Immigration raids targeting meat plants expand to agriculture sector

Business:The immigration raids underway in cities from Los Angeles to Chicago are expanding to the agriculture industry, with a meat plant in the Midwest and fruit workers in California being targeted.

More than 70 people were detained after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid on a meat plant in Omaha, Nebraska, earlier this week. Federal agents were also spotted at a farm in Tulare County, California, where farm workers were picking blueberries, the LA Times reported.

President Donald Trump’s administration is stepping up immigration raids across the country, and farm workers are no longer being spared. The Agriculture Department estimates that about half of the more than 850,000 crop workers in the U.S. are undocumented.

The raid in Omaha found some undocumented immigrants at a Glen Valley Foods facility, which makes products such as beef, chicken and pork for retail and other food-service providers. It was the largest workforce enforcement operation in the state so far under Trump’s second term.

In California, the country’s largest agricultural state, federal agents have appeared at farms and packinghouses from the Central Coast to the San Joaquin Valley, according to the LA Times. Elizabeth Streeter, vice president of the United Farm Workers, told newspapers that there has been an “increased chaotic presence of immigration enforcement, particularly the Border Patrol.” “We are deeply concerned by the latest actions from the Trump administration targeting workers on farm fields, packinghouses and other facilities from the Central Coast to the Central Valley,” said California Democratic senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff. “Without people working in difficult conditions — extreme heat, cold weather or torrential rain — it would be impossible to feed the country.”