The Precarity Economy: Immigration Enforcement and the Future of American Labor Policy

In 2019, ICE conducted one of the largest workplace immigration raids in US history at a network of poultry plants in Mississippi. The arrest of 680 Hispanic undocumented workers freed up positions for American citizens in the area, many of whom were unemployed at the time. Yet, those positions, which paid the federal $7.25 minimum wage, didn’t fill up—and the plants closed. This came immediately following Koch Foods, the operators of the plants, settling for $3.75 million in an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) lawsuit alleging supervisors hit Hispanic employees and charged them money to use the bathroom. This settlement highlighted the industry's entrenched exploitation, dating back to the 1990s, when Mississippi plants began to hire Latino workers who, lacking leverage, endured lower wages and harsh conditions.

The inability to fill those jobs wasn’t a mystery or failure of the local workforce, but rather the outcome of an industry built on the mindset that workers are temporary, disposable, and too vulnerable to fight for anything better. The work, which involved cutting, sorting, and processing raw poultry on fast-moving lines, involved extremely low wages, demanding conditions, and no significant opportunities for advancement. Immigrant workers threatened with deportation at any mention of resistance had no leverage and depended on these positions to support themselves and their families. These raids don’t just highlight the role of immigrant labor in the American economy; they underscore the ways in which enforcement-first policies destabilize industries without fixing the underlying problem––the unsustainable nature of the jobs themselves. 

These systemic vulnerabilities don’t disappear when the raids end; they persist, reinforced by the ongoing threat of enforcement. Even without mass deportations, rhetoric alone can reshape labor markets by driving down wages, deterring worker advocacy, and influencing hiring practices. Industries that rely on undocumented labor don’t just depend on the work itself but on the precarity of those doing it—a workforce less likely to demand higher pay or better conditions.

In December 2006, immigration authorities arrested roughly 1,300 illegal immigrants at Swift & Co. meat processing plants in Minnesota, Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, and Iowa in what was then the largest immigration enforcement action in U.S. history. Among them were several hundred US citizens, misidentified by E-Verify and SSA databases to be not authorized for employment—an error that the National Immigration Law Center estimates impacts up to 3.6 million eligible workers per year. These raids destabilized towns like Worthington, Minnesota, where many children only found out they had been separated from their families when nobody came to pick them up from school. Swift & Co. took over four months to rebuild its workforce, despite launching a major transportation initiative to bus in unskilled laborers at minimum wage. Many of these workers were African refugees who met the company’s documentation requirements.

Following the Swift raids, the Center for Immigration Studies released a report on their effects as well as the circumstances that produced them. Findings outlined the history of the packing industry in these small towns, where conditions had rapidly deteriorated without wage increases for decades, despite inflation making these wages less and less valuable over time. Worker turnover was consistently high, between 40 and 70% per year. This business model was intentional and persisted because of the seemingly endless supply of workers in these areas, most of whom were immigrants who lacked the leverage to advocate for any improvements. As early as 1985, failed strikes led to a cooling effect among immigrant worker resistance, where, as labor historians have noted, the industry “drew on workers with limited job options, especially immigrants and those without the resources or skills to find more desirable employment.”

Evidently, the historical implications and rhetoric around the threat of deportation can be enough to impact working conditions to a point where some of the most important jobs in the American economy are completely undesirable. This is already unfolding today as further deportations loom, even in immigration-friendly states like California. Since President Trump’s inauguration in January, day laborers, who have long been the backbone of California’s construction and manual labor market, have largely retreated from street corners and public spaces where they once waited for work, fearing deportation. Now, with California facing surging demand for construction labor, particularly after the Palisades fires, the state is experiencing a severe shortage of workers. Some experts have projected the mass deportation agenda to cost nearly $130 million in lost GDP in 2025 alone. This not only worsens the labor shortage, but it also exacerbates the American housing crisis, as construction efforts become more expensive with a smaller workforce.

In a modern economy where immigrant workers fill many low-wage, physically demanding jobs, people often cite the idea that “only immigrants will do these jobs” to explain the reliance on undocumented labor. However, labor shortages following workplace raids suggest that these jobs remain difficult to fill regardless of workforce composition. Industries such as meatpacking, agriculture, and construction have faced persistent challenges in worker retention, as wages have stagnated, job protections have weakened, and high turnover has become the norm. In cases like the Swift and Koch raids, the removal of undocumented workers did not lead to a surge in American hires. Instead, vacancies remained unfilled, underscoring broader structural issues within these industries.

The question industry leaders and policymakers must now ask themselves, with mass deportations looming and rhetoric only getting stronger, is how these positions can be made more stable and desirable to working Americans. High turnover positions only benefit industries in the short term; any instability could quickly wipe out an entire workforce. Implementing immigration-sensitive labor policies, such as pathway-to-citizenship programs, may offer greater stability for both workers and employers. For example, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act has helped to keep the agricultural workforce stable by giving eligible workers the chance to become legal citizens while keeping their jobs. 

Enforcement-first immigration policies have repeatedly failed to deliver on opening up desirable jobs to Americans. Instead, they create instability, hurting businesses and workers. Historically, some of the largest-scale ICE raids have proven that removing undocumented workers doesn’t lead to an influx of American hires; they lead to labor shortages, higher turnover, and, in some cases, business closure. Immigration enforcement and labor policy are inseparable, shaping both industries and lives. Today, policymakers must recognize that stability, both for businesses and workers, depends not only on who fills these jobs but also on the conditions that make them worth keeping.