It’s been almost two years since I began reporting on abuses against foreign farmworkers in Georgia. Some of the workers I found had come to the United States legally through the H-2A visa program and were harmed and exploited by subcontractors – despite protections that were supposed to be guaranteed by the federal government.
During those two years, I thought a lot about how the government’s obligation to keep foreign workers safe clashed with another priority: helping America’s farmers stay in business.
Farmers have long called for fewer H-2A regulations. This is due in part to the exorbitant costs of the program, which sets a minimum hourly wage and requires farmers to pay for workers’ housing and transportation. As one Georgia farmer wrote last year in a letter to the U.S. Department of Labor: “It felt like every policy related to the H2A program was made with a sole focus on benefiting the migrant worker. »
All of this reminds me of a frigid weekend in January 2025, early in my reporting, when I showed up at a farmers’ conference in Savannah, Georgia. What farmers were looking for at that rally — and what happened in the months that followed — illustrates the tension between keeping workers safe and keeping farms solvent.
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After walking through a well-lit convention hall — past the tractor salesman’s booth, the labor regulator’s booth and tables of canned peaches and dried blueberries — I arrived at a room full of farmers eager to learn what President Donald Trump’s second term would mean for an industry dependent on foreign labor and facing a growing number of bankruptcies.
A small group of lawyers and lobbyists made several presentations to farmers. One promised that Trump could “profoundly” change the program, in part by making it easier to hire H-2A workers and paying them less. And if the lobbyists’ plans succeeded, farmers would save even more money by facing fewer labor protections for their workers.
“Everything is on the table,” said Braden Boucek, a lawyer who has represented the agriculture industry in challenges to the H-2A program requirements.
In the coming year, Trump’s immigration policies would significantly reduce the number of immigrants crossing the border and speed up expulsions of people without legal status living in the country. But one important avenue – the H-2A visa program – would remain wide open. And the administration, under pressure from the agricultural sector, would be quick to enact the kinds of changes that lobbyists had been talking to farmers about that frigid January weekend.
To get the financial relief farmers were looking for, three key elements needed to change with the H-2A program, lawyers and lobbyists told farmers at the conference.
The first was to roll back parts of a rule adopted by the Biden administration. The rule gave workers the right to certain union protections, including those that would protect them from unfair treatment by their employers. Farmers opposed the rule because they felt it would make it more difficult to run their businesses.
At the conference, I listened as Leon Sequeira, former deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor, explained to farmers how several pending lawsuits could help “invalidate” parts of the rule. Last June, a Georgia blueberry farm, along with 17 states, sued the administration, alleging the rule went beyond what Congress allowed. That lawsuit, along with two others, led to injunctions that temporarily suspended part of the rule.
Sequeira, who is an attorney in one of the three cases, later told me that the legal effort “is not intended to deny workers more protections.” Rather, the goal is to protect farmers against the excesses of the U.S. Department of Labor.
“People can certainly differ on whether or not workers should have greater protections under the law,” he told me. “But as several courts have said, it is a decision for Congress, not the agency,” to make the decision to pass laws.
Five months after Trump took office, his administration suspended enforcement of President Joe Biden’s regime. He then proposed canceling parts of it. This proposal is pending.
The second change was to slow or stop wage increases for H-2A workers that had skyrocketed under the first Trump administration and the Biden administration. After months of pressure on the industry, the Trump administration last year reduced the hourly wage rate, which is expected to save farmers more than $2 billion a year. These savings are expected to cost H-2A workers dearly up to 32% of their annual salaryaccording to the think tank Economic Policy Institute.
The last thing I heard at the conference was an ambitious legal strategy to further advance farmers’ interests.
One of the attorneys, Ann Margaret Pointer, said three recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings had taken together to diminish the powers of the federal government. A decision limits capacity federal agencies to create new regulations. Another does it harder for agencies to fine companies that violate certain federal laws. And a third does it easier for employers to challenge federal regulations this had been planned for many years.
Pointer said these rulings could pave the way for future lawsuits challenging the visa program — and could strengthen farmers’ chances of winning those lawsuits.
All three efforts were essential, she told farmers at the conference, to “keep some of the costs of complying with the H-2A program from falling on your shoulders.”
I recently contacted the lawyers and lobbyists who spoke at that conference to ask what they thought of the progress in implementing the plan they outlined.
Boucek, who is now a U.S. attorney in Tennessee, declined to comment for this story.
Both Pointer and Sequeira said the Trump administration’s early changes to the program made it work better for farmers. Sequeira also said the changes are just the beginning of the agricultural sector’s wish list.
Pointer and Sequeira said the larger changes industry is seeking in the H-2A program will require congressional action. They pointed a finger recently submitted invoice which proposes limiting wage increases, cutting red tape for farmers, and allowing other sectors of the agricultural industry to participate in H-2A. (Labour and immigrant advocacy organizations oppose the bill, saying it would harm farm workers and amount to executive overreach.)
Until Congress changes the statute, Sequeira said, the Labor Department “can only play around the edges.”
