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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids are terrorizing immigrants across the Midwest. In addition to arbitrary\u00a0arrests<\/a>\u00a0of Spanish-speakers, some of them U.S. citizens, in Chicago, federal agents have randomly snatched\u00a0roofers<\/a>\u00a0in St. Paul, Minnesota; a\u00a0handful of men<\/a>\u00a0remodeling a house in suburban Illinois; twenty-four\u00a0dairy workers<\/a>\u00a0in Manitowoc, Wisconsin; and seven\u00a0construction workers<\/a>\u00a0sharing a home in Madison. The people being seized are not \u201ccriminals\u201d or \u201cterrorists,\u201d as the Trump Administration claims. They are longtime U.S. residents\u2014landscapers, farmworkers, construction crews\u2014working people contributing to the U.S. economy and supporting their families.<\/p>\n Along with the nightmarish crackdown by masked agents in unmarked vans, the Trump Administration is deliberately moving people from local detention centers to facilities in faraway states very quickly, making it hard for their lawyers and family members to locate them and putting them on a quick path to deportation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re having to go to federal court and sue the government to get people out of detention because the feds are saying that they are not eligible to be released on bond if they are unauthorized crossers,\u201d Madison immigration attorney Aissa Olivarez tells me. \u201cNow we\u2019re doing two to three cases in one, because we have to sue to get them out on bond, where we used to be able to say they\u2019re not a danger or flight risk.\u201d<\/p>\n The quick arrests, sometimes by local cops acting as agents of the federal government, and the shuffle of the people they arrest out of town, \u201cincreases that pretrial-to-detention pipeline,\u201d Olivarez says. \u201cIt means so many people are being deported before they ever have a day in criminal court.\u201d<\/p>\n Some people are so desperate to get out of indefinite detention that they are signing away their rights, accepting voluntary deportation even when they have a good case.<\/p>\n \u201cMass deportation\u201d was a Trump campaign promise in 2024. But the reality is shocking to some Trump voters who rely on immigrant workers, including farmers across the Midwest.<\/p>\n \u201cTaking hardworking employees off farms does not make communities safer,\u201d Brian Rexing, a dairy farmer from Indiana, said during a panel discussion on immigration and farm labor at the World Dairy Expo in Madison in October. He described the Hispanic workers on his farm as \u201cway more than employees\u2014they work together with me and my family side by side.\u201d<\/p>\n Recently, even the Trump Administration\u2019s\u00a0Labor Department declared<\/a>\u00a0that the nation\u2019s food system faces an emergency due to the administration\u2019s aggressive mass deportation program, warning in a\u00a0federal filing<\/a> first reported by The American Prospect<\/em><\/a>\u00a0that the immigration crackdown on agricultural workers has created a significant \u201crisk of supply shock-induced food shortages.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Department does not believe American workers currently unemployed or marginally employed will make themselves readily available in sufficient numbers to replace large numbers of aliens,\u201d the filing states, contradicting Trump Administration rhetoric about immigrants stealing American jobs.<\/p>\n Farmers have also been hit hard by Trump\u2019s tariffs and trade wars, with high prices on farm equipment and fertilizer driven by tariffs draining their pocketbooks, and a record soybean crop stuck in storage after China, U.S. farmers\u2019 biggest soybean customer, stopped buying U.S. soybeans in May. By the time China lifted its embargo, plenty of damage had already been done.<\/p>\n \u201cFarmers are getting it in so many ways; their exports are down, their costs are up, and they\u2019re losing their workforce,\u201d says Gbenga Ajilore, chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a former senior adviser for rural development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.<\/p>\n Despite all that, farmer sentiment \u201cactually hasn\u2019t really moved as much as you would expect, given what\u2019s happening,\u201d he says. He attributes it to a wait-and-see attitude among farmers who have faithfully supported Trump for years. But now, he adds, \u201cthe impact is starting to really hit home.\u201d<\/p>\n Those big Trump banners are still flying over soybean fields in Wisconsin. But the chaotic economy, scary ICE raids, and the Republicans\u2019 refusal to renew health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are beginning to take a heavy toll on rural, Trump-voting areas of the state.