Author: Cora LeCates

Immigration enforcement efforts are escalating dramatically in New Jersey, disrupting farming operations and leaving crops to rot. Fearing immigration-related arrests, farmworkers are failing to report for work, causing a labor shortage which NJ farmers say could lead to farm closures and higher prices for produce. 

“We’ve seen people losing their jobs because the farm owners don’t want to be involved, migrant labor is becoming a high cost to the farms. And the workers are afraid to drive to work because they’re stopped in their cars by ICE,” said Katherin Zepeda, a representative from CATA (El Comité de Apoyo a Los Trabajadores Agricolos, or, “The Farmworker Support Committee”), a New Jersey farmers’ association focused on Latino immigrant farmworkers. “Local farms and family farms are struggling and suffering, and they will close. It’s a lot of fear on every side.” 

New Jersey’s farmers are not alone in their concerns. In major agricultural states including California, Pennsylvania, and New York, farmers are expressing similar hiring struggles. “New York’s small farms are beginning to feel the strain of immigration enforcement under the Trump administration,” Newsweek reported in September. 

The farming industry is reliant on foreign-born populations both state-wide and on a national scale. According to the USDA, 42% of U.S. crop workers are undocumented migrants. In New Jersey specifically, CATA estimates that up to 70% of farmworkers lack legal status. With the suspension of the 2024 Farmworker Protection Rule in June–– a Biden-era policy which expanded protections for migrant farmworkers on H-2A temporary visas–– and the Trump administration’s aggressive use of ICE for immigration-relatred arrests, farmers in New Jersey are beginning to raise concerns over labor shortages and operating costs. 

Since Trump’s inauguration, ICE has been racing to meet new White House arrest quotas for immigration violations nationwide, bolstered by a massive increase in funding through the “Big Beautiful Bill” signed into law on July 4th. While attorneys from the Trump administration denied the implementation of daily arrest quotas, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said on Fox News in May that ICE would set a goal of a “minimum” of 3,000 arrests a day–– 10 times the number of daily arrests under the Biden administration. In states with high migrant populations, the ICE crackdown has typically been more severe. In the first six months of Trump’s presidency, arrests doubled in California and tripled in Florida, according to a June report by the New York Times. 

While New Jersey, which has the fifth-highest immigrant population in the nation, has not faced quite as dramatic an escalation in arrests, average daily ICE arrests in the state are already up by 73% from 2024, according to the New York Times’ research. The surge in arrests has had a destabilizing effect on migrant communities. 

“The tone for immigration arrests has definitely worsened in New Jersey, and our communities are scared,” said Hollis Painting, a representative of Catholic Charities’ “El Centro” organization in Trenton. El Centro provides assistance with health care, naturalization, and basic needs for migrants on Trenton’s South Broad Street, serving between 2 and 3 thousand individuals annually. “Rumors spreading and fear are making migrants afraid to leave their homes, much less report for work,” said Painting. 

Migrants in New Jersey and nationally are increasingly noticing ICE agents in their neighborhoods and workplaces. The promotion of an immigration enforcement “tip line” used by the agency has also led to a rising sense of suspicion and paranoia amongst migrant communities, according to advocates including Resistencia en Acción, a New Jersey organization which operates a hotline for migrants to help respond to ICE sightings. 

“We often have calls to our hotline, I would say at least two to three times a day, seven days a week….unmarked cars, ICE agents walking around an area, waiting outside their workplace, their homes,” said Ana Pazmiño, the executive director of Resistencía en Acción NJ, “90% of the time they don’t even have a search warrant, I would say. It’s basically them just looking to arrest as many people as they can.” 

ICE has already completed several major raids across New Jersey under Trump’s new bill. On July 8th, ICE arrested 20 individuals at an Alba Wine and Spirits warehousing facility in Edison. Later that month, on July 24th, Homeland Security officials stopped a van carrying a group of Guatemalan migrants to landscaping work in Princeton, detaining 15. Most recently, raids in Princeton and Jersey City resulted in the arrest of 9 Chilean nationals on September 19th. 

