Editor's note: Farmworkers in this story requested to use their first names, and one name was changed for privacy and safety reasons.
In the productive farmlands of Central Washington, feelings of fear, uncertainty and anxiety grow among local farmworkers. For decades, domestic farmworkers have been part of the Northwest agriculture industry. Some domestic workers, who are local and employed directly by farms, say federal immigration policies are changing who is harvesting the crops.
As immigration policies shift nationwide, local farmworkers in the Northwest say they are losing hours and losing ground. Some fear being replaced by foreign workers on visas, while others worry about detention.
The National Center for Farmworker Health estimates more than 70% of agricultural workers were born in another country.
Another report from the USDA Economic Research Service with data from 2020-2022 shows that among farmworkers, 32% were born in the United States, 7% were naturalized citizens, 19% were other authorized immigrants and 42% lacked legal work authorization. However, the report notes ”the legal immigration status of farmworkers is difficult to measure. Not many surveys ask workers about their legal immigration status, and unauthorized respondents may be reluctant to answer truthfully if asked.”
Washington’s agricultural sector generates more than $12.8 billion annually, nearly half of its workforce, 49.1%, is made up of immigrants, according to the American Immigration Council.
In June, the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) published a final report about the needs of farmworkers in Washington State. According to the report, in 2022 around 113,000 individuals did farmwork in the state. It includes people working on farms, orchards, greenhouses, ranches and food packing operations, many of them concentrated in Yakima County.
Between fear and the need to work
Many local workers, documented and undocumented, say they are in the middle of two powerful forces: immigration enforcement threats and the expansion of the H-2A guest worker program, which allows foreign people to work temporarily in the U.S. with a visa.
Giovanni is a farmworker from Quincy, Washington, who has worked in agriculture for over 20 years. He said workers do talk among themselves about their fears.
“A co-worker doesn’t go out as much as he used to. He lives on the farm and sometimes asks me for favors: ‘Bring me a 40-ounce bottle of water, bring me some tortillas, bring me a soda,’” Giovanni said in Spanish.
Giovanni said his co-worker is scared to leave his house.
Chaucho, another local farmworker from California, said he has not seen any law enforcement in the fields.
“Right now, thank God, we’re doing fine. We haven’t seen any pull overs,” he said in Spanish while explaining he did not see any ICE encounters while he traveled to Washington State.
Tomas is a farmworker from California, as well. He said he also hasn’t seen Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the fields.
“I happen to see them at the stores. We ran from once as we went out to buy things. That was the last time I remember seeing them (ICE). When it’s your turn, it’s your turn, honestly,” Tomas said in Spanish.
David Morales volunteers for Yakima Immigrant Response Network, a grassroots organization that responds to and confirms immigration raids.
He said this year only a few workforce-related raids have been reported.
Even though Washington has not seen many raids, ICE arrests have increased. In Washington as of Sept. 1 about 1,044 ICE arrests were made in 2025. In 2024, there were 976 ICE arrests, according to the Deportation Data Project.
Morales said rumors or misinformation about ICE spread quickly online. He said social media posts often claim raids are happening which leads to unpredictable attendance in the fields in Washington among farmworkers, with some skipping work entirely.
“Rumors go around the world three times before we find out about it, and we can send a verifier. A good example of this is people reposting about a supposed raid in Washington,” Morales said.
“We would go out there again and see nothing is going on. People mean their best, but I think people amplify things that are going on in California or other states and amplify those fears here.”
Edgar Franks is the political director of Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ), a labor union based in Skagit County, Washington. Franks said narratives about ICE and immigration detentions are having an impact on the entire community, regardless of documentation status. He said the fear among the community is not because of rumors, but lived experiences.
“We see it like every day in apartment buildings and everywhere,” said Franks. “It doesn’t seem that the lives of farm workers and immigrants are as important as getting workers … in our view it’s keeping people safe and then the work, secondary.”
Alex Lanuza is a longtime farmer who grows pears in Cashmere. Lanuza said he feels the strain of a shrinking workforce. He said he understands both farmworkers’ and growers’ perspectives.
”Locals and migrants, everybody’s worried. That has to do with some people not even driving up here because they’re afraid they’ll get pulled over from California to Washington, and they’ll get sent back to Mexico,” said Lanuza.
This September he is working to package pears for shipment. In the past, Lanuza said he hired H-2A workers from Mexico to help with the harvest, but now the program is too expensive for him. This year, he relied on migrant workers instead, but said their attendance was inconsistent.
“There are days I pick 200 bins and days I only pick 18,” Lanuza said. “That’s how it is. The crews don’t show up.”
In Congress, a bill called the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, introduced by U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren, D-CA, and co-sponsored by U.S Representative. Dan Newhouse, R-WA, aims to address labor issues in agriculture.
The proposed legislation would provide a pathway for legal status for farmworkers working in the U.S. if they turned in an application in the two years preceding the introduction of the Act in May 2025. They would get five and a half years of legal status and can renew it by proving they worked 100 days a year for five years.
The labor bill would also modernize the H-2A application process for farmers. The reforms to the program would include a one-year wage freeze of the adverse effect wage rate, and would allow growers to submit one H-2A application for multiple seasons.
Local workers deal with effects of H-2A expansion
While growers say not enough local workers are available in the region, domestic farmworkers said they are ready to work, but nobody is hiring them.
“That’s why we decided it was better to leave the state and look elsewhere, because it’s easier to get jobs in other places than here in Sunnyside, Yakima, all that area,” said Enrique, a farmworker from Sunnyside.
