John Rosenow, a fifth-generation farmer in Waumandee, Wisconsin, owns more than 900 acres and over 600 dairy cows. He said about 90% of the work on the farm is done by immigrants.
Those immigrants include Kevin, who was born in central Mexico and crossed the U.S. southern border illegally when he was 18. Now 21, Kevin, who did not provide his last name during an interview with CBS News, is among the 11 million undocumented migrants living in the U.S. More than 10,000 of them work on Wisconsin dairy farms, according to a report by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Kevin’s duties include feeding cows and cleaning barns. He told CBS News he often works 12 hours a day, six days a week, sometimes starting as early as 3 a.m. But the pay is better than back home.
He said his mother and siblings back home depend on his salary, along with money made by his dad, who works on the same farm.
More than half of all workers in the U.S. dairy industry are immigrants, according to a study by Texas A&M University. Many are presumed to be undocumented since dairy farms generally can’t access seasonal visa programs to hire legal migrant workers. Like Kevin, many leave behind loved ones for wages that are below what American workers get.
“If I hired Americans to do the work, I would have to pay probably about $100,000 a year per person, and they would only work maybe 40-50 hours a week at that rate,” Rosenow said. “Clearly, I couldn’t be able to afford to pay Americans as much as they want.”
But as the new Trump administration begins to follow through on the president’s promise to deport undocumented immigrants, Rosenow is fearful of the future.
When asked what would happen if his workers were deported, Rosenow told CBS News, “I’m out of business. And it wouldn’t take long.”
But Kevin doesn’t appear to share his boss’ fear.
“Four years ago, when he was the president, he said ‘I am going to deport everyone’ but it never happened,” Kevin said in Spanish. “Sometimes we would watch the news and we would see that a family was deported, and we were scared to go out and buy groceries. But I have not felt fear since then.”
