“Everybody’s just waiting for an ICE raid. When people you work with on a daily basis are worried, it’s stressful for everybody,” says one Oregon vineyard manager, who requested anonymity, because the stakes for immigrant workers are now so high. “That’s true even for the folks who have visas because they don’t know if and when their program will end.”
President Donald Trump campaigned on the promise to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. Within the first month of his presidency, he issued executive orders expanding expedited removal of undocumented immigrants, restricting birthright citizenship, halting the U.S. Refugee Program, denying funding for sanctuary jurisdictions, and beefing up the borders “against invasion.”
Since then, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has ramped up immigrant raids across the country. With Trump calling more and more National Guard troops into Los Angeles following protests against immigrant detentions, ICE agents roughing up and arresting elected officials investigating their actions, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller demanding 3,000 ICE arrests per day, employers and their immigrant workers throughout the U.S. are bracing for disruption. And as last week’s events have shown, the wine industry is not immune. While Trump briefly reversed course for immigrants working in farming and hospitality, his waiver seems now to be over.
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SevenFifty Daily spoke to wineries and vineyard management companies to find out how the industry is responding to the arrival of ICE agents in wine country and what they’re doing to protect themselves and their immigrant workers.
An Industry on Tenterhooks
Initially, ICE raids focused on urban areas, where media is centered, so authorities could make a show of enforcement, notes Michael Kaiser, the executive vice president and director of government affairs for WineAmerica, the industry’s lobbying body. But more recently, ICE has been active in farmlands—a trend that might be escalating. “As more crops are being harvested in summer and fall, we might see an uptick in looking at agricultural businesses,” says Kaiser.
Indeed, in May, ICE agents picked up a handful of laborers on California’s Central Coast, and in June, there were more ICE detentions in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties and in the San Joaquin Valley. Though it is unclear whether the people arrested had been working in vineyards, just last week, in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, ICE agents arrested Moises Sotelo. The vineyard manager, who, in 2024, launched Novo Start Vineyard Service after 30 years in the U.S., had been actively seeking citizenship. Now in ICE detention, allegedly in Arizona, his fate is uncertain, and his family has launched a GoFundMe for his legal support.
According to a 2021 to 2022 Department of Labor survey, 68 percent of agricultural workers are foreign born, and an estimated 42 percent are undocumented. The latter number is likely lower on vineyards, where owners can often afford to hire workers with legal status or bring in seasonal workers on H2A visas. Yet, even where vineyard stewards are working legally, family members might be undocumented. And documentation has not proven foolproof under the second Trump term, as the administration has deported even U.S. citizens. Thus, says Terence Mulligan, the executive director of the Napa Valley Community Foundation (NVCF), which funnels donations from Napa wineries and other sources into community support projects, “A lot of people are on tenterhooks.”
Terence Mulligan says the Napa Valley Community Foundation has seen a 200 percent spike in inquiries for legal services since November. Photo courtesy of the Napa Valley Community Foundation.
Carmen Naranjo, a San Francisco-based immigration attorney, notes that the relative lack of enforcement in agriculture early on in Trump’s second term might have been a sign of the calm before the storm. “They are trying to be more organized [than during the first Trump term],” she says. “They are getting warrants,” and that takes time. “It’s not a matter of if but of when.”
That leaves the industry in a position of uncertainty, particularly given Trump’s own mixed messaging. Hours after Sotelo’s arrest on Thursday, June 12, following a post by the President on Truth Social in support of agriculture and hospitality workers, a senior ICE official instructed agents to “hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants, and operating hotels.” Then, on Monday, under pressure from administration hawks, Trump reversed his stance and ordered ICE to resume raids of farming and hospitality businesses.
Amid the flip-flopping and White House infighting, Naranjo says, “Anything that may happen is just still up in the air. People should continue standing up for their rights, requesting to see a judge, and remaining silent.”
Getting Educated, Passing It On
In response, many in wine country are preparing for the worst. NVCF, whose board members include a host of wine industry professionals—Pete Richmond, the co-owner of Silverado Farming Company; Dalla Valle Vineyards’ second-generation winemaker Maya Dalla Valle; former Domaine Chandon winemaker Dawnine Dyer; Kevin Corley, the president of Monticello Vineyards—started readying for ICE raids in 2012, says Mulligan, “when I thought America had reached its anti-immigrant zenith” with the spread of state “show me your papers” laws.
Back then, the NVCF funded a Migration Policy Institute study, which found that 23 percent of Napa residents were foreign born, and a third of those were undocumented. Since that time, it has supported the growth of legal services in Napa that have garnered citizenship for more than 2,500 people.
