TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Florida’s agriculture industry is quietly dismissing claims it depends on undocumented foreign workers in an attempt to steer clear of an intraparty battle among the state’s Republicans over immigration.
It’s not working. Gov. Ron DeSantis has said farmers have an “affinity for cheap, illegal foreign labor” and he’s promised to veto an immigration policy bill from the GOP-led Legislature that would establish the state’s agriculture commissioner, Wilton Simpson, as Florida’s chief immigration officer, rather than having that role sit under the governor’s authority.
Representatives of Florida’s politically powerful agriculture industry, which has a $270 billion economic impact, privately say they hire foreign workers with temporary visas rather than those who remain in the country illegally.
Officials and lobbyists who spoke to POLITICO on the matter said they largely don’t want to speak on the record because they don’t want to be drawn further into the feud. “This isn’t about us,” one Republican ag lobbyist said. “[We’re] just keeping our head from between the dog and the fire hydrant.”
“Florida’s agriculture industry has for decades been focused on securing a stable legal workforce that can support the businesses that grow and harvest the nation’s food supply,” one longtime industry ally added. “Weighing into this debate does not accomplish that.”
Rick Roth, a former Republican legislator who grows vegetables, sugar cane and rice in Palm Beach County, said farmers want immigration reform but do not want it to be disruptive.
“We’re not really taking on the governor — that’s not the position,” he said. “The position is do we want a user-friendly immigration system? The answer is yes. We’re not sure the governor is going to give it to us.”
DeSantis spokesperson Jeremy Redfern responded by pointing to the governor’s comments last week in Palm Beach County, where he said, “Nobody elected the commissioner of agriculture to do the immigration stuff.”
DeSantis was elected in 2018 after beating Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam in the GOP primary, during which DeSantis called him “the errand boy for U.S. Sugar.”
He has pushed for lowering water levels in Lake Okeechobee, which ag opposes, and last year he vetoed a bill, FL SB 1082 (24R), backed by farm groups that would prohibit local governments from regulating farm worker lodging. DeSantis said he vetoed the bill because it could “pave the way for housing of illegal alien workers.”
Immigrants — both documented and undocumented — play a large role in agriculture, but that represents a small portion of their overall employment in Florida.
The state had more than 1 million unauthorized immigrants in 2022, according to the Pew Research Center. But agriculture is not among the top five categories for where they work.
Of those working in Florida in 2019, 24 percent were in construction, 17 percent were in professional and administrative services and 15 percent were in accommodations, food services, entertainment, arts and recreation, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
For all documented and undocumented immigrants, those working in the category that includes agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting and mining made up only 1.2 percent of the workforce, according to 2022 data.
But immigrants made up 42 percent of those working in the same category, the highest of any industry sector in Florida.
DeSantis has said that putting the agriculture commissioner in charge of immigration means “the fix is in.”
“Let’s just be honest with ourselves — one of the magnets from illegal immigration is illegal low wage farm labor,” DeSantis said last week at the Palm Beach roundtable. “Now that doesn’t mean every farm in Florida, or even most. But we know that’s one of the magnets.”
A Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. However, Simpson, a former Republican Senate president who has had a frosty relationship at times with DeSantis over the years, fired back at the governor.
After DeSantis tweeted that putting Simpson, an egg farmer, in charge of immigration is like having the “fox guarding the henhouse,” Simpson responded, “I’m not the one who opposed and ran against President Trump.”
The governor’s “routine attacks on farmers don’t sit well here in Florida — and apparently not with folks across the country either,” Simpson said on X.
Ag supporters who say they want to avoid getting caught in the crossfire pointed to recent comments by a White House official and other recent remarks by DeSantis.
While nearly 70 percent of the nation’s farm workers were born outside the country, ag industry representatives pointed to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller claiming last week that only 1 percent of those who are in the country illegally work in agriculture.
“The illegal aliens that Joe Biden brought into our country are not — full stop — doing farm work,” Miller said on CNN, adding, “They are in our cities collecting welfare.”
And DeSantis earlier this month seemedto dismiss the role of illegal workers in Florida’s farm economy while arguing that Florida had led the way in cracking down on illegal immigration.
“First of all, that’s offensive to say Florida is just based on illegal immigration,” he said at a news conference in Winter Haven. “And people will say, like, there will be these farm workers, and they’ll say ‘See!’ And then you go and these people have farm visas to work here.”
A former legislator with ties to agriculture echoed the industry’s argument that it doesn’t rely on illegal foreign workers.
“It’s bizarre — I don’t see how there is any profit in it for the governor,” the former legislator, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said. “If his goal is to be president, ag not only is an enormous part of Florida’s economy but it’s still an enormous part of the vote share in the middle of America.”
Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried, who as agriculture commissioner feuded with DeSantis from 2019 to 2023, said last week the governor has consistently criticized agriculture for the past six years.
She speculated that the criticism could stem from his 2018 GOP primary race with Putnam — or the fact that he had to deal with her being on the Cabinet during the governor’s first term.
“But regardless of his reasons, going after the people who are putting food on our plate is outrageous as a governor whose economy relies on agriculture,” Fried said.
Redfern, the governor’s press secretary, responded to her earlier comments by saying, “Nobody even knows who Nikki Fried is.”
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