Dairy farmers who voted for President Donald Trump are worried there will be no one around to milk the cows now that the administration is cracking down on "otherwise law-abiding immigrants in the country illegally," The Boston Globe reported.
Farmers in Vermont told the Globe they voted for Trump because they liked his tough talk on quelling immigration and closing the border. Things are different now that ICE is coming for their workers.
“All the dairy farmers who voted for Trump were under the impression they weren’t going to come on farms and take our guys,” one farmer said. “It’s happening more than we’d like. It’s scaring the farming community and we’re like, ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen.’”
According to the report, "Farm owners and workers alike in this agricultural region near the Canadian border have been on edge in the month since U.S. Border Patrol officers detained eight Mexican men on Vermont’s largest dairy operation, Pleasant Valley Farms."
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The report said that four of the men taken into custody have since been deported.
"Federal immigration authorities say they are not targeting Vermont’s $3.6 billion dairy industry, which is responsible for 63 percent of the milk produced in New England," the report said. "But the recent arrests are prompting some in the sector to wonder how it would survive without its undocumented labor force."
The report quoted Vermont's Secretary of Agriculture as saying, "I think our farmers are concerned about the well-being of their workers. That’s foremost. They’re also concerned if (the workforce) was to go away, who’s going to do the work? Who’s going to milk the cows?”
Read The Boston Globe article here.
