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Trump marks first 100 days in office in campaign mode, focused on grudges and grievances; Maine's Rep. Pingree focuses on farm resilience as USDA cuts funding; AZ protesters plan May Day rally against Trump administration; Proposed Medicaid cuts could threaten GA families' health, stability.

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Trump marks first 100 days of his second term. GOP leaders praise the administration's immigration agenda, and small businesses worry about the impacts of tariffs as 90-day pause ends.

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Migration to rural America increased for the fourth year, technological gaps handicap rural hospitals and erode patient care, and doctors are needed to keep the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians healthy and align with spiritual principles.

Migrant farmworkers in VA threatened by mass deportation policy

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Wednesday, February 19, 2025   

President Donald Trump has issued a flurry of executive orders meant to jump-start his mass deportation policy but the policy may negatively affect migrant farmworkers in Virginia.

Nationwide, nearly half of agricultural workers are immigrants and more than a quarter of those workers are undocumented. More than 300,000 people work in Virginia's agricultural sector, many of whom are immigrants. Numbers are not available at the state level for how many workers are undocumented.

Manuel Gago Silcox, co-director of the Virginia-based Worker Justice Program at the Legal Aid Justice Center, said Trump's policies come during a slow period in agricultural production in the Commonwealth.

"We're still not seeing a big repercussion of this," Gago Silcox pointed out. "We will know about this when the season starts, like around May, April. We'll see how this plan will be affecting farms and crops, especially in the summer, the harvesting season, when it's more labor-intensive."

Overall, 42% of farmworkers do not have an authorization to work in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Gago Silcox expects applications for H2-A visas, a program for companies to hire foreign workers for agricultural jobs, to dramatically increase.

Gago Silcox added there is a lot of confusion in migrant farmworker communities about immigration raids potentially happening at workplaces. Many thought the raids were supposed to target criminals, instead of workers.

"It's at a workplace. They are people that are doing work. They are feeding their families, and they're feeding other families," Gago Silcox explained. "So they don't understand why these raids at the workplace, while people are trying to earn their basic needs, are taking place there. "

Gago Silcox noted groups are currently working to educate migrant workers about their rights and pass out red cards, which detail the constitutional rights of both citizens and noncitizens if they are approached by immigration officers.


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