'Still going to be America’s Dairyland?' ICE raid threatens core identity of US heartland

The morning of Sept. 25, federal agents and immigration authorities swept into Manitowoc to arrest people alleged to be in the country without proper documentation. Agents first went to a Walmart parking lot where dairy workers are known to meet up before driving to the farms where they work. The action then moved on to private residences, where migrants were arrested as they left the house.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security claims the ICE raid in Manitowoc was aimed at dismantling an international sex and drug trafficking ring, but has so far provided little evidence to support that claim. Federal authorities initially said 21 migrants had been arrested in the raid, before later saying 24 had been picked up.

On Tuesday, DHS released the names of six of the 24. Only one individual named in the release has been charged with a sex crime — Jose Hilario Moreno Portillo, who was charged in Manitowoc County court in May with the 2nd degree sexual assault of a child. However, Moreno Portillo has not yet been convicted and court records show he’s been in ICE custody since July.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment on why Moreno Portillo was named as being arrested in the Manitowoc action when he was already in ICE custody.

The five other named individuals have been convicted of identity theft, hit-and-run, disorderly conduct, driving under the influence, possession of narcotic equipment, traffic offenses and a failure to appear charge.

In Wisconsin, immigrants without documentation aren’t able to obtain driver’s licenses, which often causes them to wrack up several criminal traffic offenses when they’re pulled over and ticketed for driving without a license.

With little proof that ICE actually broke up a ring of sex traffickers, immigration advocates and farm groups see the raid as a direct threat to the state’s dairy farms and the immigrant workers that keep the industry afloat.

Farmers and immigrant advocates in Wisconsin have been watching ICE’s actions on dairy farms across the country closely. In March, ICE raided a dairy farm and petting zoo in New York. In April, a raid on a dairy farm in Vermont resulted in eight arrests. And in early June, ICE arrested 11 immigrants in a raid on a dairy farm in New Mexico.

But so far, enforcement against undocumented people on dairy farms had been sporadic and far from the Midwest. In June, President Donald Trump announced and then retreated from guidance that ICE would not aggressively target farms and the hospitality industry.

While last Thursday’s raid in Manitowoc didn’t take place on a dairy farm, most of the individuals arrested were dairy workers. Beyond that, they were dairy workers in the county with the highest concentration of dairy factory farms in the state. Manitowoc County and its northeast Wisconsin neighbors are the epicenter of the modern farming powerhouse that maintains Wisconsin’s status as “America’s Dairyland.”

“It’s just sending an economic ripple effect across the dairy industry, which is Wisconsin’s rural economy,” says Luis Velasquez, statewide organizing director for immigrant advocacy group Voces de la Frontera. “And then also there’s the symbolic and political dimension to it as well. We are America’s Dairyland, and so this enforcement is not just an administrative matter, but it threatens the industry’s well being. Who are we going to be after all of this? Are we still going to be America’s Dairyland?”

Velasquez says the raid sent a “big anxiety wave” through immigrant communities across the state.

“These views have just spiraled out of control in terms of the rumors that have been sent out across the community, rumors of ICE coming into their neighborhoods, to their homes, to their schools,” Velasquez says.

“I have had serious conversations since the raid in Manitowoc of folks who are planning to leave after many years of being here,” he adds. “They just don’t feel like this is a humane lifestyle anymore. They’ve given many years of their lives, and many of them have children here.”

Michael Slattery, a Manitowoc County farmer who grows grain and raises Holstein steers, points to data that shows 70% of the labor on Wisconsin’s dairy farms comes from immigrants and estimates that the dairy industry is the driver of 20% of Manitowoc County’s economy.

Slattery says farmers can’t survive without that migrant labor because no one else is willing to do the work.

“Do you want to get up at 3 a.m. seven days a week to go out in the cold, the heat, to get kicked by cows when you’re putting the suction cups on, to be shat upon, pissed on, pushed around by 1,400 pound cows? People don’t want that,” he says. “I’ve tried to hire part time labor here, I cannot get people, they don’t want to do this sort of stuff.”

Simply expecting farm families to pick up the slack isn’t the answer, he adds. “These dairy farms, they don’t have enough family members that can come out and replace immigrant labor, both documented and undocumented, that are leaving,” Slattery says. “They’re in a money-losing situation now.”

Losing the dairy labor force would have ripple effects across the economy in Wisconsin and the country.

“What do they do in that situation? If your cows cannot be milked, in two, two and a half weeks they’ll go dry,” he says. “The cows get milk fever, get ill, that’s your cheap hamburger in the stores. They’re selling the cows at a loss, that’s what they’ll do. There’s less milk in the market, that will drive up prices for cheese, milk and butter.”

Danielle Endvick, executive director of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, says if Wisconsin’s immigrant workers leave the state — either from being arrested by ICE or leaving on their own to avoid arrest — farms could close and prices could increase.

“Immigration raids and mass deportations can shrink rural economies, are terribly destabilizing for communities and can harm schools, churches, just the fabric of our rural communities too,” Endvick says. “Our rural spaces, our farmers can’t thrive if we’re treating a key workforce like they’re disposable. I think that immigrant workers are essential to Wisconsin dairy, and that when they are threatened, farmers in our rural communities are threatened too.”