Agriculture secretary says able-bodied Medicaid recipients will replace deported farmworkers

Washington DC - US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins recently suggested a solution to fix the problem of farmers losing their workforce to President Donald Trump's aggressive immigration agenda.

During a recent press conference, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said undocumented farmworkers will be replaced by machines and Medicaid recipients.
During a recent press conference, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said undocumented farmworkers will be replaced by machines and Medicaid recipients.  © JIM WATSON / AFP

In recent weeks, Trump has been pitching ideas on how to give a "temporary pass" to undocumented farmworkers in an effort to mitigate harm done to his supporters in the farming industry as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents enact aggressive deportation raids across the country.

But during a press conference at USDA headquarters on Tuesday, Rollins made it clear that the president is not looking to grant migrants any kind of "amnesty" and vowed that mass deportations will continue, "but in a strategic way."

She went on to say that the administration aims to replace any lost workers with machines and Americans who will soon need work to keep their Medicaid coverage.

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"With 34 million people, able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do that fairly quickly," Rollins said, adding, "There are plenty of workers in America."

Rollins' comments come after Trump managed to get his controversial "Big, Beautiful Bill" passed last week, which is expected to cut Medicaid by billions of dollars while also strengthening work requirements needed to qualify for the program.

Trump and MAGA Republicans have repeatedly argued that Medicaid is being abused by "lazy" people with no jobs, and claim the new requirements would incentivize them to join the American workforce.

Cover photo: JIM WATSON / AFP

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