While immigration enforcement is affecting Central Washington communities, it isn’t reducing Yakima Valley harvest numbers this fall, agriculture industry leaders say.
There haven’t been workplace raids reported in orchards and packing plants in the region. But targeted immigration enforcement is happening and detentions have increased in Washington, according to information from the Deportation Data Project.
The increase in enforcement is impacting communities, said Erik Nicholson, a farm labor consultant with Pandion Strategies based in the Tri-Cities.
“Businesses that depend on the Latinx consumers are way off. People aren't going out. They're fearful. They're staying in. They're not having social activities,” he said.
“It is having a real, a profound impact on the residents of the Yakima Valley and Columbia Basin right now, even without the experience of the mass deportations that we fear are forthcoming.”
Giovanni, a farmworker from Quincy who is not using his real name because of safety concerns, has worked in agriculture for more than 20 years.
“People are scared,” he said in Spanish. “ We have to go out. We can't stay inside like mice. We can't stay inside like moles, but fear and anxiety do exist.”
Edgar Franks, political director of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, a farmworkers union in Skagit County, said people are thinking more about traveling from town to town or even participating in community celebrations.
"There's been more reluctance for people to feel free, to move around and look for work," said Franks. "I think people may be choosing other lines of work that are closer to their home or just overall feel like it's a safer place."
Apple harvest
People driving past orchards and fields in Central Washington may see unpicked fruit this fall. The reason has more to do with market conditions than immigration enforcement, fruit industry leaders say.
About 77% of the nation’s fresh apples are grown in Washington and Oregon, and Washington is the top U.S. producer of apples, pears and sweet cherries, according to the Northwest Horticultural Council.
Jon DeVaney, the president of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association, said cherry growers had trouble securing labor early in the season, in part because of immigration enforcement fears as workers came up from California. But things stabilized this summer.
In August, the Washington State Tree Fruit Association predicted an apple harvest of 142 million standard 40-pound boxes. The number would match a record for the state’s fresh apple crop, but the group cautioned the actual harvest might be lower.
Apple harvest typically runs from August to November.
As of early October, growers harvested 5.6 million fewer boxes of early variety apples than forecast, which is likely due to August heat and selective picking, DeVaney said.
Some growers said they are concerned about oversupply and prices.
DeVaney said apple growers plant trees for decades, and have to consider what market expectations will be over a long window. Wage rates for labor and access to customers globally can change significantly over time.
“Suddenly, you find that your costs have increased far more rapidly and your access to certain customers has changed significantly,” he said
H-2A changes
Labor is the largest variable production expense for tree fruit growers, and agricultural wages have been rising faster than other segments of the economy, DeVaney said.
Earlier this month the Trump administration announced changes to the H-2A program, which brings thousands of farmworkers from other countries to the Northwest. The update will reduce the hourly wage for those farmworkers, and allow growers to deduct housing costs from their pay.
As of June 2025, the Department of Homeland Security approved just over 28,000 H-2A workers for Washington state. Most H-2A workers are from Mexico.
The changes take effect for contracts after Oct. 2. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates the change will transfer $2.46 billion from H-2A workers to H-2A employers annually, according to the Federal Register notice.
“It's a really big deal, because it sets a bad precedent,” said Franks. “Lowering the wages of farm workers, whether they be H-2A or local workers, we still feel it's an overall attack on farm workers that already are some of the poorest workers in the state.”
In making the change, the Labor Department noted the increase in immigration enforcement coming in the “One, Big Beautiful Bill Act” and the closure of the southern border. Nationwide, the confirmed number of voluntary departures went from just 592 in February 2025 to 4,241 in July 2025, the notice said.
The department pointed to concerns about the nation’s food supply and consumer prices if there isn’t enough labor available.
“U.S. agricultural employers need a legal and stable workforce to support their farming operations, and persistent labor shortages and increases in production costs will only harm U.S. competitiveness, threaten food production, drive up consumer prices, and create instability in rural communities,” the notice said.
How things might change
How the new wages will play out will involve basic economic principles of supply and demand.
Jeff Luckstead, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at Washington State University, said reducing the wage could affect whether workers sign H-2A agreements.
He also said that farmers have been looking for wage relief as agricultural wages have increased.
“H-2A wage rates have been growing around 20% a year on average,” he said. “So this could provide some relief for the farmers but could have some longer run effects on supply issues.”