Now those legal services are more needed than ever. “We’ve had a 200 percent increase in client inquiries since Trump’s inauguration,” says Mulligan. Yet, attaining legal status is also harder now. Since January, Naranjo reports, there’s been a 60 percent increase in requests for additional paperwork in response to visa and green card applications, and a 24 percent increase in denial rates. “Maybe this will be the end of visas from Mexico,” she says. “They’ll ask for so much evidence, it gets burdensome, so it might get difficult to sustain legal immigration.” Meanwhile, those showing up for appointments at immigration courts have become easy targets for ICE arrests.
As a result, NVCF has shifted gears. “We are still helping people become citizens, but we’re focused on defense,” says Mulligan. With funding from winegrowers, NVCF has hosted 62 seminars to disseminate know-your-rights information to 2,000 people in the Valley, including vineyard stewards, vineyard managers, and winery owners. It’s been handing out the Immigrant Legal Resource Center’s pocket-sized red cards, which list immigrants’ rights and privileges and are available in multiple languages. And it has been encouraging vineyard stewards to make family preparedness plans, which Mulligan equates to having a go bag in the event of a wildfire. “You need someone in place to take your kids in the event that you go to work at a winery but don’t come home.”
If the Trump administration operates as it did during its first term, people picked up by ICE who have been here for 10 years and have U.S. citizen children can, theoretically, apply for cancellation of removal, says Naranjo. “So they should have copies of their children’s birth certificates in their phones and say, ‘I want to see a judge.’” But former safeguards aren’t certainties. “If they kidnap people and put them on a plane, I’m not sure that’s the answer anymore.”
“Our communities are much quieter. You don’t see people gathering on Saturdays and Sundays at the local parks or going to the grocery stores …” – Quinn Pisoni, Pisoni Vineyards
Naranjo has been conducting seminars, including for the Napa Valley Vintners association’s 539 winery members, on dealing with audits, raids, arrests, and adjudication processes. She advises owners to have their paperwork in order in the event of an I-9 audit conducted to verify workers’ identities and legal employment status, or an H2A audit that checks on the visas of seasonal workers. The fines for audit violations increased tenfold under former President Joe Biden last year to $2,789 per form (in other words, for each improperly documented worker). Though wineries are not responsible for the undocumented workers hired by third-party contractors, “if there’s a sloppy job with paperwork, you should have both an immigration and white-collar criminal attorney because there could be criminal charges,” says Naranjo.
She also cautions wineries on giving advice to vineyard stewards. “It is a tricky situation to have an employer telling people, ‘Know your rights. Don’t say your name,’ as it’s almost officializing that you suspect some people are there without the right paperwork,” she says.
Be that as it may, the Oregon Winegrowers Association has been “amassing resources from other groups,” says executive director Jana McKamey, including the Oregon Department of Justice’s Sanctuary Promise Community Toolkit and red cards. After similar mobilization during the first Trump term, “folks are more prepared for interruptions and have an understanding of rights and responsibilities and legal requirements,” says McKamey.
Creating Communities of Support
Wine regions that previously built support networks to help vineyard stewards with other needs, such as affordable housing and healthcare, are now better positioned to carry out emergency responses to ICE. The Willamette Valley Wine Foundation has joined up with Latino-led nonprofits under the umbrella of Oregon for All, a network of organizations that support immigrant rights in the state, spreading information on resources like pro bono legal services, a hotline for reporting ICE activity, and know-your-rights audio in indigenous Mexican and Central American languages.
In the meantime, concerns that stewards will flee, leaving vineyards untended, have proven unfounded. Sofia Torres McKay, the co-owner of Oregon’s Cramoisi Vineyard and cofounder of Ahivoy, which provides career development to vineyard stewards, notes that this cohort “has always been in survival mode.” In that sense, says McKay, “I see the crews just working hard, despite the political and social environment.”
That’s crucial to a region that has built its reputation on quality and community, implies Michael Davies, the executive winemaker at the Willamette Valley’s Rex Hill. The immigrants there are “hard-working people doing important work, and without them as consumers we would be in a whole other hurt,” says Davies. “I think Willamette Valley wineries are like-minded about protecting labor and looking out for our people.”
Nevertheless, trepidation over ICE is affecting the social fabric in wine country. “Our communities are much quieter. You don’t see people gathering on Saturdays and Sundays at the local parks or going to the grocery stores. Guys and gals are going from their house out to their workplace and back,” says Quinn Pisoni, the viticulturalist for the Central Coast’s Pisoni Vineyards. “We keep our gates locked all the time. Our vineyards are up in the mountains, so employees are not on the main roads. We’re doing what we can to keep our team safe.”
