During Washington’s 2025 apple harvest, many farmworkers kept going to work despite fear of immigration enforcement because they needed the income to pay their bills. A December 29, 2025, report by Hal Bernton for Washington State Standard describes arrests away from orchards, growers’ concerns about labor and costs, and a proposed federal bill that had not become law.
Why workers kept showing up despite fear
The harvest near Union Gap ran from August to early December 2025. Workers told Washington State Standard they worried about immigration enforcement, but most continued reporting to orchard jobs because they needed the work. Raul Arroyo Rosas, a horticulturist working in a Pink Lady orchard, put the financial pressure plainly: “Everybody has work. They got to pay their bills. So, it makes it hard to not come.”
The report said skilled pickers could earn $20 to more than $40 an hour during the harvest. That is a reported range for skilled picking, not a guaranteed wage: the story does not establish that every worker earned those amounts or how many hours each person worked.
Fear also affected workers’ decisions about whether it felt safe to leave home, commute, or continue working. Jaime, a 52-year-old orchard foreman, said, “They hear rumors — and they are afraid.” One worker reportedly stopped going to the orchard after relatives were taken by federal agents.
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Where the reported arrests happened
Washington State Standard reported that there were no large-scale workplace raids in orchards during the 2025 harvest. Its accounts instead described people being detained after leaving home, at a gas station, or while commuting. Those reported incidents help explain why workers could feel at risk even when the report did not describe raids at orchard workplaces.
David Morales, an attorney working with Yakima Immigrant Response Network, estimated that ICE arrests in the area rose from one or two a day in late summer to five to 10 a day by late November, then fell to three to five a day in December. These are Morales’s local estimates, not official ICE statistics. The report said ICE did not respond to a request for comment about the pace of arrests in central Washington.
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The story also reported that Jamie Ortiz believed her social media posts drew federal agents’ attention to her husband. That is her belief, not an independently established finding about why agents acted. Ortiz said her husband, Jose, was detained for six weeks, deported to Hidalgo, Mexico, and barred from entering the United States for 20 years; those details concern his reported case and should not be generalized to other people detained.
Why immigration enforcement became a labor and income issue
Harvest work brings paychecks to workers and spending to nearby communities, while growers depend on enough labor to bring in crops. Price Warehouse & Cold Storage reportedly hired about 600 orchard workers at peak harvest, largely from the Yakima Valley. Its vice president, Aaron Clark, said the company wanted to keep money in the local community. But fear that makes it harder for workers to commute or stay on the job can add uncertainty for employers as well as households relying on harvest earnings.
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Washington farmers and growers hired nearly 36,000 H-2A workers in 2024, compared with fewer than 4,000 in 2011, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics as reported by Washington State Standard. H-2A is a federal temporary agricultural worker program. The figures show the program’s growth in Washington; they do not establish how many workers were in a particular orchard or how much of the harvest was picked by H-2A workers.
The report described growers facing labor shortages and low apple prices alongside the cost of hiring through H-2A. A Quincy-area grower said, “We can’t get workers to come out,” and said he would be in trouble without guest workers. Farm labor consultant Erik Nicholson said growers told him they feared speaking publicly because they did not want to be targeted for retaliation by the administration. The report presents those as growers’ concerns, not proof that retaliation occurred.
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What the proposed Farm Workforce Modernization Act would—and would not—mean
H.R. 3227, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2025, was introduced on May 7, 2025, and referred to House committees. Congress.gov displayed its status as “Introduced”; it was a proposal, not enacted law. The bill included proposed worker-status and employer-verification provisions, and the report described it as a possible route to legal residency for some farmworkers.
Jamie Ortiz said of the proposal: “That would be so awesome if that would have passed. To be able to have your work permit. To be able to work, and not be afraid.” The distinction matters to workers planning around income and employment: the bill’s introduction did not itself provide anyone with a work permit or legal status.
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The H-2A wage-rule dispute
A Federal Register rule changing the methodology for calculating H-2A adverse-effect wage rates was effective October 2, 2025. Washington State Standard reported that United Farm Workers and others sued in November, alleging the rule would reduce wages paid to U.S. workers in violation of federal law. That was the challengers’ allegation, not a court finding. The cited accounts do not establish the later outcome of the lawsuit or the rule’s implementation status after the events they cover.
The Department of Labor estimated that the proposed wage plan would transfer more than $2.4 billion from agricultural employees to employers, as reported by Washington State Standard. That is the department’s projected transfer under the plan, not a measured amount workers had already lost. Growers’ concerns about labor costs and workers’ concerns about wages are competing stakes in the policy debate, not interchangeable claims.
Why the harvest matters beyond the orchard
The Northwest Horticultural Council’s Apple Fact Sheet, updated January 26, 2026, says the Pacific Northwest produced 70% of the total U.S. apple crop in 2024 and 78% of the fresh U.S. crop in 2024. These are regional shares, not Washington-only figures. The scale helps show why labor disruptions in the region matter, but it does not measure the economic impact of the reported enforcement activity.
Washington State Standard also reported an estimate that nearly 40% of workers producing many labor-intensive fruit, vegetable, and other crops are immigrants unauthorized to work in the United States. The estimate was not attributed to its original publisher in the article, so it should be treated as the report’s figure rather than a separately verified count of Washington apple workers.
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The report documents the financial pressure workers described, individual accounts of detentions, growers’ labor concerns, and policy debates surrounding H-2A and immigration status during one harvest season. It does not provide an official count of central Washington arrests, establish that every worker faced the same risk, or show how the reported events affected total crop output or worker earnings across the region. Its account is specifically about the 2025 harvest, not a measure of enforcement activity in 2026.
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