Nicholson, the labor consultant, said the wage changes could affect local workers, too.
“There is fear amongst many that there will now be an economic incentive to hire H-2A workers over domestic workers, causing further displacement,” he said.
The same day the new wages were announced, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security also issued a new rule to streamline the filing process for H-2A visas, helping growers secure outside labor more quickly.
Nicholson said fruit growers might not see the economic benefits from the wage change as they bring their products to market.
“Any economic gains that result from this wage deduction are not going to stay with the farmer,” he said. “They will be taken up by the retailer who recognizes that labor costs have gone down.”
Other crops
Elsewhere in the valley, the hop harvest is smaller this year as growers clear out dried hops in storage. Hops are used in beer, and around 75% of the country’s supply comes from the Yakima Valley.
Maggie Elliot, science and communications director for the Washington Hop Commission, said to her knowledge immigration enforcement has not had any discernable impacts on the functions of this year’s hop harvest in the Yakima Valley.
At Loza Farms near Wapato, the workforce is made up of entirely local labor. Leon Loza Jr. says the farm has benefitted indirectly from the H-2A guest worker program.
“We're pretty far out here, and we're a small farm, so before H-2 was a thing, we had a hard time finding enough people to pick hops,” he said. “Now, with H-2A, with other farms, bigger farmers using H-2A definitely helps send more people our way.”
According to a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Survey hop stock report, the hop inventory held by growers, dealers and brewers in September was down 15% from last year. That means the industry is making progress in depleting its oversupply. With a smaller harvest coming in this year, the hope is for inventory to be even lower in the March 2026 hop stock report.
At Hyatt Vineyards near Zillah, the wine grape harvest started in September.
The family-owned vineyard has six full-time crew members who work year round, with a cherry orchard, processing facility and bottling line. Winemaker Samantha Mallery says extra workers are brought in during grape harvest. They are too small to use the H-2A foreign guestworker program.
"We haven’t had any trouble finding people, but part of that is because our partnerships with our custom crush clients, so we share crews with some of our vineyard partners,” she said.
Sara Higgins, executive director of the Washington Winegrowers Association, said market conditions will prompt vineyards to harvest fewer grapes overall this fall. In some cases, they may not pick fruit. One bright spot this fall was British Columbia’s decision to extend a tax exemption for Washington grape growers another year.
What’s ahead
DeVaney said that because many of the issues facing tree fruit growers are policy related, there are avenues for change. He mentioned international trade, investments in water infrastructure and wages that are fair to workers and not too high for farmers.
“I’ve heard growers sort of say, if anyone has the credibility to talk about putting undocumented workers into a legal status, it would be this administration and this president that made immigration enforcement such a central piece, in the sort of way that only Nixon could have gone to China,” he said.
As the Trump administration focuses on mass deportation, the Congressional Research Service estimates that 35% of agricultural workers in the U.S. in 2024 did not have legal work authorization.
Some farmworkers groups and industry leaders, like the United Farm Workers union and Washington Growers League, say they’re hopeful that challenges may be addressed through the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. The bipartisan legislation is sponsored by Reps. Dan Newhouse of Central Washington and Zoe Lofgren of California.
It’s one of several proposals Congress is considering that would make changes for growers and workers. Others, like the Bracero 2.0 Program Act brought by Congresswoman Monica de La Cruz from Texas, also aim to reform the H-2A program to stabilize the agricultural workforce and disincentivize illegal border crossings.
Familias Unidas por la Justicia has opposed that legislation and other bills that focus on bringing in more foreign workers, Franks said.
“We've always said that workers in agriculture should be rewarded with amnesty,” he said. “If there is a need for more workers to be brought in, it should not be under the H-2A system. It should be under a whole different program or a whole different policy. The H-2A program right now gives way too much power to growers.”
Franks said he's concerned the Farm Workforce Modernization Act still leaves workers in limbo.
“If the growers all decided to say, ‘stop the deportations,’ I think the president would really consider it,” he said.
Franks said if growers really care about farmworkers and their families, it's time to act.
Joel Donofrio contributed to this reporting.
This is the fourth piece of “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.
Read part 1: Immigration policies and labor needs: A look at the growing reliance on H-2A workers in the Pacific Northwest
Read part 2: Displaced in the fields: Domestic farmworkers and the cost of immigration shifts in the Pacific Northwest
Read part 3: The impossible choice: How immigration enforcement is affecting Pacific Northwest farmworker families