He said he has filled out many applications and nobody has called.
Giovanni, the worker from Quincy, said he has seen the growth of the H-2A program in his decades of working in agriculture. He said there are over 100 H-2A workers in his current workplace and only eight local workers.
United Farm Workers (UFW), a labor union for U.S. farmworkers, is opposed to the increased use of the H-2A program, saying it is cutting into jobs for local workers, according to Antonio De Loera-Brust, UFW’s director of communications.
In June 2025, the Department of Homeland Security certified just over 28,000 H-2A workers for Washington state.
“We need to do right by the workers that are already here,” said De Loera-Brust.
However, Ben Tindall, the executive director of Save Family Farming — an organization that advocates for farmers in Washington state — insists the lack of labor is real and said the immigration crackdown is a factor.
“When we add things like fear and stress regarding immigration concerns … that just adds stress to farms of any size,” Tindall said during an interview last month. “That stress is leading farms to disappear.”
Tindall believes the state is losing about two farms a month, and the total number (of farms) is quickly dwindling down.
According to the U.S Department of Agriculture 2022 Census of Agriculture, there were 32,076 farms and ranches in Washington, 10% fewer than in 2017.
In a press release, Save Family Farming outlined farm labor shortages and the increased crackdown on undocumented immigrants. Tindall said federal labor data shows a 7% decrease in the number of people working in U.S. agriculture, from March to July, representing around 155,000 workers.
Troy Phillips, a farmer from the Yakima area, attended a listening session with congressman Dan Newhouse last month in Prosser. Phillips expressed concerns about high labor costs.
He said that hiring more H-2A workers is not a matter of choice.
“This isn’t something that we really want to be doing but it’s a necessity, and it’s the only way to get the job done because we don’t have domestic labor force willing to take on the work,” Phillips said.
To underscore his point about the loss of jobs, De Loera-Brust with UFW pointed to people like Maria, who lives in Sunnyside and has worked in agriculture for about 15 years. She started a new job with a Yakima County-based fruit company earlier this year. Maria believes the arrival of more H-2A workers has led to less available hours to work.
“ They’re giving us four hours, so it seems to me that they want to bring in more contract workers (H-2A),” Maria said in Spanish. “Why? If they give us four hours with more contract workers right now, how many hours will they give us, two hours?”
On her picking crew, she said there are only a few domestic workers and the rest are H-2A workers.
Maria said she doesn’t understand why companies are asking for more guestworkers, when she is willing and able to work.
Strengthening local farm labor remains a challenge
Bertha Clayton is the Director of Agricultural and Seasonal Workforce Services. The office is part of the Washington State Employment Security Department (ESD) and has an advisory committee in workforce matters.
This committee is made up of appointed members representing agricultural workers, agricultural employers and state agencies. Franks, the political director of FUJ, is a member of the committee. It focuses on providing local and foreign workers with protections, and helping producers maintain a stable workforce.
The 2022 Agricultural Seasonal Workforce Services Report, said that local workers report “many employers don’t want to hire them once they start bringing H-2A workers, or only hire them for short periods when they need additional workers, not the other way around.”
The same reports also noted that the percentage of workers hired through WorkSource “is small.” However, no specific percentage is provided. WorkSource is a partnership of state, local and nonprofit agencies. It offers training and employment services for employers and job seekers, including those in the agricultural industry.
Clayton said in 2023, the ESD contracted a firm to study how employers are recruiting in Washington, and how farmworkers are looking for jobs.
“Farmworkers look for work by going from farm to farm or from talking to a relative or a friend … it’s very relationship based,” she said.
The ASWS advisory committee recognizes the need to improve domestic workers’ recruitment.
“We’re taking a very customer-centered approach, because our committee is understanding how we need to really mitigate the barriers that our system and our regulations require us to have,” said Clayton.
Newhouse and U.S. Rep. Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson, R-PA, the chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, said they are also working on improving the local workforce.
“We cannot forget and not do our best in terms of looking at domestic workers. But it’s been a challenge. I think it’s a challenge for farmers,” Thompson said.
He also said science, technology and innovation in agriculture would be part of the answer.
Thompson also pointed to another piece of federal legislation: the GO Ag Act — Growing Opportunities in Agriculture Act. It aims to encourage youth to pursue careers in agriculture by creating grant opportunities for agricultural education in high schools.
Looking for a better life
Back in the farmlands, Giovanni said relations between local and H-2A workers remain cordial but there have been signs of underlying tensions. He said he overheard a H-2A worker threaten to call immigration on another because of his immigration status.
According to the U.S Department of Agriculture, from 2020 to 2022 42% of hired farmworkers did not hold any work authorization to work in the fields, and 19% were authorized to work meaning they were permanent residents or held a green card.
Back in the field or in the orchard, Chaucho said life in the U.S. is not easy for him. He said working in agriculture is difficult, but he said he does it to support his son in college. He said many workers are just trying to do their jobs but now they are worried.
“Anyone can get stopped even if you’re just going about your life. If they see you and there’s a warrant or some record, they can lock you up,” Chaucho said in Spanish. “In the end they can send you back to your country. I don’t think that’s good for us, or for the country, or for the people. We come to make a living to support our families and provide everything we hope to live a better life.”
Questen Inghram of the Yakima Herald-Republic contributed to this reporting.
This is the second piece for the project “Harvest at a crossroads: How immigration changes are affecting Northwest farming and communities.” It is a collaboration between Northwest Public Broadcasting, El Sol de Yakima and the Yakima Herald-Republic. This project is funded by the Poynter Institute.
