Contributor: ICE raids and migrant pay cuts are devastating California economies

Along the southern stretch of California’s Central Coast, President Trump’s crusade against immigrants has left a visceral mark. It seems these days that almost everyone there has seen or felt the aftermath of an immigration raid: cars with shattered windows left idling and businesses emptied of their usual employees and patrons. The human toll is stark. Raids around Christmas removed at least 100 people from our communities, leaving children without parents and families without primary earners — creating crises that cascade far beyond the moment of enforcement.

The economic consequences of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids are equally severe. Recent farmer surveys have shown that immigration raids and the fear they generate have caused farmworker shortages, particularly in labor-intensive crops such as strawberries — the region’s most valuable agricultural commodity — where fruit rots on the plant without the immigrant workers who pick it.

Early research quantifying the economic impact of ICE raids in Oxnard estimates direct crop losses of $3 billion to $7 billion with significant spillover into other sectors of the economy. As families lose income to raids — whether through the direct loss of a working family member or in the form of lost business production or sales — they spend less in the local economy. The ripple effect means that the total economic impact of ICE raids is much greater than unpicked crops, with harm most concentrated among the most vulnerable: farmworkers.

Recent changes to a foreign worker program threaten to deepen the wound. The federal program, known as H-2A, allows growers and farm labor contractors to recruit temporary foreign workers to meet seasonal labor demand. It has become the fastest-growing work visa system in U.S. agriculture. It carries with it a well–documented history of wage theft, abuse and trafficking enabled, in part, by H-2A workers’ relative isolation and inability to seek other employment while in the United States.

Until October 2025, the wages paid to H-2A workers were, although low, not so low as to distort the labor market and drag down the wages paid to domestic farmworkers. In October, the Trump administration delivered a huge pay cut to H-2A workers and, in doing so, undercut wages for farmworkers across America regardless of visa status. Trump’s changes include both a direct wage cut as well as new provisions allowing employers to charge housing fees of up to $3 per hour worked.

Estimates of the pay that farmworkers will lose because of these changes range from $4.4 billion to $5.4 billion, or 10% to 12% of farmworkers’ annual wages. Given these figures, the losses suffered by farmworkers in Santa Barbara County alone — where I conduct research — could range from $126 million to $152 million annually, with subsequent decreases in spending and tax revenue reverberating through the region.

With H-2A labor now cheaper relative to domestic farmworkers, visa holders are likely to fill at least one-fifth of all agricultural jobs in Santa Barbara County. This exceeds the program’s 2023 peak in the county, when 18.1% of all agriculture jobs were filled by H-2A, before wage increases caused many growers to drop out of the program in 2024 and 2025. Including housing deductions, employers can now pay H-2A workers $13.90 an hour, significantly below California’s minimum wage of $16.90 an hour. Growers have a strong incentive to substitute resident workers for lower-cost H-2A labor, resulting in local farmworkers losing jobs and income. In addition, because of decreased income and employment, more farmworker families will be forced to rely on benefit programs such as CalFresh, increasing government expenditures.

The tax and budget consequences of expanded H-2A use should be a serious concern for local and state governments. Not only have Trump’s changes significantly reduced farmworkers’ taxable income, but H-2A workers themselves generate less local tax revenue and economic activity than resident workers would.

H-2A employers and employees are exempt from key payroll taxes, including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance. At the same time, the program’s temporary structure — averaging about six months — means workers remit a larger share of their earnings abroad to support families they cannot bring with them, further limiting local spending and the sales tax base.

Elected officials are not powerless in the face of these changes. A range of policy levers could help stabilize a labor market under mounting strain, particularly those that reinforce a meaningful wage floor and limit further downward pressure on earnings. This could include raising the agricultural minimum wage, increasing the California Employment Development Department’s program oversight capacity, and bolstering legal protections for undocumented farmworkers organizing for better working conditions.

The United Farm Workers are currently challenging the Trump administration’s pay rate and housing deduction in court, arguing they constitute one of the largest wealth transfers from workers to employers in the history of American agriculture. Meanwhile, Assemblymember Maggy Krell (D–Sacramento) has introduced legislation to raise the minimum hourly wage for certain agricultural workers to $19.75 — effectively restoring the previous H-2A rate. But that fix, while essential, would not take effect until 2027 and still needs to be passed. In the interim, the state and local governments must act decisively to enforce the existing wage floor, ensuring employers cannot use expanded housing deductions to push workers’ pay below the legal minimum.

These are not radical steps; they are basic protections. The alternative is to accept a race to the bottom — on wages, on working conditions and on the economic stability of the region itself.

Matt Kinsella-Walsh is a graduate researcher with the UC Santa Barbara Community Labor Center and the Organizing Knowledges Project. He researches agricultural economics and labor in the North American strawberry industry.