“The immigration response has been very harsh. There’s a lot of cruelty involved,” said Stephen Macedo, a professor of Politics at Princeton specializing in immigration policy. “The Biden administration made a grave error in allowing so much undocumented migration. The Trump administration is now taking liberties in responding to the issue and its enforcement measures have been cruel.”

The President responded to concerns about the way the new ICE quotas were affecting farmworker performance in a Truth Social post in June.

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote. “This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”

However, Congress has yet to provide a solution to the concerns of farmers nationwide. Rather, in response to protests over immigration enforcement in states including California and Oregon, the Trump administration is deploying the National Guard against its citizens. On Sunday, Trump sent 300 federalized members of the California National Guard to Oregon–– a decision Gov. Gavin Newsom of California called “reckless and authoritarian conduct,” according to the New York Times. The President previously activated more than 4,000 troops in California to address similar protests in June. 

“Until migrant workers feel secure, the farming industry in New Jersey will continue to suffer,” said Zepeda, on behalf of CATA. “I don’t know how long our local farms will survive.”

The Russo-Ukrainian war continues to escalate, with major advancements in drone technology threatening only more severe destruction to Ukraine in the near future. Simultaneously, as the number of Ukrainians in need of foreign asylum increases (with 4.2 million refugees already registered for temporary protection in EU states as of February), EU nations’ resources–– and willingness to provide aid–– are dwindling. In Germany, the world’s third-largest refugee hosting country with over 1.2 million Ukrainian migrants at present, leaders are struggling to accommodate a persistent need for asylum. The country is grappling with strained public services and a severe housing crisis. Consequently, in the past year, benefits for asylum seekers have narrowed to a “bed, bread, soap” approach–– basic assistance is still provided, but Ukrainians in Germany are not receiving comprehensive aid from the government. Nearing the end of his term in the spring, Chancellor Scholz became increasingly hard on asylum seekers, and implemented heightened border controls in Germany akin to those of neighboring countries. At the same time, anti-migrant sentiment in Germany is growing, with heightened attacks on asylum seekers reflecting a growing sense of frustration and xenophobia in Germany.
Still, Germany’s response to the Ukrainian crisis is set apart from its neighbors of Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands, which plainly discourage asylum seekers from entering their borders. The question stewing in Germany across all of the sources for this week is one I think would be quite familiar to American audiences: where (else) is there for asylum seekers to go?
Along this vein, I was fascinated in this week’s sources by the connection between American and Ukrainian Evangelical Christians in A Faith Under Siege. Christian Hickey’s disapproval of Tucker Carlson’s misinformation regarding the treatment of Christians in Ukraine (even though Hickey is a self-proclaimed supporter of Carlson), was one particularly notable instance where political lines and national borders fell to a sense of common faith and compassion. A Faith Under Siege led me to wonder about the religious practices of Ukrainian refugees living in Germany and around the EU. Is the resurgence of Christian community and faith which took place in Kherson following its liberation (and in other parts of Ukraine) also happening amongst migrant Ukrainians in Berlin and other European cities? (And, on a more skeptical note, is this “resurgence” overblown or exaggerated in the documentary, which is clearly steeped in a Christian and American perspective?) How might Christianity characterize the Ukrainian perception of the war in “Europe’s bible belt”? What is the role of religious difference in the refugee experience in Germany, which is also currently accommodating asylum seekers from Syria in comparable numbers? (interesting read on religious differences amongst migrants in Germany: https://www.uscannenbergmedia.com/2025/04/30/the-religious-refugee-experience-in-germany/) And can a resurgence in Evangelical and Protestant faith amongst Ukrainians help to counteract the attack on their nation? (I would be interested in researching the religious practices of Ukrainian refugees in Germany on our trip to Berlin next month.)