Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Tuesday that Americans on Medicaid could replace thousands of migrant farm workers the Trump administration is removing from the country as part of their mass deportation effort.
At a briefing on United States farmland security, Rollins said “there will be no amnesty. The mass deportations continue, but in a strategic and intentional way as we move the workforce toward more automation and toward a 100 percent American workforce.”
Rollins said that with 34 million able-bodied people on Medicaid, “we should be able to do [this] fairly quickly.”
Donald Trump signed his massive domestic policy bill into law last week. The bill includes massive cuts to Medicaid. Republicans have defended the cuts claiming it is protecting the “most vulnerable” Medicaid recipients by removing able-bodied Americans.Â
Up to 70 percent of farm workers have stopped reporting to work due to ICE raids resulting in crops sitting in the fields rotting, farm owners and industry representatives told Newsweek.
Replacing these workers with “able-bodied adults” on Medicaid is not as easy as Rollins suggests.
“We do not have enough workforce in the United States to do manual work, to do those jobs that other people are not qualified to do and do not want to do it,” Alexandra Sossa, CEO of Farmworker and Landscaper Advocacy Project, told the outlet.
Furthermore, approximately 64% of American adults who receive Medicaid already work, and those who don’t have jobs are either primary caregivers, are attending school, or have an illness or disability that prevents them from working, Common Dreams reported.
Another report from the Economic Policy Institute further undermines Rollins’ suggestion.
The report finds that while ‘able-bodied adults without dependents’ (“ABAWDs”) may not have a documented disability “they often experience health challenges and must take on some caregiving duties, each of which could provide a genuine barrier to finding steady work.”
“We find that 21% reported having a disability that affects their ability to find and sustain work, suggesting that adults with genuine health barriers are being swept up in overly stringent work requirements,” the report continued. “13.8% of ABAWDs live with an adult over the age of 65 in their household, suggesting that many are potential caregivers in some form and likely have caregiving responsibilities beyond what is captured on paper.”
