US agriculture secretary says Medicaid recipients can replace deported farm workers

The US agriculture secretary has suggested that increased automation and forcing Medicaid recipients to work could replace the migrant farm workers being swept up in Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, despite years of evidence and policy failures that those kinds of measures are not substitutes for the immigrant labor force underpinning American agriculture.

Speaking at a news conference with Republican governors on Tuesday, Brooke Rollins said the administration would rely on “automation, also some reform within the current governing structure”, and pointed to “34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program” as potential workers.

“There’s been a lot of noise in the last few days and a lot of questions about where the president stands and his vision for farm labor,” Rollins said. “There are plenty of workers in America”.

Trump signed legislation Friday creating the first federally mandated work requirements for Medicaid recipients, set to take effect by the end of 2026. Medicaid is a healthcare safety net program that currently covers pregnant women, mothers, young children and the disabled, with 40 states having expanded coverage to working poor families earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level.

However, agricultural experts and economists have repeatedly warned that neither automation nor welfare reforms can realistically replace the migrant workforce that dominates American farming.

According to USDA data, more than half of US farm workers are undocumented immigrants, and just under 70% are foreign-born.

And a March report from the Urban Institute found that most Medicaid recipients are either already working, exempt or face some sort of instability.

Previous state-level immigration crackdowns are also evidence of the challenges facing Rollins’ proposed solution. Georgia’s 2011 immigration law resulted in a shortage of over 5,200 farm workers and projected losses of hundreds of millions of dollars at the time, according to a University of Georgia study. Alabama farmers reported similar struggles, with locals telling the Associated Press in 2011 that American workers lasted about a day at their new farm jobs.

While agricultural automation is advancing fast, it still appears to remain years away from replacing manual labor in fruit and vegetable harvesting.

Rollins acknowledged the administration must be “strategic” in implementing deportations “so as not to compromise our food supply”, but held that Trump’s promise of “100 percent American workforce stands.”

Trump himself appeared to soften his stance last week, telling Fox News he was considering exemptions for undocumented farm workers.

“What we’re going to do is we’re going to do something for farmers where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge,” he said.