Worksite Immigration Raids Could Shake Upstate NY Farms and Factories
A push to ramp up enforcement at job sites nationwide has Mohawk Valley farmers, dairy processors, and food plants bracing for what comes next.
Worksite immigration raids are back on the table in Washington, and the ripple effects could hit close to home in Upstate New York. The Trump administration is planning a major expansion of worksite immigration enforcement operations, according to five sources who spoke with CNN. Federal agencies are working out how to boost arrests, run more audits, and pursue criminal investigations at businesses across the country, from meatpacking plants to construction sites to dairy farms. For a region like ours, where dairy processing and agriculture are economic lifelines, this is not a distant Washington story. It is a local one.
What the Trump Administration Is Planning
According to CNN’s reporting, officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice have been in ongoing talks to build out a worksite enforcement strategy. Part of the plan involves educating employers about their hiring responsibilities, while also carrying out arrests at worksites tied to criminal investigations.
A Homeland Security spokesperson told CNN there has been “an increase in criminal investigations targeting fraud.” A White House official added that the effort isn’t a brand new policy, saying the administration has been investigating “welfare fraud, benefit fraud, identity theft, and more” since taking office.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the country is now deporting more than 3,200 people daily.
“We’re surging every day because we’re trying to restore law and order, regardless of whether you live in a red state or a blue state,” Mullin said at a press conference in New York.
Immigration hardliners have pushed for this shift for months. Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told CNN that stepping up job-site enforcement is the real test of whether the administration follows through on mass deportation promises.
“The test is whether they’re going to significantly step up job-related enforcement,” Krikorian said. “That’s not just raiding worksites. That’s got to be part of it, but all the other stuff like paperwork enforcement.”
Why Worksite Operations Take So Long
Unlike a street-level arrest, a worksite operation can take months or even years to prepare. ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit typically serves a company notice that it intends to audit immigration paperwork, performs the audit, and then opens a criminal investigation if problems turn up.
“They’re hard because it’s mountains of paperwork and it requires a lot of analysis and due diligence to put it together to prove culpability,” a former DHS official told CNN. “It takes quite a bit of effort.”
That slow, methodical process is part of why the administration has struggled to hit the daily arrest quotas set last year by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who directed ICE to aim for 3,000 immigration arrests a day. ICE has been averaging closer to 2,000 arrests a day in recent weeks, and officials want that number to keep climbing.
Why This Matters for Upstate New York
New York’s dairy industry depends heavily on immigrant labor, and much of that workforce lacks a clear path to legal status. There is no visa category built for year-round dairy work. The H-2A visa program only covers seasonal jobs like planting and harvesting, which leaves dairy farms, which operate every day of the year, largely locked out.
“Our cows are milked three times a day, every day, seven days a week, so we need year-round staff here,” said Joel Riehlman, co-owner of Venture Farms in Onondaga County, in an interview with Spectrum News 1. “We would really love it if there were other programs that were more suited to us in the dairy industry.”
New York is the fifth-largest dairy state in the country, producing roughly 16 billion pounds of milk a year. Companies like Chobani, Fairlife, and Cayuga Milk Ingredients have all announced expansions of their New York processing facilities, expansions that depend on a steady, skilled workforce showing up every day.
That workforce has already felt the pressure of enforcement actions close to home. In September 2025, immigration officials raided the Nutrition Bar Confectioners factory in Cato, New York, and detained 57 employees. Richard Stup, director of Cornell University’s agricultural workforce development program, said the raid rattled farm owners across the region, even those who never expected to be a target.
“It creates a lot of fear on the part of the farm owners and managers,” Stup said. “To have some of your skilled employees, people that you know personally, to have them picked up and removed from the country is terrifying and there are business implications.”
The Human Side of the Debate
Cortland County dairy farmer Mike McMahon, who recently sold his EZ Acres farm after decades running it, has spent 25 years pushing Congress for a legal pathway for year-round agricultural workers. He told syracuse.com that the current system forces farmers into an impossible position, relying on workers whose documents they know cannot be verified because no legal option exists for them.
“The system has been broken. It is broken,” said Joel Reihlman, who bought McMahon’s farm. “It’s gotten pretty disgusting. Unfortunately, it’s the world we live in.”
Gustavo Hernandez, who has worked at EZ Acres for 16 years after coming from Veracruz, Mexico, put it simply when asked about his status.
“I’ve been here for a long time,” Hernandez said. “So if I go home, I’m ready to go.”
These are not abstract policy debates for towns like Homer, Cato, or communities across Oneida and Herkimer counties. They are conversations happening in barns, break rooms, and kitchen tables.
The Economic Stakes Are High
About 70% of agricultural workers nationwide are immigrants, according to the National Center for Farmworker Health, and roughly 20% of all U.S. food industry workers are immigrants, per the Migration Policy Institute. If worksite enforcement expands significantly, the disruption could ripple through New York’s food supply chain, from the farm to the processing plant to the grocery store shelf.
Some local police leaders in farm country have already made clear they won’t be stepping in to help federal agents with immigration enforcement. Homer Police Chief Bob Pitman, whose town includes several large dairy operations, said his department focuses on public safety, not immigration status.
“We got a job to do, and we’re not immigration,” Pitman said.
That local tension, between federal enforcement priorities and the economic reality on the ground, is likely to grow sharper if the administration’s worksite plans move forward. Business groups, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, have continued to press Congress for reforms like the bipartisan Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would expand the H-2A program to cover year-round work and offer a path to legal status for long-term farmworkers. The bill remains stalled.
What Comes Next
The scope of the administration’s new worksite enforcement push is not yet clear, and officials caution that plans are still fluid. But the direction is unmistakable. Immigration hardliners want more arrests at job sites, more audits, and more pressure on employers. That pressure will land hardest in places like the Mohawk Valley, where dairy, food processing, and agriculture are woven into the local economy and where families like McMahon’s and Riehlman’s have spent generations building a workforce with no legal pathway to match it.
Congress holds the key to a long-term fix through immigration reform that reflects how the agricultural economy actually works. Until lawmakers act, farmers, processors, and workers across Upstate New York will keep operating in the same uncertain space they have been in for years, just with the added weight of knowing federal agents may be paying closer attention than ever.
Residents who want their voice heard on this issue can contact their members of Congress and push for movement on stalled legislation like the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. Local farms and food processors are part of the fabric of this region, and what happens next in Washington will be felt right here at home.
