There Is No Bigger Kitchen-Table Issue Than ICE Violence

Given their fixation on America’s dining rooms, it may help Jeffries and Schumer understand the problem of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to put it all in their favored kitchen-table terms. While there is no question crimes like the murder of Renee Good and ICE’s mass deportation campaigns in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Louisiana, and North Carolina are a flagrant assault on human rights and American democracy, the agency’s activities are also putting the squeeze on everyone’s pocketbooks. Not only are ICE’s operations hiking up everyone’s grocery bills, they are also, contrary to administration claims, making the housing crisis worse by terrorizing the construction industry and making life unlivable in immigrant neighborhoods.

When it comes to grocery bills, ICE’s raids have frozen large swathes of American agriculture with chilling consequences for consumers nationwide. The American Immigration Council estimated that, as of 2019, nearly half of all farmworkers were immigrants and that 27.3 percent are undocumented. These figures rise even higher when the question shifts to crop production; there, immigrants make up 57 percent of the workforce, with undocumented workers making up 36.4 percent of that total. The United States, in other words, depends on immigrants to stay fed, ensure abundant supplies of food, and keep the costs of grocery bills down.

With these realities in mind, it is unsurprising that ICE’s mass-deportation campaign has significantly disrupted food production. A Bay Area Council–UC Merced study from June 2025 argued that expelling all undocumented immigrants from California would shrink the size of the state’s agricultural sector by 14 percent, putting a serious crimp in America’s most agriculturally productive state. But this damage is not limited to the Golden State. Agricultural advocates were sounding the alarm as early as April 2025 after the American Business Immigration Coalition determined that mass deportation, nationwide, would shrink agricultural output by between $30 billion and $60 billion and push many farms to the breaking point.