By: Anthony Pahnke, FFD Vice President and Associate Professor of International Relations at San Francisco State University.
Originally published by the Captimes (Madison, WI), 3/13/2025
About 100 people, including myself, my mother, faith leaders, some farmers and other community members from Wisconsin, joined an evening call a few weeks ago that had been organized by the interfaith group, WISDOM.
The topic: challenging 287g agreements.
Such agreements have become central to immigration policy debates, as they allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deputize local law enforcement to carry out President Trump’s plans for mass deportation.
Across the United States, 137 counties have signed up, including eight in Wisconsin. Lacking the resources and manpower to deport the estimated 11 million people who are in the U.S. without legal status, and with personnel challenges plaguing the Trump administration’s immigration plans the first time the Republican was in office, these agreements are critical to the government’s intention to increase arrests.
On our call, we discussed which sheriffs to contact, how to speak to them about the problems of working with ICE, and the need to continue to educate immigrants on their rights.
What really surprised me about that call was how so many different people were organizing to challenge a critical piece of the Trump agenda. Motivating us, at least my mother and me, was a strong sense of community that led our family to fight for one another in the past and that still pushes us to take a stand with the most vulnerable among us. In addition to economic considerations, we demand respect and dignity for all, including for immigrants, regardless of their legal status.
My mother lives on the dairy farm where we both grew up. Located in eastern Wisconsin, the dairy industry there and throughout the state has changed significantly over the past few decades. While in the past we milked cows with other family members, now undocumented workers mostly tend to the cattle.
Reports show that if mass deportation took place, Wisconsin’s dairies would be hit hard as no visa program exists for dairy workers and upwards of 70% lack legal status. With 5,661 operating dairies in the state, a 46% decrease from just over 10 years ago, farms have decreased in number while increasing in size and growing dependent on non-family labor.
At the same time, debates about the place of immigrants in our agricultural system are about more than dollars and cents.
Back in the 1960s, my grandfather dumped milk as part of the National Farmers Organization’s (NFO) efforts to raise public awareness and pressure lawmakers to improve milk prices to keep families on the land. Then, similar to the struggle for immigrant rights now, there were serious economic challenges in our community. But also at issue was respect and dignity, as the farmers who were putting the food on Americans’ tables deserved the means to provide a decent life for themselves.
What has remained the same over time is that those directly engaged in agriculture are on the frontlines to protect the land, care for the animals and provide us with food. Accordingly, both farmers and workers deserve not only decent incomes, but safety and security.
We find the opposite in programs like 287g. From increasing racial profiling, to causing undue financial problems for the counties that collaborate, the initiative strikes fear in immigrant families. The program has nothing to do with “going after the worst first” and targeting violent criminals as it overburdens our local law enforcement officers by making them do the job of federal agents.
The reasons that people come into the U.S. are many, including escaping war and poverty. As the vast majority commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens, they deserve better than to live in fear.
So until we have politicians willing to respect the millions of undocumented people in this country with real policies that could include worker visas or immigration reform, including for those who make our food system work, we will continue to have calls and organize for change.
