The Trump administration is admitting that its mass immigration deportation effort could result in “immediate dangers” to the U.S. food supply.

The startling admission is contained in an obscure document posted Oct. 2 to the Federal Register.

The warning flies in the face of a statement made in July by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins that mass deportations would create a “100% American” farm labor force.

“Employers in the U.S. agricultural sector are facing a structural, not cyclical, workforce crisis driven by both the lack of an available legal workforce that is relatively mobile and able to adjust to changes in labor demands, as well as an ever-hastening loss of the mobile illegal alien workforce that had flowed in and out of the United States through a previously porous border,” a Department of Labor memo says.

“The 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 that threaten the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers.”

Ag Secretary Predicted All-American Ag Workforce

Rollins based her prediction of an all-American farm workforce on the theory that as the Trump administration cut Medicaid and food stamps, people needing to fill those gaps would displace immigrants in jobs such as picking the nation’s fruits and vegetables and working in slaughterhouses.

However, the Department of Labor noted that few workers born in the United States have the skills or the desire to pick crops.

“These essential jobs involve manual labor, long hours, and exposure to extreme weather conditions — particularly in the cultivation of fruit, tree nuts, vegetables, and other specialty crops for which production cannot be immediately mechanized,”  the Deportment of Labor said.

“Based on the Department’s extensive experience administering the H-2A temporary agricultural visa program, the available data strongly demonstrates a persistent and systemic lack of sufficient numbers of qualified, eligible and interested American workers to perform the kinds of work that agricultural employers demand.”

Perhaps that’s why in the years 2020 through 2024, the federal government approved 97% of H-2A temporary ag visa applications “based on a lack of qualified, eligible, and interested U.S. workers.”

Consumer Prices Rising

Trump administration policies — which also include tariffs — are being felt in the wallets of Americans. The consumer price index rose 2.9% in August, the last month for which there is a report.

To counter the troubling labor and consumer headwinds, a Trump administration rule that took effect Oct. 2 lowers wages for migrant seasonal farmhands on H-2A visas. The wage cut will save farmers $24 billion over 10 years while avoiding “imminent widespread disruption across the U.S. agricultural sector,” the Department of Labor said.

The administration’s hope is to attract foreign farmworkers to boost the labor supply with the wholesale approval of H-2A visas while lowing food production costs.

It’s a novel concept because wages typically rise when there is a labor shortage.

Another Trump Bailout for Farmers?

President Donald Trump said last week that he would unveil further economic support in the many billions of dollars for farmers. The New York Times reported that Chinese tariffs have some American farmers on the brink of bankruptcy.

The situation is similar to 2018 when Trump bailed out farmers from the disastrous effects of his trade war with China.