Farmworker advocates and public health experts say President-elect Donald Trump’s threats of mass deportations are piling onto the existing fears agriculture workers have about participating in efforts to track the bird flu outbreak.
Infectious disease experts are calling for more testing and surveillance to monitor developments that could make the outbreak more dangerous. To accurately track it, they say they need more health data from farmworkers, who comprise nearly all of the people in the United States with confirmed bird flu infections. Undocumented immigrants make up much of the U.S.’s agricultural workforce and are a demographic Trump has said he would target.
The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment, but public health experts and advocates worry that under his administration, farmworkers will be more apprehensive to report unsafe working conditions or to isolate and test when exposed to sick animals. They say that without more workplace protections and safe health care access for frontline workers, keeping track of the bird flu or other animal-to-human disease outbreaks will become even harder.
“The fear is in the community, and it happened during COVID,” said Elizabeth Rodriguez, the National Farm Worker Ministry’s director of farmworker advocacy. “Farmworkers would not go to the hospital because they were afraid of being identified and reported to immigration. But the No. 1 worry was that they’d be rejected for their legal status.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still calls avian influenza a “low” risk to public health, but the outbreak, the U.S.’s worst ever, could wreak havoc on public health and the American food supply. The CDC said last week there have been 55 human infections in the U.S this year. But the Los Angeles Times reported that the number is likely undercounted among dairy workers because of workers’ fears of losing their jobs or being targeted based on their immigration status.
There’s already mistrust between farmers and the federal government in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning it’s already hard for experts to keep track of the spread among livestock. But that mistrust is hampering human disease surveillance, too.
When dairy cows get infected with bird flu, they still have to be taken care of and milked. Dairy workers fear getting fired or being asked not to come back if they get tested or isolate after exposure.
Elizabeth Strater, a spokesperson for the nation’s largest farmworkers’ union, United Farm Workers, told NOTUS “there are so many people that are sick that are not tested” because they don’t want to risk losing wages or their jobs.
“If we can’t protect those people, we’re all fucked,” Strater said about dairy workers. “If they get tested, they are gambling. And because they are afraid to get tested, the rest of us are gambling right now.”
Strater added she expects farmworkers’ reticence to getting tested to worsen under Trump because they “don’t want to be on the radar of an administration which has targeted them, at least in rhetoric, with the violence of deportation.”
The bird flu outbreak is not a pandemic at this point, but it is prompting concerns about what a response to another pandemic would look like under a Trump administration. Already there are worries that the federal government is not being aggressive enough in its approach to the bird flu outbreak.
“We should be responding, I think, much more aggressively than we have,” said James Lawler, the associate director of the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Global Center for Health Security. “Our response to date has been far from optimal. There has been limited transparency, there’s been limited action to protect workers.”
Lawler acknowledged that farmworkers already fear workplace retaliation when they seek out bird flu testing and care. But he said a new Trump administration might further discourage undocumented agricultural workers from getting tested, adding “mandatory testing or widespread blanket testing” on a broader scale would relieve some of that pressure, while also further aiding disease surveillance efforts.
Some Democratic lawmakers told NOTUS they shared the same fears about immigration policies complicating the bird flu response, especially heading into a second Trump administration.
“A virus doesn’t recognize your immigration status or visa status,” Rep. Ami Bera told NOTUS. “From a public health perspective, you always want people to come in if they’re sick, and I would hope public health professionals don’t find themselves in a position where the Trump administration says, ‘Hey, you need to check someone’s immigration status.’”
In July, the Department of Homeland Security issued a reminder that bird flu testing and treatment sites are protected from immigration enforcement: “To the fullest extent possible, ICE and CBP do not conduct immigration enforcement activities at protected areas where such medical or public health outreach is being conducted.”
But reminding farmworkers about their rights takes multilingual outreach.
“You have to have a lot of personnel to go out into the field that speak Spanish to allay their fears. But their fears are not some fantasy. It’s based on what they’ve been told,” outgoing Rep. Anna Eshoo, ranking member of the House’s health subcommittee, told NOTUS.
The CDC updated its guidance for farmworkers Nov. 8, encouraging them to wear personal protective equipment and recommending that sick workers stay home and tell their supervisor. What prompted the changes was a CDC study of voluntarily tested dairy workers conducted this summer that revealed cases that had flown under the radar in Michigan and Colorado.
The CDC told NOTUS in a statement that it changed its recommendations for testing and antiviral treatments based on that study. It said that anyone exposed to sick animals should seek care, even if they’re asymptomatic.
“CDC works with state and local partners to encourage testing on farms. CDC is also conducting outreach to raise awareness about bird flu and its symptoms in affected areas. CDC has worked to tailor recommendations to protect workers at the highest risk and contain the spread of the virus,” said a CDC spokesperson.
The outbreak has been ravaging poultry farms since 2022, killing over 100 million birds. Almost all the online guidance from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on bird flu focuses on poultry farms. But since bird flu was first detected in dairy cows in March 2024, the dairy industry has been scrambling to keep up with — and sometimes fighting against — surveillance efforts.
A Department of Labor spokesperson told NOTUS in a statement that “OSHA will respond to employee complaints and media reports where there are employee safety issues, such as inadequate or improper use of PPE.” It pointed NOTUS to additional resources, including some aimed at offsetting costs for employers and protecting farmworkers.
Advocates told NOTUS that current government guidance and protections don’t go far enough in reassuring scared farmworkers that they won’t lose their jobs or face scrutiny about their immigration status for getting tested.
Amy Liebman, the chief program officer for the Migrant Clinicians Network, said immigration is just one factor complicating the public health response to the outbreak. She said existing government protocols about bird flu largely leave the burden on farmworkers to report unsafe conditions and to seek health care after exposure.
“They need to be reassured that they won’t lose their job for participating in public health programming. They need to make sure that they are given the proper treatment, and if they’re asked to isolate, that they are not losing their wages,” Liebman said. “Workers are desperate to work, and we have to understand that. They’re not going to want to do anything that jeopardizes their job.”
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Emily Kennard is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.