Sometimes the choice is more complicated \u2013 the U.S. isn\u2019t as safe for them as it was, but its school districts still offer things like mental health care and physical therapy that migrant workers fear they won\u2019t get in their home countries. Balanced against that is the possibility of one or both parents being deported<\/a>, leaving the children with no legal guardians in this country.<\/p>\n Statistically, it\u2019s difficult to even know the number of farmworkers employed today, let alone how much the fear of deportation is affecting employment in the industry. In late October, Ag Alert, a publication of the California Farm Bureau, broke the news<\/a> that both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Labor canceled annual farmworker labor surveys. That means that, for the first time since the late 1980s, there is no federal documentation of farmworker hours, wages or demographics. Historically, about 40% of farmworkers<\/a> in the last decade were undocumented.<\/p>\n The nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that more immigrants left the country or were deported<\/a> this year than the number who arrived. If the trend holds until the end of the year, 2025 will be the first year since the 1960s that the population of immigrants in the U.S. falls<\/a>.<\/p>\n For Raul, the question of returning is simple. He will need to earn money so he can support his kids, so he plans on coming back.<\/p>\n \u201cQue quisiera un padre? Raul said. \u201cQuiere que sea lo mejor para los hijos.\u201d<\/p>\n What would a father want? He wants what\u2019s best for his children.<\/em><\/p>\n The road into Firebaugh rolls up and over a wash, next to the spot where Andrew Firebaugh founded a ferry across the San Joaquin River that became an important stop on stagecoach routes.<\/p>\n The river has always been what kept this town alive, first as an obstacle around which they built a settlement and later as the lifeblood of its farms and fields.<\/p>\n Just outside of town, the pavement has fractured and buckled. The street signs are tiny and faded on the broad grid of roads bounded by fields that push right up to the street. You orient yourself with both cardinal directions and crops.<\/p>\n Prunus amygdalus<\/em>, also called almond trees, look like they\u2019re raising their arms. Pistacia vera<\/em>, the pistachio tree, look like they\u2019re shrugging.<\/p>\n Uncovered truck bed bins spill ripe red tomatoes on tight turns. Tractors with their tillers raised trundle slowly down the highway. On the side of the road bobs of lettuce heads peek out of the ground, followed by a massive pile of unhulled almonds, and then a series of palm trees, some very tall and some a little squat.<\/p>\n At the corner of one of these roads, just before it meets the interstate, is the melon farm owned by Joe Del Bosque, Raul\u2019s employer of 21 years. And the first thing people inclined to these kinds of questions will ask Del Bosque is why he hires undocumented labor.<\/p>\n He begins explaining his trouble hiring people on the federal H-2A visa, which permits employers to hire foreign seasonal workers. It\u2019s not just that he has to pay them $3 more per hour, Del Bosque said. It\u2019s that he must also pay for their transportation to and from the farm every day. He must pay for the rooms where they sleep and the food they eat. It is, he said, economically impossible to rely on the visa program.<\/p>\n The next suggestion is hiring local people. Del Bosque laughed and said he tried that. The locals made it a week, at the most, and then found some other way to make money that didn\u2019t leave them sore all over.<\/p>\n He knows that one day soon, he\u2019ll likely have to turn over operations to the only family member active in the business, his son-in-law. But that\u2019s only if there\u2019s still a farm to hand over.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t have a lot of confidence that the future of our farm and a lot of farms is looking very good right now,\u201d Del Bosque said.<\/p>\n The U.S. Department of Labor is already sounding the alarm on losing farmworkers and the threat that poses to the nation\u2019s food supply in a notice in the Federal Register in October.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce, results in significant disruptions to production costs and threatening the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S consumers,\u201d the department said in a rule-making proposal that would allow employers to pay H-2A workers less than they are paying now.<\/p>\n \u201cUnless the Department acts immediately to provide a source of stable and lawful labor, this threat will grow,\u201d the notice said, citing the likelihood of enhanced immigration enforcement under the budget bill Trump signed earlier this year.