Idaho Dairies Wary as Immigration Crackdown Spares Farms, for Now

TWIN FALLS, Idaho — President Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign has so far largely spared the U.S. agricultural sector, but Idaho dairy producers — whose industry relies overwhelmingly on immigrant labor — are growing increasingly anxious that the reprieve will not hold.

According to NPR, there have been only a handful of large raids at agricultural facilities nationwide in the nearly two years since the crackdown began. Yet the unease is deepening in the fertile river plain around Twin Falls, where the state’s multi-billion-dollar dairy industry is concentrated and where an open secret — even in deeply Republican Idaho — is that local farms depend heavily on undocumented workers.

A Workforce Built on Immigrant Labor

Rick Naerebout, CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, estimates that roughly 90% of workers at the state’s some 350 dairies may lack legal status. He rejects the charge that these workers are displacing American labor.

“We’re not taking jobs from Americans,” Naerebout told NPR. “The jobs are physical in nature and you’re out in the elements. They just don’t appeal to Americans.”

The data complicate the picture of why farmers rely on migrant labor. Last year, Idaho advertised 7,500 jobs through the H-2A temporary agricultural visa program. Only four local residents applied.

Idaho’s dairy sector ranks among the top five milk producers nationally and is now the fourth-largest in the U.S. But the work is year-round, not seasonal — a distinction that disqualifies the industry from the H-2A program, which is limited to temporary and seasonal agricultural labor. That leaves dairies reliant on a workforce that is, by industry estimates, overwhelmingly undocumented.

Enforcement’s Chill Reaches a Rural Region

Even if large farm raids have been rare, the broader enforcement apparatus is casting a shadow over the region. Twice a week — on Tuesdays and Thursdays around noon — an ICE deportation flight lands at the small Twin Falls airport, where immigration-rights activist Heather Muth and a small group of demonstrators unfurl a banner reading “Human Rights, Not Shuffle Flights.”

“The whole purpose of [these flights] is for them to move around so that their attorneys and their families can’t find them,” Muth said. On one occasion, she counted more than two dozen shackled Idaho detainees being loaded onto a contracted plane.

In nearby Burley, 65-year-old farmworker activist Susan Rios says the crackdown has upended her family. Her daughter and son-in-law, fearing detention, recently moved to Mexico; the husband is undocumented, and the couple did not want their two young daughters to witness their father being taken away.

“They were seeing how people were being detained and they did not want to take that risk,” Rios said.

The flights are far smaller than high-profile operations such as those in Minneapolis or Los Angeles. But they are still unsettling a rural region that has relied on immigrant labor since the 1950s.

Dairy’s Political Clout, and Its Limits

So far, Idaho’s dairy industry appears to have avoided the workplace raids seen elsewhere. Nampa-based immigration attorney Brandy Perez attributes that to the sector’s political influence in a deep-red state.

“They have the ear of some of our legislators, our governor, and I think it’s because of that that we’ve been able to keep the enforcement at a different level than we’ve seen in some of the other states,” Perez said.

Only one known large ICE raid has occurred in Idaho since Trump returned to office — part of an alleged illegal gambling bust last fall at a horse racing track popular with farmworkers.

The industry’s economic weight helps explain its leverage. According to a February 2026 economic impact study prepared for the Idaho Alliance for a Legal Workforce, removing 28,725 foreign-born workers would cut Idaho’s gross state product by 4.6% — about $5.1 billion — and eliminate an estimated 55,818 jobs once supply-chain effects are included. Idahoans would see a $2.9 billion reduction in wages and benefits and $397.8 million in lost state tax revenue. The report compares the magnitude to the Great Recession of 2007–2009.

“This study shows that without federal solutions, Idaho’s economy will continue to face unnecessary strain,” Naerebout said at the report’s release.

A Federal Fix That Hasn’t Arrived

Trump has repeatedly signaled sympathy for agricultural employers. In July 2025, he pledged a system to sign up undocumented farmworkers “so they don’t have to go.” No such fix has materialized. In June 2026, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a memo clarifying that some dairies could access H-2A visas if they proved seasonal labor needs — a narrow opening industry leaders are still trying to interpret.

More comprehensive reform has stalled. A bipartisan bill introduced by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson would remove the seasonal requirement for key agricultural visas while keeping them temporary — a maximum of 350 days a year — and would let some existing unauthorized workers access the H-2A program, though it provides no pathway to legalization. The measure has drawn support from much of the farming industry but faces opposition from both labor groups and conservatives.

As NPR has reported, the program’s use has surged more than 500% since 2012, from 62,743 visas to nearly 400,000 in 2025. Yet employers, labor advocates and both parties agree it is far from perfect — and disagree sharply on how to fix it. The United Farm Workers opposes expansion without a path to legalization, arguing visa workers tied to a single employer are vulnerable to abuse. The conservative Heritage Foundation opposes expansion on other grounds, fearing it would compete with American workers and drive down wages.

Congress is in recess until after the midterm elections, leaving the bill’s path uncertain.

A State-Level Collision

The tension between Idaho’s agricultural industry and the ascendant hard-right wing of the state GOP has already turned personal. State Sen. Glenneda Zuiderveld, a hardline immigration enforcement proponent, said three Magic Valley dairies ended a business relationship with her husband, Tom — an account representative for a lube and oil company whose dairy sales accounted for most of the household income.

Zuiderveld named Millekamp Cattle, Black Pine Cattle and Cedar Ridge Dairy and called the move “political retaliation” over her immigration stance. “When they quit us, we lost 85% of our income,” she said, according to Idaho News 6.

Naerebout disputed that characterization, saying the dairies responded to “four years of a collective voting record and multiple statements that go against agriculture.” He framed the decision as an exercise of free-market choice.

What to Watch

For Naerebout, the industry’s current standing with the administration is precarious. “As quickly as we got into this favorable position with the administration, we could fall out of favor,” he said. “It’s not the most secure place to be.”

With Congress in recess and no federal fix in sight, Idaho’s dairymen are left waiting — and cows still have to be milked every day, all year.