Trump's Deportation Goal Would Require Economy-disrupting Raids In Red States

VEBLEN, South Dakota — Behind the bleary eyes of workers streaming in and out of a dairy farm dormitory here in Kristi Noem’s state is a story of a booming industry, a broken immigration system and the tension facing the Trump administration as it attempts to forcibly remove 12 million undocumented immigrants.

Noem, who was governor from 2019 to 2025, helped boost the state’s thriving dairy farms that generate $7.2 billion a year — with a dairy cow population up 70 percent since she took office. But much of that growth wouldn’t have been possible without state and federal officials looking the other way at the legal status of the farm hands who pull the long shifts needed to keep the milk flowing.

Noem is now playing a major role in orchestrating President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans as Homeland Security secretary — putting her and her state squarely at the center of the long-simmering question that has now reached a boil. To deport all 12 million people, the Trump administration will have to conduct raids throughout the entire country, upending communities and disrupting economies in red states, where more than 40 percent of undocumented immigrants reside.

The politics will only get harder. It’s one thing for Noem to don an ICE cap and bulletproof vest while raiding an apartment building in New York City or Arlington, Virginia — blue cities that are easily demonized by Trump’s base. It’s quite another to disrupt rural farm economies in the heartland, which overwhelmingly supported Trump and house key industries heavily dependent on foreign-born workers.

The farm hands work in the dairy parlor around the clock, keeping up with a milking schedule that requires attention at all hours of the day, all days of the week. Stacked bales of hay are situated in front of the dairy farm in Veblen, covered to keep them dry. And down the gravel road that runs parallel to the farm, thousands of cows can be seen poking their heads through the stalls, where they stay between milkings with bedding and feed. The sprawling site also holds a cow carousel, as well as parallel milking parlors that allow for the dairy hands to milk the cows even faster.

Dairy farmers have worked to ensure their employees are here legally, but it’s not a bulletproof system, as workers sometimes forge documentation, said Walt Bones, a retired fourth-generation farmer who co-owns the Turner County Dairy and was the state’s secretary of Agriculture from 2010 to 2013. During his tenure as secretary, DHS conducted a random audit of his dairy and requested driver’s licenses, Social Security cards, or employment eligibility forms for the workers. They found that 10 employees had falsified documents, and Bones was forced to let people go who had been working there for nearly a decade — a scenario that, if applied across dairies, could cripple the state’s ability to milk its now 215,000 milk cow population.

“The focus now is bad actors — the folks with criminal records who are here and committing crimes and are not stellar citizens and who are not contributing to society,” Bones said. “My hope is that, let’s focus on those folks, and in the meantime, let’s try to get some policies in place so that we can keep our good people here who are contributing.”

During her governorship, Noem’s office touted the “thriving industry” and declared the state “open for business.” Community members here feel she turned a blind eye to the immigration issue that also expanded with that growth, and Kathy Tyler, a former Democratic member of the state legislature, said showing up in her state as DHS secretary would be a direct acknowledgement of the realities she ignored while she was in charge for several years — and risk crippling an industry in her own backyard.

“It would be a political disaster if she did,” said Tyler, who lives in Milbank, South Dakota.

The White House and DHS did not respond to requests for comment.

None of this is black and white. South Dakota is the fifth-smallest state by population, leading some of its farmers to believe they can stay off of Trump’s radar — that he won’t want to touch vital business. Others close to the industry are holding out hope that Washington might finally offer solutions to fix an arduous, outdated legal immigration system that could benefit the industry. About 70 percent of farmworkers in the country are from Mexico or Central America, according to data from the National Agricultural Workers Survey, and an estimated 44 percent of these farmworkers lack legal status.

“If it were not for these foreign workers, we wouldn’t have the strong dairy farm community we have in rural America and the cost and source of milk would be uncertain,” said Jaime Castaneda, executive vice president for policy and strategy at the National Milk Producers Federation.

But while the farmers wait for Washington, every tension of the immigration debate has spilled out into these communities: the challenges with the broken system; the potential economic consequences of the president’s mass deportations agenda on crucial industries; the narratives around migrant crime; and the politics of immigration in Red America that propelled the Trump movement for the last decade.

