https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/09/trump-agriculture-medicaid-migrant-farm-workers
The US agriculture secretary has suggested that increased automation and forcing Medicaid recipients to work could replace the migrant farm workers being swept up in Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, despite years of evidence and policy failures that those kinds of measures are not substitutes for the immigrant labor force underpinning American agriculture.
Speaking at a news conference with Republican governors on Tuesday, Brooke Rollins said the administration would rely on “automation, also some reform within the current governing structure”, and pointed to “34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program” as potential workers.
“There’s been a lot of noise in the last few days and a lot of questions about where the president stands and his vision for farm labor,” Rollins said. “There are plenty of workers in America”.
Trump signed legislation on Friday creating the first federally mandated work requirements for Medicaid recipients, set to take effect by the end of 2026. Medicaid is a healthcare safety net program that currently covers pregnant women, mothers, young children and the disabled, with 40 states having expanded coverage to working poor families earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level.
However, agricultural experts and economists have repeatedly warned that neither automation nor welfare reforms can realistically replace the migrant workforce that dominates American farming.
According to USDA data, 42% of US farm workers are undocumented immigrants, and just under 70% are foreign-born.
And a March report from the Urban Institute found that most Medicaid recipients are either already working, exempt or face some sort of instability.
Previous state-level immigration crackdowns are also evidence of the challenges facing Rollins’s proposed solution. Georgia’s 2011 immigration law resulted in a shortage of more than 5,200 farm workers and projected losses of hundreds of millions of dollars at the time, according to a University of Georgia study. Alabama farmers reported similar struggles, with locals telling the Associated Press in 2011 that American workers lasted about a day at their new farm jobs.
While agricultural automation is advancing fast, it still appears to remain years away from replacing manual labor in fruit and vegetable harvesting.
Rollins acknowledged the administration must be “strategic” in implementing deportations “so as not to compromise our food supply”, but held that Trump’s promise of a “100% American workforce stands.”
Trump himself appeared to soften his stance last week, telling Fox News he was considering exemptions for undocumented farm workers.
“What we’re going to do is we’re going to do something for farmers where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge,” he said.
Quick, we need cope to distract from the white girls Trump killed and the pedophile elites he's protecting!
trumpinian ii is truly going to be one of the silliest tragic characters in history
Aren't most Medicaid recipients children, disabled and elderly people? Good luck getting them to do demanding physical labor
>>1419170Technically medicaid is for the poors, but in practice it's a lot of kids and disabled people. The "able bodied" people on it can't hold down a good enough job to have health insurance, they're not going to be the kind of people who can do the slave work that the farmers need.
>>1419170We already can't get abled body people to do the physical demands of field work. This admin is about to learn the same lesson the West Coast did when they tried to crack down on Chinese laborers in the 1880s- a massive economic downturn because immigrants, legal or not, are a major part of our farming sector.
they're raiding weed farms now
https://ktla.com/news/california/photos-federal-agents-deploy-tear-gas-at-protesters-during-immigration-raid-in-camarillo/
>It’s the latest in a string of high-profile, high-visibility immigration operations conducted by the Department of Homeland Security and/or its federal partners.
>Another immigration raid took place Thursday morning in nearby Carpinteria in Santa Barbara County.
>There have been reports that the properties may have been cannabis cultivation farms.
>>141918172.3 % of working poor people on Medicaid. We need to raise the age of a retirement up 72 and get you seniors out there in the fields picking for $3 an hour
>>1419237>WeWhy is brazil working American seniors?
>>1419181>The "able bodied" people on it can't hold down a good enough job to have health insurance,Maybe they need to stop smoking crack, meth and fentanyl. That would help quite a bit
>>1419170>children, disabled and elderly peopleMandatory exemption from work requirements, propagandabot
You want a source on that or are you just going to implode again when you read it?
>>1419242>crack, meth and fentanylwe call that the MAGA express down here.
It literally rots your brain and turns you into a Republicunt shill
>>1419165 (OP)Thus to have the right to be called 'Commander-in-Chief', Donald 'Bone Spurs' Trump must enlist in the US Armed Forces - preferably the Marines - and has to work his way up from Private to General. If President Dwight D. Eisenhower can do so, Trumpy has no right to any excuses.
>Bone SpursGee, I wonder why WWII USAAF air ace & USAF pilot who served in Korea & Vietnam Brigadier General Chuck Yeager refused to endorse Trump?
>>1419243When the news stories start coming out about heavily crippled people the government claims are physically able and therefore not exempt, you won't feel stupid but you should. The government tries extremely hard to not classify anyone as disabled already so they don't have to give them any disability benefits. With this they have an even bigger incentive since it'll let them kick those people off of medicaid.
>>1419237Medicaid is for blacks, and meth addicts, you dumb ass turbo faggot. Your stupid HIV infested brain is thinking of MEDICARE which is for olds.
>>1419246>It literally rots your brain and turns you into a Republicunt shillSo you must be a Republican?
>>1419262Why are you replying to yourself
>>1419278who would want to be as dumb as you?
Everyone in my family is on SSA and Medicare for some reason. Our total family income is $5500/month and the only work we do is a few side jobs for extra cash.
I suppose it's different when billionaires do this.
9/11 survivors fucking suck, they’re a bunch of worthless ants and it’s their own fucking fault for dying. Its also their fault we live in a paranoid surveillance state. I hope rats are eating their bones. Their retarded next of kin were the principal advocates of these pointless middle eastern wars. I nutted when they jumped out of buildings those worthless specks and splattered on the ground like tomato paste, I wish I could have taken pictures of their corpses on the ground.
Insider here. The vast majority of my clients on Medicaid are just lazy faggots. Some are legit. A lot of immigrant kids and moms. Some down on their luck normal people. Some actually disabled folks. But at least 50 percent are entitled brats who don't like to work.