<\/p>\n Those longer-term consequences in the labor market won\u2019t be felt evenly.<\/p>\n Fresno County and the rest of the Central Valley went for Trump in the 2024 election. Del Bosque calls himself a conservative, though he donates to both parties<\/a> \u2013 Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and former President Barack Obama<\/a> have both made public visits to his acreage.<\/p>\n Next to his farm \u2013 right up on the property line where everyone will see it \u2013 is a massive Trump 2024 sign, erected by his neighbor. No one driving to the Del Bosque Farm will miss it. Del Bosque laughs about it, but it\u2019s also a reflection of how their differing crops help define their politics.<\/p>\n Del Bosque grows melons, which are labor intensive and require lots of people to work long hours. He supports an easier path to employment for undocumented workers. Next door, his neighbor grows almonds. They only require one person to drive a \u201cshaker\u201d to get the nuts out of the trees and another to operate the basket that catches them as they fall. His neighbor, whom CalMatters was unable to contact, doesn\u2019t require much labor at all.<\/p>\n \u201cHere\u2019s the thing, not all farms are the same, not all farmers are the same,\u201d Del Bosque said. \u201cI\u2019m concerned about these people. (The neighbor) is not concerned about that, because he has almonds. He manages his almonds with just him and one or two more people.<\/p>\n \u201cHe can do his whole farm with two, three people. So this immigration (enforcement) does not affect him at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Author and Central Valley farmer David Mas Masumoto wrote about neighborly tension in his 1995 \u201cEpitaph for a Peach.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe depend on labor from Mexico, part of a seasonal flow of men and families. Many come here for the summer, return to Mexico during the slow winter months, and return the following year. They\u2019re predominantly young men with the faces of boys. We\u2019re dependent on their strong backs and quick hands. And they are hungry for work.\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cThis September, farmers drive down the road staring straight ahead, steering clear of a chance meeting with a competitor who was once a neighbor. Eyes avoid eyes, hands hesitate and refrain from waving. It\u2019s an ugly September.\u201d<\/p>\n Politics out here can make it a whole ugly season.<\/p>\n What if they don\u2019t come back?<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have a precedent for trying to understand that major of a disruption to our state\u2019s economy and demographics,\u201d said Liz Carlisle, an associate professor in the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara.<\/p>\n Something is changing in one of the world\u2019s most productive agricultural regions. Wine grapes are going unharvested<\/a>, rotting in the fields, as exports to Canada collapsed under new tariffs and younger consumers started shying away from alcohol.<\/p>\n Land values are cratering<\/a> in places with limited water, leaving farmers in multi-million dollar debt. Water costs are skyrocketing in part because of a 2014 conservation law<\/a> that seeks to regulate years of agricultural over-pumping.<\/p>\n \u201cI do think we\u2019re looking at the potential of really big and rapid change to California\u2019s agricultural sector and all of the workers and everything that touches the economy,\u201d Carlisle said. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a perfect storm because you have major shifts in trade policy at the same time as you have major shifts in the workforce at the same time you have major shifts in climate and potential regulatory responses to those climate impacts.<\/p>\n \u201cSo that\u2019s a lot of huge transformations for people in the agricultural sector to try to manage at once.\u201d<\/p>\n This year, the problems were the usual problems: Five or six big storms clobbered the Central Valley with rain and hail, hitting young crops just as they were approaching maturity. But larger battles loom.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nA town shaped by a river<\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/091125-Melon-Farm-and-Kerman-LV-38-1024x682.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/092425-Melon-Farm-Day-2-LV-13-1024x682.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/092425_Melon-Farm-Day-2_LV_CM_08-1024x682.jpg\")
<\/figure>![\"A](\"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/091125-Melon-Farm-and-Kerman-LV-30.jpg\")
This is Trump country<\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/091125-Melon-Farm-and-Kerman-LV-34-1024x682.jpg\")
\u2018Big and rapid change\u2019<\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/092425-Melon-Farm-Day-2-LV-12-1024x682.jpg\")