The board of directors of the Napa Valley Grapegrowers has issued a statement that reads, in part, “Our farmworker community isn’t just essential to our success—they’re our neighbors, friends, and the heart of Napa Valley’s wine-growing heritage. That’s why we’re working harder than ever to support them through education, resources, and a voice for sensible immigration policies.”
Nonprofits like Vital Wines (pictured) are partnering with immigration rights advocates to help support their communities and workers. Photo courtesy of Stephanie Forrer.
In Walla Walla, Washington, Vital Wines, a nonprofit winery set up to fund improved access to healthcare for vineyard workers and their families, is working with the Walla Walla Immigrant Rights Coalition. “They give access to immigration attorneys, and if they have information they need to get out, we get that information out,” says Maddie Richards, the executive director. That cooperation is so important to Vital’s mission because the stress of living under the threat of deportation “has awful health outcomes,” she notes. “This statistic is from 2019, but the average Latino male in southeastern Washington has a 17-year shorter life span than his white counterpart.” Those in the process of residency or citizenship applications are banned from government assistance, which creates confusion. “People won’t go to the doctor,” she says, and that compounds health issues.
Waiting for Reform
Many in the wine industry argue that immigration reform is needed. One California winemaker, whose family immigrated here in the 1960s, employs and houses a full-time crew, most of whom are related. “We invest in their permanency,” she says, helping them through the citizenship process because “it creates community, which is behind the crafting of fine wines. That level of commitment to great quality and service has to do with how well workers are taken care of by their employer. You can’t have one without the other.” Yet, as her workers age, she is considering bringing in temporary visa holders.
She may be disappointed by the visa situation. The H2A program, for instance, was designed 40 years ago. Its requirements are a heavy lift for employers, and its restrictions are tough for laborers. In Texas’ Hill Country, Jackie Mancuso, the director of farming operations for Atlas Vineyard Management, houses, transports, and insures her workers under the requirements of the seasonal visa program. “It takes a lot of work and money, and you need to get lawyers involved,” she says. The minimum hourly wage for H2A workers in Texas is $15.79 on top of their housing, transportation, and insurance, “so you’re charging your customer $45 to $50 an hour per worker. That’s outrageous.” It’s even pricier on the West Coast, where wages are higher.
Moreover, Mancuso’s stewards are separated from their families three-quarters of the year. Her foreman has worked in the U.S. on an H2A visa for 15 years. “He wanted to take his family to Disney World,” she says, but he was forced to wait a year for their tourist visas. “That’s why we need immigration reform, to figure out how to make this easier for people.”
The Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would overhaul H2A, gets reintroduced every Congress. As of now, employers must advertise open positions in newspapers; the bill would create an electronic database of positions. It would extend the visa from one to three years and accommodate workers year round. Crucially, it would provide a permanent path to legal residence and citizenship, which H2A workers are barred from at present.
The bill’s co-sponsor is Congressman Dan Newhouse, Republican Chair of the Congressional Wine Caucus. “He comes from Washington’s Columbia Valley, where he knows how important this bill is,” says Kaiser. The hope is to fold the Farm Workforce Modernization Act into the Farm Bill. “But the Farm Bill is two years overdue. We have to see if they can even get that done.” Kaiser is not optimistic. “Our best chance was more than 10 years ago under former President Barack Obama. Trump came in the first time, then there was COVID, now there’s Trump again, and the possibility of legislation for widespread immigration reform is just gone.”
While Mancuso supports the idea of immigration reform and recognizes that her workers could be subject to questioning over their status, she is still in favor of some of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. “This work is backbreaking, and it’s harder in Texas because it’s so hot and humid, so we can’t get Americans to do this work,” she says. “Immigrants want to work hard for us. But we can’t have it both ways, so I fully support the Trump administration’s closed borders. We can’t have open borders with drug cartels and also innocent immigrants coming in.”
The Californian winemaker, whose family immigrated here in the 1960s, however, says what is needed is true leadership at the federal level, not fear mongering and ethnic profiling. “The government could treat immigration more diplomatically. The foundation of this country is immigrants. It’s crazy to single out specific nationalities,” she asserts. “When I became a U.S. citizen in Oakland, there were 102 nations represented. This is not just Hispanics. It’s all of us.”
Dispatch
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Betsy Andrews is an award-winning journalist and poet and the co-author of Coastal: 130 Recipes from a California Road Trip. Her writing can be found at betsyandrews.contently.com.