Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration is piling pressure on US factories, according to employees and union leaders, as veteran workers from overseas are forced to leave their jobs.
As economists warn the administration’s full-scale deportation ambitions could ultimately cost millions of jobs, workers at two sites – in Michigan and Kentucky – told the Guardian that industrial giants are grappling with labor shortages.
The US president has moved to strip more than a million immigrants of their legal status in the US, including by shutting down the Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans (CHNV) Parole Program, which allowed hundreds of thousands to work legally in the country. It has meanwhile ramped up immigration arrest operations with prospective daily quotas of 3,000 arrests per day.
Such moves have piled pressure on industries across the US economy – including the food, hospitality, construction, transportation and care sectors – which rely on large numbers of migrants to do essential work.
At a GE Appliances plant in Louisville, Kentucky, more than 125 workers were abruptly forced out of their jobs in the spring due to programs cancelled as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown, according to an employee. GE Appliances makes home appliances including refrigerators, microwaves and dishwashers.
“In three different buildings, on a couple of different shifts, stewards reported that they lost production so they weren’t able to make all the products they were supposed to make,” said Jess Reese, a replacement operator at the plant and organizer for IUE-CWA Local 83761. “It was hard to cover certain job tasks on the assembly line, and so that created chaos, and it was just hard to get things done.”
Reese expressed concern about the threat of more workers being forced out. Trump’s efforts to revoke protected status could impact an additional 200 union members next February, she said. “Hundreds of workers kind of disappearing at the drop of a hat is no joke, as we’ve seen with the last wave of mass terminations.”
A spokesperson for GE Appliances said: “We added additional staffing where needed and continue to follow the law.”
At a Kraft-Heinz plant in Holland, Michigan, meanwhile, workers are said to have been mandated to work overtime. The firm is one of the largest food and beverage companies in the world, behind brands including Philadelphia cream cheese and Jell-O deserts.
“We had people there for 20 years, and all of a sudden they get notification their immigration authorization is revoked,” Tomas Torres, a maintenance mechanic of 13 years, and president of RWDSU Local 705. “And they can’t be there anymore, and that just puts a strain on everybody,.
“The lack of people on the lines. There are employees running two machines; it should be one person per machine. Manager and supervisors are all stressed out, and cancelling vacations for people because they don’t have enough to run the machines.”
Torres has been working 12- to 14-hour days, he said: part of a first shift, all of a second shift, and part of a third shift.
“I’m tired. And you catch people falling asleep on the line, and it’s a big safety issue,” he added. “All of this that has happened has affected everybody at the plant. It’s crazy, because I hear people complain every single day.”
Kraft Heinz refuted the plant is experiencing labor shortages due to immigration policy changes, but did not say how many workers were lost at the plant due to the changes.
“Kraft Heinz has strict work authorization verification processes that comply with all applicable laws and regulations,” said the firm in a statement. “Overtime is driven by the needs of the business, and we are currently in one of our busiest seasons of the year.”
As Trump’s officials press ahead, economists have warned that deporting millions of immigrants from the US could have drastic consequences. The Economic Policy Institute estimated this month that 4 million deportations would result in the loss of 3.3 million jobs held by immigrants in the US and 2.6 million US-born employees, hitting industries including construction and childcare.
The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative thinktank, meanwhile found that Trump’s immigration policies would likely lead to a negative net migration into the US for the first time in decades and result in a decrease in US gross domestic product of between 0.3% and 0.4%, or $70.5bn to $94bn in economic output, annually.
“One day they are there,” said Maria Jose Padmore, a human services assistant for Fairfax County in Virginia. “And the next day, I’m looking for my coworker, and he’s gone because their Temporary Protected Status expired.
“Forget about the fact that I now have to share my coworkers’ job. Let’s think about my coworkers’ family: how are they going to put food on their table?”
Padmore was speaking at a panel on how Trump’s immigration polices are affecting workers, organized by the AFL-CIO in Washington DC this month. Gwen Mills, President of Unite Here, the largest hospitality union in the US, said they were “wreaking havoc across the families of our coworkers and in our communities”.
“Oftentimes within the labor movement, we find ourselves divided by industries,” said Jimmy Williams, president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, which represents construction workers. “When it comes to immigration, it’s gotta be the one single thing that puts a thread between a hotel worker, a construction worker, a service worker, a public employee, a teacher. This is something that affects every single working person in this country.”
The Trump administration alleges that CHNV and other temporary protected status programs were abused, a claim challenged by groups such as Refugees International.
“There is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force, and President Trump’s agenda to create jobs for American workers represents this Administration’s commitment to capitalizing on that untapped potential while delivering on our mandate to enforce our immigration laws,” said Abigail Jackson, White House spokesperson.
But its policies are already causing apprehension on the factory floor. “This has a real impact on immigrant workers, obviously, but it also has a real impact on non immigrant workers,” Reese, at the GE Appliances plant in Louisville, said. “It’s really important that we stick together, because we all want the same things.
“We want safe workplaces. We want good wages. We all want to go home to our family in one piece. We want to live in a safe place. We want to be free. These are things we all share, and we’re only going to get that stuff if we stick together.”
