VEBLEN, South Dakota — Behind the bleary eyes of staff streaming out and in of a dairy farm dormitory right here in Kristi Noem’s state is a narrative of a booming trade, a damaged immigration system and the strain dealing with the Trump administration because it makes an attempt to forcibly take away 12 million undocumented immigrants.
Noem, who was governor from 2019 to 2025, helped enhance the state’s thriving dairy farms that generate $7.2 billion a yr — with a dairy cow inhabitants up 70 % since she took workplace. However a lot of that progress wouldn’t have been potential with out state and federal officers wanting the opposite manner on the authorized standing of the farm arms who pull the lengthy shifts wanted to maintain the milk flowing.
Noem is now taking part in a significant position in orchestrating President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans as Homeland Safety secretary — placing her and her state squarely on the middle of the long-simmering query that has now reached a boil. To deport all 12 million folks, the Trump administration should conduct raids all through your complete nation, upending communities and disrupting economies in crimson states, the place greater than 40 % of undocumented immigrants reside.
The politics will solely get more durable. It’s one factor for Noem to don an ICE cap and bulletproof vest whereas raiding an condo constructing in New York Metropolis or Arlington, Virginia — blue cities which are simply demonized by Trump’s base. It’s fairly one other to disrupt rural farm economies within the heartland, which overwhelmingly supported Trump and home key industries closely depending on foreign-born staff.
The farm arms work within the dairy parlor across the clock, maintaining with a milking schedule that requires consideration in any respect hours of the day, all days of the week. Stacked bales of hay are located in entrance of the dairy farm in Veblen, coated to maintain them dry. And down the gravel street that runs parallel to the farm, hundreds of cows could be seen poking their heads by means of the stalls, the place they keep between milkings with bedding and feed. The sprawling web site additionally holds a cow carousel, in addition to parallel milking parlors that permit for the dairy arms to take advantage of the cows even quicker.
Dairy farmers have labored to make sure their workers are right here legally, but it surely’s not a bulletproof system, as staff typically forge documentation, stated Walt Bones, a retired fourth-generation farmer who co-owns the Turner County Dairy and was the state’s secretary of Agriculture from 2010 to 2013. Throughout his tenure as secretary, DHS carried out a random audit of his dairy and requested driver’s licenses, Social Safety playing cards, or employment eligibility types for the employees. They discovered that 10 workers had falsified paperwork, and Bones was compelled to let folks go who had been working there for practically a decade — a state of affairs that, if utilized throughout dairies, may cripple the state’s potential to take advantage of its now 215,000 milk cow inhabitants.
“The main focus now’s unhealthy actors — the parents with legal data who’re right here and committing crimes and usually are not stellar residents and who usually are not contributing to society,” Bones stated. “My hope is that, let’s concentrate on these of us, and within the meantime, let’s attempt to get some insurance policies in place in order that we are able to maintain our good folks right here who’re contributing.”
Throughout her governorship, Noem’s workplace touted the “thriving industry” and declared the state “open for enterprise.” Group members right here really feel she turned a blind eye to the immigration concern that additionally expanded with that progress, and Kathy Tyler, a former Democratic member of the state legislature, stated displaying up in her state as DHS secretary can be a direct acknowledgement of the realities she ignored whereas she was in cost for a number of years — and danger crippling an trade in her personal yard.
“It might be a political catastrophe if she did,” stated Tyler, who lives in Milbank, South Dakota.
The White Home and DHS didn’t reply to requests for remark.
None of that is black and white. South Dakota is the fifth-smallest state by inhabitants, main a few of its farmers to consider they’ll keep off of Trump’s radar — that he gained’t wish to contact very important enterprise. Others near the trade are holding out hope that Washington would possibly lastly supply options to repair an arduous, outdated authorized immigration system that would profit the trade. About 70 % of farmworkers within the nation are from Mexico or Central America, in response to information from the Nationwide Agricultural Employees Survey, and an estimated 44 % of those farmworkers lack authorized standing.
