing multiple harvests. We're harvesting all of the time."

She added, "Tree crops are year-round. We don't rotate. We don't stop."

HIGH COSTS OF HOUSING HINDERS H-2A

One of the ways Ventura County minimizes urban sprawl from the Los Angeles area is that farmland can't be converted for development without a citywide or county vote. That protects farms in one sense, but also means housing costs are high as well. Farmers are required to provide housing for H-2A workers. That's a significant problem in an area where the median home cost is nearly $900,000.

"We tried H-2A, but housing is the first problem. There's a housing shortage here, so where do you put workers?" Tate said.

Providing housing also then affects insurance. Tate provides housing for three regular employees on the farm. Because of that, every workers' compensation company she has contacted in California refused to cover her farm, forcing her to enroll in a state-run program, she said.

"I house three of my regular employees, and I was told by every workers' comp company that if you provide housing, they won't cover you," Tate said. "If you have a claim, they will drop you because you provide housing. So that leaves us in a bit of a pickle. You pay a lot for not-great insurance."

H-2A also is temporary, but tree crops require constant care. "We don't ever stop. It's constant so my workers are here every day, and I need them to have those skills."

Some of these complications mean it is not financially feasible to bring in an H-2A work crew for four or five weeks.

"If we need the labor here all the time, then we need to absorb those workers into our communities. We want them to be part of our communities," Tate said. "Why would we want people who aren't participating within the community to be here? You know, we want their kids educated. We want them contributing. So why can't we build a program that allows for them to stay in the jobs that we need them in for longer periods of time?"

FARM, BUSINESS GROUPS SEE A SHIFT

In Palm Springs, California, earlier this week, dairy leaders and analysts at the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) Dairy Forum said there's been a popularity shift when it comes to some of the Trump administration's policies. The president's enforcement actions have become "particularly unpopular" with Hispanic voters who supported Trump, and the cost of labor is a factor in rising consumer prices, said James O'Neill of the American Business Immigration Coalition.

Asked by Chelsie Keys, the IDFA senior vice president for government affairs, if enforcement of immigration laws had been different in blue states and red states, Idaho Dairymen's Association CEO Rick Naerebout said there have not been farm raids in his state but added, "There is an anxiousness within our workforce."

In terms of action, Naerebout said, "This is a Trump Congress, and nothing will be done unless there is a signal from the president."

California Farm Bureau President Shannon Douglass said there has been concern about picking the right immigration bill to support but that it would take a long time for agriculture leaders to reach consensus on a bill. It would be better, she said, for ag leaders to support any legislation that moves the issue forward.

"Farmers just want improvement because it is really bad up and down the state and across the country," Douglass said. "I am frustrated with the idea we can get it perfect. I prefer we don't let perfect get in the way of good."

DTN Ag Policy Editor Chris Clayton reporting from Santa Paula, California and DTN Political Correspondent Jerry Hagstrom reporting from Palm Springs, California.

See DTN's video interview with Lisa Tate: https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Also see:

-- "Farm Leader: ICE Crackdown Fuels Labor Fears in Minnesota Agriculture," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

-- "What Farm Owners Need to Know About ICE Audits and Immigration Raids," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Chris Clayton can be reached at Chris.Clayton@dtn.com

Follow him on social platform X @ChrisClaytonDTN

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