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On the campaign trail, Donald Trump made two main promises: to get rid of all “illegals” in the country and lower prices. As it turns out (and as anybody with any sense could have predicted), you can’t do both. And that’s not us talking, but rather Trump’s own Department of Labor (DOL). 

Earlier this month, tucked away in the Federal Register in a document entitled “Adverse Effect Wage Rate Methodology for the Temporary Employment of H-2A Nonimmigrants in Non-Range Occupations in the United States,” the administration did something unusual: It told the truth about the devastating consequences of deporting hundreds of thousands of farmworkers.

Here is what the truth about a central component of Trump’s war on “illegal” immigrants sounds like. 

“The near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce, results in significant disruptions to production costs and threatening the stability of domestic food production and prices for US consumers,” the document, which The American Prospect appears to have first flagged, states. 

Oops!

But it gets better (or worse, from the perspective of someone who wants a stable food supply and groceries at affordable prices).

As it turns out, Trump’s megabill that Congress passed earlier this year will exacerbate these problems. 

“Unless the Department acts immediately to provide a source of stable and lawful labor, this threat will grow as the tools Congress provided in H.R. 1, One Big Beautiful Bill Act, to enhance enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws are deployed,” the document adds. 

Big and beautiful indeed. 

But wait a minute, what about all of those young men who are playing PlayStation all day in their parents’ basements? We were told that they were going to get off their couches once they lost their Medicaid coverage and the bill’s work requirements kicked in. 

For example, when the bill passed, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said that there were loads of Americans ready to toil the nation’s fields and replace the undocumented immigrants who had done that back-breaking work for low wages. 

“The mass deportations continue, but in a strategic way, and we move the workforce towards automation and 100 percent American participation,” Rollins said at the time. “With 34 million people, able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do that fairly quickly.” 

And House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) added that this would “return the dignity of work to young men who need to be out working instead of playing videogames all day.”

Let’s see how the DOL feels about that.

“The Department does not believe American workers currently unemployed or marginally employed will make themselves readily available in sufficient numbers to replace large numbers of aliens no longer entering the country, voluntarily leaving, or choosing to exit the labor force due to the self-perceived potential for their removal based on their illegal entry and status,” the document states. 

What a surprise!!! 

Then again, you can’t blame those able-bodied American slackers for wanting to play “Farming Simulator 25” on their PS5 instead of doing the real thing. The DOL certainly doesn’t make it sound appealing. 

“Agricultural work requires a distinct set of skills and is among the most physically demanding and hazardous occupations in the US labor market,” the DOL states. “These essential jobs involve manual labor, long hours, and exposure to extreme weather conditions — particularly in the cultivation of fruit, tree nuts, vegetables, and other specialty crops for which production cannot be immediately mechanized.”

That doesn’t sound appealing at all! Who in their right mind would want to do that, especially for the relative pittance that these jobs pay?

That’s right, those evil “illegals” we hear so much on Fox News about. How dare they come to the United States to do hard labor in search of a better life!

But it’s not just them. Because of ICE’s overzealous approach to its mission (which is a nice way of saying “brutal and indiscriminate”), even legal immigrants won’t show up to work anymore if they believe that they will be swept up in pogrom-like raids.

And that is going to pose a problem when employers try to import new workers to make up the shortage. 

That, by the way, is the point of this document. 

The DOL wants to use the H-2A visa program to bring in more foreign workers. This, in turn, will probably also lead to reduced pay for the Americans and legal immigrants who are currently working in the agricultural sector.

In addition, importing workers will result in additional costs, so it seems pretty clear that all of this will increase the price of food production… if there are even enough workers who don’t mind getting rounded up every few days by ICE agents working to fill their daily quota of brown people.

And guess who ends up paying more for their food. That’s right, dear reader — it’s you!

Again, it’s not us saying that; it’s Trump’s own Department of Labor. 

Of course, they are framing it a little bit differently so that the old man won’t get mad and fire them. He is not exactly a fan of getting bad news. 

So here is how the DOL put it:  

Given the scale, speed, and investment in the federal government’s efforts to enforce immigration laws and restore the integrity of the US border, the Department concludes that there will be significant labor market effects in the agricultural sector, which has long been pushed to depend on a workforce with a high proportion of illegal aliens. Because these illegal aliens often possess specialized skills suited to agricultural tasks and typically earn lower wages than authorized workers, their sudden and large-scale departure is expected to significantly increase labor costs for employers. These cost increases are very likely to limit the ability of agricultural operations to maintain current production levels or expand employment, resulting in downstream impacts on food supply and pricing.

All of this sounds problematic. That’s certainly how the DOL feels, because it wants to bypass the regular notice-and-comment period required for federal regulations.  

“Without swift action, agricultural employers will be unable to maintain operations, and the nation’s food supply will be at risk,” the DOL states. 

In other words, Trump’s genius deportation plan is about to backfire colossally.