January 15, 2026<\/b> \u2013 The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation that has roiled Minneapolis and led to the shooting death of Renee Good is also impacting farms and food businesses across Minnesota, according to legislators, government officials, and farmers.<\/p>\n
\u201cICE is terrorizing our communities, including our farm communities,\u201d Angie Craig (D-Minnesota), the top Democrat on the Agriculture Committee, said at a Capitol Hill press conference Thursday morning. \u201cThey are not just in the Twin Cities. They are everywhere.\u201d Craig said one Minnesota dairy farmer had reached out to her about his workers not wanting to come in because agents were waiting near the farm.<\/p>\n
At a separate press conference<\/a> hosted by state legislators at the state capitol on Wednesday, state Senator Aric Putnam, a Democrat, said he had received reports that the state\u2019s guest farmworkers, who have legal status through the H-2A program<\/a>, are afraid to go to work. \u201cWe are actually in our communities, unlike Kristi Noem,\u201d Putnam said. \u201cWe\u2019re in our communities and we know what\u2019s going on in them.\u201d<\/p>\n Minnesota Farmers Union president Gary Wertish, a grain and livestock farmer, said that the union\u2019s members \u201care increasingly concerned about ICE\u2019s operations in greater Minnesota.\u201d Restaurant closures<\/a> due to safety concerns are impacting the farms that supply them, he said.<\/p>\n Arrests and ensuing protests have taken place at Target<\/a>, a major grocer, and a local news outlet reported<\/a> that on Tuesday, agents arrested a worker at a turkey-processing plant during a shift change. (Hormel, which owns Jennie O Turkey, did not respond to Civil Eats\u2019 request for confirmation or details.)<\/p>\n The Land Stewardship Project<\/a> (LSP), which supports Minnesota farms and rural communities, sent out a press release detailing the organization\u2019s efforts to protect immigrants in the state\u2019s rural communities.<\/p>\n \u201cLSP supports our immigrant neighbors, no matter their status, because we believe we will not have a sustainable farm and food system until it is sustainable for everyone,\u201d said Nick Olson, a farmer and organizer with LSP, who told Civil Eats he heard reports of farmers impacted but all were afraid to speak out due to safety concerns.<\/p>\n At the state press conference, Andrea Vaubel, Minnesota\u2019s deputy commissioner of agriculture, said that the issue could have serious ripple effects. \u201cWe\u2019re talking grocery stores, we\u2019re talking food processing facilities, we\u2019re talking meat processors, we\u2019re talking about dairy farms,\u201d she said. \u201cThe food supply will be significantly affected if this continues like this.\u201d<\/p>\n ICE did not respond to a request for comment. (Link to this post<\/a>.)<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The post ICE Crackdown Is Impacting Minnesota\u2019s Farms and Food System, Officials\u00a0Say<\/a> appeared first on Civil Eats<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January 15, 2026 \u2013 The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation that has roiled Minneapolis…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/authorwebsitepublishing.xyz\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/authorwebsitepublishing.xyz\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/authorwebsitepublishing.xyz\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/authorwebsitepublishing.xyz\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/authorwebsitepublishing.xyz\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/authorwebsitepublishing.xyz\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/authorwebsitepublishing.xyz\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/authorwebsitepublishing.xyz\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/authorwebsitepublishing.xyz\/demo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}