Farmland owners and investors have plenty to watch in the months ahead as the country prepares for a new president, a new political makeup in Congress, and lower interest rates.
Some of those factors are known; others are not.
The “new” president could be more accurately described as the new version of an old president, Donald Trump. What will Trump be like in his return to the White House?
Some of the issues that he stressed in the campaign had similar themes to those he pushed during his first term in office: immigration, economy, “American First” global policies, expanded authority for him.
But Trump 2.0 may carry out those initiatives differently and with different key leaders around him.
Trump didn’t complete a border wall on the southern part of the United States or get Mexico to pay for it as he promised voters. But he has escalated Americans’ focus on immigration policies, national security, and crime.
In his second term, he pledged mass deportations of migrants in the country illegally. What remains unknown is how he would do that. How much will that cost taxpayers who are already concerned about the country’s escalating debt that nears $36 trillion?
“I will launch the largest deportation program in American history,” Trump told supporters during a rally in October.
The American Immigration Council, a non-partisan advocacy organization, estimated that Trump’s proposals regarding immigration could cost taxpayers more than $300 billion.
RELATED: See the story from KTVU-TV in Oakland, California, on why Trump’s immigration actions might also include terminating Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the 2012 law that protected from immediate deportation some children of undocumented adults who came to the United States illegally.
If Trump directs law enforcement in whatever capacity (Just federal? State and local, too?) to potentially remove millions of migrants who don’t have legal status, what will that mean for agricultural operations? What will it do to the workforce of meat packing and processing facilities?
Those are jobs that can be especially challenging to fill.
Deportations may not only include undocumented workers. Will workers’ spouses and children (who might be U.S. citizens) also leave the country, too?
That could magnify the impact on workforce and smaller community vitality.
Some Republicans inaccurately labeled Vice President Kamala Harris as President Joe Biden’s “border czar.” Biden never gave Harris that title but did assign her to travel to central America to determine the causes of why so many migrants wanted to flee their home countries and head to the United States.
Biden’s lack of sufficient action on border security added to the reasons that Trump handily won the presidential race against Harris on November 5th.
Trump is using “border czar” to describe Tom Homan. Homan is a former New York police officer, U.S. Border Patrol agent, and former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation branch in 2013 under President Barack Obama.
RELATED: President Barack Obama awarded Tom Homan the Presidential Rank Award, the highest civil service recognition. Learn more about that award in 2015 in this release from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Trump exaggerates the presence of migrants in the country and the crimes that they commit. But he prioritized the need for stricter border security and for policies for those living illegally in the country.
Regardless of whether people overstayed work visas, failed to show up for court dates after seeking asylum, or unlawfully entered the United States undetected, they number millions – no one can say exactly how many – and Democrats refused to prioritize a national policy to deal with them like Trump has.
Trump successfully used the issue to win over American voters, giving him a popular vote Election Day victory. It is a significant accomplishment. No Republican president has done that since George W. Bush in 2004.
It will be up to Homan to carry out Trump’s new deportation policies. When Homan worked for Trump during the first administration, he was part of an initiative that permanently separated migrant children from their families in ways that no previous administration had done.
Is that what the American people want beginning in 2025?
It may be a while before farmland communities know more specifics about Trump’s immigration plans. But those actions could have sizable impact on agriculture and food production around the country.