Allison Pankow and Lindsey Krump voted for Trump, but don’t believe his deportation agenda will touch the Dakotas. The two sisters go back and forth as they sip on their beers and seltzers at a high top at a family friend’s home.

“They’re not going to do it,” Krump said. “We’re little piddly wigs here.”

“I would hope that Kristi Noem says, ‘Yeah, I have a real problem in my state, and I need to step up and do something,’” Pankow said. “That’s what I would hope. Is she going to? I don’t know.”

It’s the type of conversation you hear from both Republicans and Democrats in the state, who see themselves as minnows in the aquarium, far from the raids in California or the crackdown in big cities like Denver. Others say the president won’t want to face the pressures from industry leaders and farmers, especially in a state that sent him to the White House.

But there’s a raw, bubbling anger in the sisters’ discussion. Pankow grips her drink, her voice breaking as she tries to recount the night of May 28, 2022. She was volunteering as an EMT with her then-girlfriend Neely Wallock when a call came through about an accident off of Highway 11 west of Hankinson, North Dakota.

A man driving a Toyota pick-up had hit two people on a motorcycle. Pankow got out of the ambulance to find a woman already dead and, suddenly, she felt the air get sucked from her own body. It was her best friend Amber Volesky, who is also Wallock’s cousin. Amber’s husband, Cory Volesky, was lying in a ditch nearby, bleeding and convulsing, and would later die in Pankow’s arms.

The man who hit them, Roberto Corona Eguiza, never called the police, ran into the nearby woods and was picked up in another truck by Eugenio Pecina, a friend. They were apprehended and charged.

Both men worked at dairies in Veblen, and their employer at the time paid the small bail to secure the release. Pecina pleaded guilty to a class A misdemeanor charge for hindering, and Eguiza, after attending his initial court hearings, fled and hasn’t been seen since. He has been charged with two felonies.

Local officials involved in the case weren’t certain about Eguiza’s immigration status, other than knowing his wife and child were still in Mexico. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told POLITICO they had no information to provide about the case. The assumption in the community was that Eguiza was here illegally.

Undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than citizens and legal residents, according to data. But such analysis means little to those who are grieving.

Whenever Krump drives by the site of the accident, she sees a memorial and remembers the time she spent scrubbing the road clean of Amber’s blood.

She and Ponchel want justice for themselves, their relatives, their friends and their community — but they doubt they will get it.

“I’m very jaded,” Ponchel said. “My best friends died by somebody who I truly believe was illegal.”

The fear of no action isn’t the only kind felt in South Dakota.

Sitting at Rosalie’s restaurant in Sisseton, Tyler, the Democratic lawmaker, sits across from Steve McCleery, whom she served with in the state legislature. McCleery, who was a dairy farmer for years before his family sold the farm, orders a glass of milk. He doesn’t believe the Trump administration would dare raid the state’s dairies, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t signs of alarm in the immigrant community.

Tyler coaches debate at a school in Milbank, and she’s had students who have told her they’re scared for their parents. One student came in crying, saying the family was making plans for which siblings could stay with their aunts if their parents are deported.

There has been an increase in ICE activity in some parts of the state, but the arrest numbers have been small and focused on individuals, said Taneeza Islam, the CEO of South Dakota Voices for Peace, which offers legal services for immigrants. They’ve received calls from clients, including those with U.S. citizen children, asking if they should send their kids to school or if they should go to work.

“It doesn’t even matter what’s actually happening or actually being done, because this fear is so pervasive,” Islam said.

The fear is real for Carlos, who moved from Guatemala more than a decade ago on a temporary visa to work a seasonal agriculture job, and stayed after it expired, building a life in the United States. POLITICO is not using his last name to protect his identity. He feels secure living in a rural area, far from the big cities — and he believes the president is focused on the criminals, not people like him.

But the threat of deportation hovers in the back of his mind, especially now that his entire family is here. He’s noticed the small shifts even in his rural, small town, like the emptiness of the local Walmart, which is typically filled with other immigrants on weekend shopping days. Now, the shelves are fully stocked.

It’s another reminder that his day may come.

“I know how I am here. So I know that someday, bad times, something will happen,” he said. “I am conscious about it.”