Rollins: Medicaid recipients, automation can replace deported farmworkers

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told reporters Tuesday that she thinks Medicaid work requirements and automation will help offset President Trump’s massive immigration crackdown, which has threatened migrant farmworkers.

“There’s been a lot of noise in the last few days and a lot of questions about where the president stands and his vision for farm labor,” Rollins said during a news conference with Republican governors. “Ultimately, the answer on this is automation, also some reform within the current governing structure, and then also, when you think about there are 34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program, there are plenty of workers in America.”

Trump’s agenda-setting “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which the president signed into law on Friday, creates the first federally mandated work requirements for Medicaid recipients. The health care safety net program typically provides coverage for pregnant women, mothers, young children and the disabled, but the federal Affordable Care Act under former President Obama allowed states to expand coverage to more of the working poor.

In the 40 states that have expanded coverage (plus Washington, D.C.), people making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level — about $20,700 for a single person or $43,000 for a family of four — are Medicaid eligible.

The new work requirements are set to take effect in states by the end of 2026, but health care advocates argue that many recipients already have jobs or are unable to work.

Meanwhile, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), under the Trump administration, has been carrying out workplace raids and mass deportations of undocumented migrants that have prompted concerns among some labor advocates about needs in the farming and hospitality industries.

Trump acknowledged last week that he had been weighing exemptions for undocumented migrants working on farms.

“What we’re going to do is we’re going to do something for farmers where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge,” Trump told Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo. “The farmer knows he’s not going to hire a murderer.”

Rollins on Tuesday said the Trump administration is focused on protecting the U.S. food supply in the short term.

“There’s been a lot of noise in the last few days and a lot of questions about where the president stands and his vision for farm labor,” she said Tuesday. “The first thing I’ll say is, the president has been unequivocal that there will be no amnesty, and I think that’s very, very important.”

Rollins said Trump “has always been of the mindset that at the end of the day, the promise to America to ensure that we have a 100 percent American workforce stands, but we must be strategic and how we are implementing the mass deportation so as not to compromise our food supply.”

“We just have to make sure we’re not compromising today, especially in the context of everything we’re thinking about right now,” she said.