The Dallas Morning News on how overhauling visa program is more productive than ICE raids:

When Americans were told earlier this year that the Trump administration’s immigration raids would target criminals, they pictured roundups of human traffickers, sex offenders and gang members. It didn’t cross their minds that the people handcuffed and shipped off to detention centers would be longtime garment workers, beloved restaurant employees and farmworkers who toil under harsh conditions to fill the produce and dairy aisles at the grocery store.

Our country needs tougher immigration enforcement, but not like this. U.S. farms are a prime example of the unworkability of populist promises of widespread immigration crackdowns. Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s mass deportation quotas are crashing against the real world outside the White House, where industries like agriculture rely on undocumented workers to put food on the table of American families. By the government’s own estimates, 40% of farmworkers are in the country illegally.

Now farm owners are complaining that many of their employees are not showing up to work for fear of immigration raids. Men and women who contribute to their communities, who’ve kept their heads down and stayed out of trouble are just as likely to be nabbed as people with rap sheets.

But even as we decry the Trump administration’s methods, it should give us pause that an industry so critical to America’s well-being is so reliant on a shadow labor force. Farm owners say they hire foreign workers — with visas or not — because they can’t find American workers to fill what are often physically taxing and low-paying jobs. They have been pushing for an overhaul of the visa program to hire temporary farmworkers, and this could be an opportunity for President Donald Trump to give that effort the momentum it needs.

Since the raids started, his administration has sent mixed messages to American farmers. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, a Texan, convinced Trump to stop targeting farms, restaurants and hotels for immigration raids, but the administration later reversed itself.

Then, last month, Trump appeared to side with farmers again, telling Fox News on Friday: “We’re looking at doing something where in the case of good, reputable farmers, they can take responsibility for the people that they hire … because we can’t put the farms out of business.”

Industry groups have supported streamlining the H-2A program for seasonal agricultural workers. In fiscal year 2023, federal officials approved more than 378,000 jobs. But the processing is inefficient: The government requires employers to submit paper petitions and supporting documentation by mail. Bills like the Farm Workforce Modernization Act that would improve the program have earned bipartisan support but stalled in Congress.

That bill would also create a legal pathway for undocumented immigrants who have worked in agriculture for a number of years and who pass background checks. We expect that policy will be more controversial, but it merits debate.

Texas Farm Bureau President Russell Boening told us in a statement that the group wants to work with the Trump administration on solutions to provide “a legal and stable workforce.”

“A safe and secure food supply is a matter of national security,” he wrote.