TWIN FALLS, Idaho — From his office overlooking the Snake River Canyon, Rick Naerebout has a front-row seat to one of the most productive agricultural regions in the country. The canyon, carved some 500 feet deep and a quarter-mile wide, is a local landmark that briefly made this small city famous in 1974, when stunt rider Evel Knievel tried — and failed — to leap it on a steam-powered rocket. Remnants of his ramp can still be spotted by those who know where to look.
These days, however, the area is better known for what it produces than for any daredevil stunt. The fertile plain surrounding Twin Falls, as locals call the city, has become a national agricultural powerhouse, anchored by an Idaho dairy industry worth billions of dollars. The state regularly ranks among the top five milk producers in the nation.
Yet the workforce that keeps those dairies running rests on a reality that is rarely discussed openly, even in a deeply Republican state. According to Naerebout, the chief executive of the Idaho Dairymen's Association, roughly 90 percent of the employees at the state's approximately 350 dairy operations may lack legal immigration status. It is, he acknowledged, an open secret.
Naerebout pushes back firmly on the notion that these jobs could simply be handed to American workers. The positions, he said, are physically demanding and require long hours outdoors in harsh conditions. Few domestic workers are willing to take them, which is why dairy operators have come to depend so heavily on immigrant labor.
"We're not taking jobs from Americans," Naerebout said, describing the work as unappealing to the domestic labor force. His comments reflect a long-standing argument made by agricultural groups across the country: that the food supply chain would struggle to function without foreign-born workers, many of whom are undocumented.
So far, American farms have been largely insulated from the aggressive immigration enforcement campaign pursued by President Trump. The administration's sweeping detention and deportation operations have targeted workplaces and communities in many sectors, but agriculture has mostly been left alone. That restraint, however, appears increasingly fragile.
As Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations continue across the country, farmers in Idaho and throughout the heartland are growing anxious. Their concern is not only about the possibility that enforcement could eventually arrive at their doorsteps, but also about a labor shortage that predates the current crackdown. Even before the recent wave of detentions and deportations, many producers were already struggling to find enough workers.
Naerebout warned that any concerted enforcement effort aimed at agriculture would carry serious consequences. If authorities launched a sustained campaign against farms, he said, it could severely damage the country's ability to produce enough food to feed itself. The remark underscores how central immigrant labor has become to the nation's food system.
The uneasy mood in Idaho mirrors a broader tension in rural America. Agricultural employers have watched the administration's immigration priorities unfold with a mixture of relief and dread — relieved that farms have not been a primary target, but fearful that the relative calm could end at any moment. For now, the industry is operating in a kind of limbo, dependent on a workforce whose legal status leaves it vulnerable.
The numbers involved are substantial. Idaho's dairy sector is a pillar of the state's economy, and the roughly 350 dairies scattered across the region rely on thousands of workers to milk cows, feed animals, and keep operations running around the clock. Dairy work cannot be paused or outsourced; cows must be milked multiple times a day regardless of staffing levels.
That operational reality makes the industry especially exposed to any shift in enforcement policy. Unlike some agricultural sectors that can mechanize more easily or rely on seasonal labor, dairies need a stable, year-round workforce. A sudden loss of employees would ripple quickly through production, processing, and ultimately the grocery aisle.
The region's agricultural identity is visible everywhere. In Burley, a cheese plant processes milk from surrounding farms, part of the chain that transforms raw milk into products shipped across the country. The infrastructure reflects decades of investment built on the assumption that labor would remain available.
Naerebout's estimate that nine in ten dairy workers may be undocumented is a striking figure, but it aligns with what industry observers have long acknowledged privately. The reliance is not a recent development; it has deepened over years as domestic interest in farm work has declined and as the political stalemate over immigration reform has dragged on.
For farmers, the practical question is what happens next. If enforcement intensifies, they say, there is no obvious pool of replacement workers waiting to step in. Higher wages alone have not solved the problem in the past, and the physical demands of the job remain a deterrent for many domestic job seekers.
The anxiety in Idaho also reflects a political paradox. The state is overwhelmingly Republican and broadly supportive of the president's immigration agenda, yet its leading industry depends on the very workers that agenda targets. That contradiction has made the issue delicate for farmers, who are reluctant to draw attention to their reliance on undocumented labor.
For now, dairymen in Twin Falls and beyond are watching Washington closely, hoping that agriculture continues to be treated as a special case. But as ICE operations expand, the sense of protection feels increasingly temporary. Many producers are left to plan for a future in which the labor force they have built their businesses around could suddenly disappear.
The stakes extend beyond any single farm or state. Idaho's milk production feeds into a national supply chain, and disruptions there would be felt well beyond the Snake River plain. Farmers argue that the conversation about immigration enforcement needs to account for that reality — and for the food on American tables that depends on it.
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