'We need workers!' Yogurt CEO begs Trump to reverse course on ICE crackdown

Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya is urging the Trump administration to reconsider its hardline approach toward immigration, as he warned Tuesday that the country’s food supply chain is being threatened by aggressive nationwide enforcement raids.

“We need to be very realistic,” Ulukaya said at the Wall Street Journal’s Global Food Forum in Chicago. “We need immigration, and we need workers for our food system to work.”

The yogurt maker’s stark warning comes amid escalating immigration raids that “have rattled food and agriculture companies in recent weeks,” the Journal reported Tuesday.

“Trump’s immigration crackdown is roiling America’s food system,” the publication added. “Produce farms, dairies and recently a meat processing plant in Nebraska have been ensnared in immigration raids, disrupting production and threatening to shrink an already tight labor pool."

Employers say workers are afraid to change jobs or even leave home, the Journal noted. Roughly two-thirds of U.S. crop farm workers are foreign-born, and nearly half are not legally authorized to work, according to Labor Department data. On Wisconsin dairy farms, about 70 percent of the workforce lacks legal status, a University of Wisconsin-Madison study found.

While the Department of Homeland Security indicated last week it would pause enforcement at farms, restaurants, and hotels, a spokesperson reversed internal guidance and confirmed that those locations are still on the table. But industry leaders fear a “labor squeeze” could ultimately lead to higher prices for consumers.

“I don’t know if it’s a year, three years, five years, 10 years, but certainly you’ll have an impact across all of those industries if we’re not able to get to a workable solution,” Hormel Foods CEO Jim Snee said, according to the Journal.

American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall echoed the food executives' warnings.

“Without farmworkers, vegetables will be left in the fields, fruit will remain unpicked, and cows will go unmilked,” he said Tuesday. “The end result is a reduced food supply and higher grocery prices for all of America’s families.” The group is calling on Congress to develop a permanent immigration solution.