Under Trump, Wisconsin dairies struggle to keep immigrants

Twenty-six-year-old Rosa Jiménez and her husband, Manuel, 36, used to do the grocery shopping together. They would take the kids and make a day of it. But, lately, Manuel goes alone.

“Imagine if they (immigration authorities) picked us up there. I won’t take the risk of them taking my children,” Jiménez says, bursting into tears as she sits in her kitchen on a recent afternoon.

The couple always planned on one day returning to Mexico when they came to the United States to find work on farms; she arrived 10 years ago, he has been here for 15. But negative depictions of immigrants by the president and the open hostility the family has experienced since the election accelerated those plans.

Now living with their two young children on a Pepin County dairy farm in northwestern Wisconsin where Manuel works, the couple — who asked that their real names not be used because of their immigration status — are making plans to leave their life in America’s Dairyland and go back across the border, much sooner than they had expected...

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Ken Notes: While not directly related to the environment, this is a huge issue to Wisconsin`s Dairy industry. While Economic Director for Lafayette County I learned that Hispanic labor is hired for their dedication and work ethic. They are paid well and work hard. We need to find solutions for this problem and "just ship them back" will not work. If we do not want exponential growth in factory farms and industrial we need to assure that the family farmers can continue to find reliable labor.