<\/p>\n During the protracted government shutdown battle, it became clear that Republican members of Congress in lockstep with Trump are willing to inflict maximum pain on their constituents in order to deliver a win to their leader. The Agriculture Department\u00a0asserted<\/a>\u00a0in late October that it would not follow its own plan to tap into contingency funds to cover food assistance for more than forty-two million people after November 1. The agency removed its assurance that it would protect Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits from its website and instead\u00a0posted<\/a>\u00a0a take-no-prisoners banner: \u201cBottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 1,\u201d the banner declared. \u201cWe are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats.\u201d<\/p>\n Federal courts ordered the Agriculture Department to release the funds, but delays in food assistance still hit vulnerable families in November.<\/p>\n Eager to pin the resulting catastrophe on Democrats, Republicans smugly declared that they can either drop their insistence on protecting ACA health insurance subsidies or watch children go hungry. We might be approaching an inflection point for Midwestern MAGA voters, too. How much longer will people be taken in by the propaganda emanating from a party that controls every branch of the federal government, yet insists it is powerless to stop the destruction it has unleashed?<\/p>\n The brutality, boorishness, and sheer tackiness of the Trump Administration are overwhelming.<\/p>\n Even as the horizon gets darker across the United States, Trump took a wrecking ball to the White House,\u00a0in order to convert\u00a0it into a Mar-a-Lago-style McMansion with a gaudy, oversized $350 million ballroom. A timeline on the official White House\u00a0Instagram<\/a>\u00a0feed promotes the destruction of the East Wing with official, black and white images of White House renovations by previous administrations. Swiping through the timeline, you can take a walk through a history that appears relatively normal until you reach recent Democratic administrations: \u201cBill Clinton scandal,\u201d with a picture of Monica Lewinsky, \u201cMuslim Brotherhood Visit\u201d with a picture of President Barack Obama in a turban, and \u201ccocaine scandal\u201d with an image of President Joe Biden\u2019s son Hunter sitting bare-chested in a bathtub. It\u2019s a gleeful middle finger to about half of U.S. voters who didn\u2019t choose Trump, and to anyone who believes there should be a shred of dignity attached to the office of the President.<\/p>\n We are living in dangerous times.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only way to get through this is through connecting with each other, using the knowledge of our rights,\u201d Christine Neumann-Ortiz, founder of the immigrant workers\u2019 rights group Voces de la Frontera,\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0during a forum at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison on responding to Trump\u2019s immigration crackdown earlier this year.<\/p>\n Know-your-rights training and quick-response teams are making a difference. Voces and other groups have ramped up rapid-response efforts, fact-checking misleading ICE reports that spread needless panic, and sending teams of observers out to meet real ICE raids when they happen.<\/p>\n It\u2019s encouraging to see video\u00a0posts<\/a>\u00a0of neighbors standing up for neighbors, blowing the whistle on ICE, and refusing to let community members be dragged away. And it\u2019s important to know that immigration lawyers continue to defend people from deportation and\u00a0win<\/a>\u00a0in court.<\/p>\n In our weird, hyperpartisan, siloed social media world, reality can be elusive. It\u2019s harder than ever for many to break with their political team, especially after hanging a giant banner on the side of the barn. Hard, but not impossible.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s true for all of us that it\u2019s hard to come to the conclusion that it\u2019s time to change after you\u2019ve been going one way for a good while,\u201d Ben Wikler, the former chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, commented to me recently. \u201cBut it\u2019s also the case that in Wisconsin, things don\u2019t have to change very much to get a dramatically different result.\u201d<\/p>\n Small acts of courage and resistance can add up to the dramatic difference we need to make.<\/p>\n Keeping in touch with our sense of justice, decency, and our shared humanity is the only way we\u2019ll come out of these dark times. That, plus continuing to fight like hell.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n