Indiscriminate ICE arrests devastate WA farms, churches and families | Editorial
As spring arrives in Eastern Washington, farmers need workers to prepare their fields and orchards. It is getting harder to find those workers, however, because federal immigration enforcers have made the region a hot spot for arrests and deportations. These enforcement actions disrupt lives and communities with little regard for the disastrous consequences.
The University of Washington Center for Human Rights analyzed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests last year in Washington. Franklin County recorded the second-highest per capita arrest rate of any county. Benton County, meanwhile, saw its raw number of arrests go from just four in 2024 to 60 in 2025, most in the second half of the year.
Those are more than numbers. Each one represents a father pulled from a truck on the way to work, a small-business owner arrested at a routine immigration appointment or a family torn apart while seeking legal status.
Arrests and deportations strike the region’s agricultural economy especially hard. The Columbia Basin and lower Yakima Valley grow asparagus, potatoes, hops, wine grapes and apples that fill grocery store shelves across the country. Historically, about three-quarters of the agricultural workforce in the state is foreign-born and many of them are undocumented immigrants.
Last summer and fall, ICE removals reduced the labor pool and created a climate of fear that kept workers from showing up. As a result, many farmers struggled to bring in their harvests. Things could get even worse this year as the Trump administration shows no inclination to ease enforcement. Farmers cannot pause or reschedule the planting season. Miss the window and the financial damage can be catastrophic.
On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump said that immigration enforcement would primarily target undocumented immigrants who had committed violent crimes. In practice, ICE has cast a wide net, capturing anyone who lacks the right papers and even some who have them.
Americans broadly agree that deporting people who commit serious crimes is legitimate and necessary. Mass enforcement against people with no criminal record is different. It is political theater engineered to stoke fear and manufacture an “us vs. them” divide that distracts from the Trump administration’s other failures.
Yet the solution is not simply less enforcement but smarter enforcement and immigration reform. Congress and the Trump administration have the power to act to create legal pathways for workers. Instead, ICE is arresting people who have been here for decades, pay taxes and have never committed a crime.
Fear has become so pervasive that even the Catholic Diocese of Yakima is worried. As reported by the Tri-City Herald’s Larissa Babiak, the diocese has mobilized immigration attorneys to protect its clergy. Priests must be bilingual to serve congregations that are about 75% Hispanic. About one in five of the diocese’s priests and seminarians are in the country on some sort of visa. One priest was days from deportation when a student visa saved him.
“I do not know of a single deportation of any of our parishioners where the person has committed a crime. Most of the people being deported don’t have (criminal) offenses,” Yakima Bishop Joseph Tyson told Babiak.
Yet the Trump administration presses on, creating chaos without offering a coherent legal pathway for workers and clergy. A green card for a religious worker currently takes more than 13 years to process. Agricultural workers are lucky to get one at all.
The trauma extends beyond the arrested and deported. It disrupts the surrounding communities. Participation in religious and civic life drops when people fear leaving home. Schools lose students. Food trucks close. Shops lose customers. Social and economic fabrics fray in ways that will take years to repair.
On March 28, Tri-Cities residents will join the national No Kings Day demonstration against the Trump administration. The local event will take place on Columbia Center Boulevard in Kennewick. Protesters will highlight the human costs of indiscriminate immigration enforcement in the region.
When a community’s priests are afraid, when its farmers cannot plant, when its families will not leave their homes, that is not national security. It is cruelty masked as law enforcement, and Eastern Washington’s families, farms and faith communities will bear the scars long after ICE leaves.