April 30, 2025 – As May Day approaches, and with the Trump administration reaching its 100-day mark, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins issued two statements in the past week touting the USDA’s efforts to curb undocumented immigration—moves that have had a significant impact on workers in food and agriculture and immigrant communities across the country.
Immigration crackdowns were central to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, and the first 100 days of his administration farmworkers and labor organizers have been detained or arrested alongside student activists and alleged members of Central American gangs. Farmers and farmworkers continue to worry that broader crackdowns will hurt an already tight labor market.
As with other departments, the USDA has worked to implement Trump’s policies. Rollins has stated she wants “to ensure that illegal immigrants do not receive federal benefits,” the agency said, by implementing stricter eligibility screening for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), among other initiatives.
Rollins says tighter restrictions will prevent “illegal aliens” from getting benefits. “We are stewards of taxpayer dollars, and it is our duty to ensure states confirm the identity and verify the immigration status of SNAP applicants,” she said in a statement. “USDA’s nutrition programs are intended to support the most vulnerable Americans. To allow those who broke our laws by entering the United States illegally to receive these benefits is outrageous.”
Rollins did not cite evidence to support that undocumented people in the U.S. are receiving federal benefits, which are denied to non-citizens in most cases. But she said she has issued guidance to state agencies “directing them to enhance identity and immigration verification practices when determining eligibility” for SNAP.
That could add steps to the process and make it harder in general for people to apply for benefits, which in turn could end up hurting farm laborers, foresters, and fishers, many of whom rely on such benefits. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that nearly 20 percent of farming, fishing, and forestry workers received SNAP benefits between 2015 and 2017. “Food workers are roughly twice as likely to need SNAP as the average U.S. worker,” the group said.