“If it weren’t for these overseas staff, we wouldn’t have the robust dairy farm group we have now in rural America and the associated fee and supply of milk can be unsure,” stated Jaime Castaneda, govt vp for coverage and technique on the Nationwide Milk Producers Federation.
However whereas the farmers await Washington, each stress of the immigration debate has spilled out into these communities: the challenges with the damaged system; the potential financial penalties of the president’s mass deportations agenda on essential industries; the narratives round migrant crime; and the politics of immigration in Pink America that propelled the Trump motion for the final decade.
Allison Pankow and Lindsey Krump voted for Trump, however don’t consider his deportation agenda will contact the Dakotas. The 2 sisters commute as they sip on their beers and seltzers at a excessive high at a household pal’s residence.
“They’re not going to do it,” Krump stated. “We’re little piddly wigs right here.”
“I might hope that Kristi Noem says, ‘Yeah, I’ve an actual downside in my state, and I must step up and do one thing,’” Pankow stated. “That’s what I might hope. Is she going to? I don’t know.”
It’s the kind of dialog you hear from each Republicans and Democrats within the state, who see themselves as minnows within the aquarium, removed from the raids in California or the crackdown in huge cities like Denver. Others say the president gained’t wish to face the pressures from trade leaders and farmers, particularly in a state that despatched him to the White Home.
However there’s a uncooked, effervescent anger within the sisters’ dialogue. Pankow grips her drink, her voice breaking as she tries to recount the night time of Might 28, 2022. She was volunteering as an EMT together with her then-girlfriend Neely Wallock when a name got here by means of about an accident off of Freeway 11 west of Hankinson, North Dakota.
A person driving a Toyota pick-up had hit two folks on a motorbike. Pankow obtained out of the ambulance to discover a lady already lifeless and, all of the sudden, she felt the air get sucked from her personal physique. It was her finest pal Amber Volesky, who can also be Wallock’s cousin. Amber’s husband, Cory Volesky, was mendacity in a ditch close by, bleeding and convulsing, and would later die in Pankow’s arms.
The person who hit them, Roberto Corona Eguiza, by no means known as the police, bumped into the close by woods and was picked up in one other truck by Eugenio Pecina, a pal. They had been apprehended and charged.
Each males labored at dairies in Veblen, and their employer on the time paid the small bail to safe the discharge. Pecina pleaded responsible to a category A misdemeanor cost for hindering, and Eguiza, after attending his preliminary courtroom hearings, fled and hasn’t been seen since. He has been charged with two felonies.
Native officers concerned within the case weren’t sure about Eguiza’s immigration standing, apart from figuring out his spouse and youngster had been nonetheless in Mexico. Immigration and Customs Enforcement advised POLITICO that they had no data to supply concerning the case. The idea in the neighborhood was that Eguiza was right here illegally.
Undocumented immigrants are much less prone to commit crimes than residents and authorized residents, in response to information. However such evaluation means little to those that are grieving.
Every time Krump drives by the location of the accident, she sees a memorial and remembers the time she spent scrubbing the street clear of Amber’s blood.
She and Ponchel need justice for themselves, their family members, their mates and their group — however they doubt they’ll get it.
“I’m very jaded,” Ponchel stated. “My finest mates died by anyone who I really consider was unlawful.”
The concern of no motion isn’t the one form felt in South Dakota.
Sitting at Rosalie’s restaurant in Sisseton, Tyler, the Democratic lawmaker, sits throughout from Steve McCleery, whom she served with within the state legislature. McCleery, who was a dairy farmer for years earlier than his household bought the farm, orders a glass of milk. He doesn’t consider the Trump administration would dare raid the state’s dairies, however that doesn’t imply there aren’t indicators of alarm within the immigrant group.
Tyler coaches debate at a faculty in Milbank, and she or he’s had college students who’ve advised her they’re scared for his or her dad and mom. One scholar got here in crying, saying the household was planning for which siblings may stick with their aunts if their dad and mom are deported.
There was a rise in ICE exercise in some elements of the state, however the arrest numbers have been small and centered on people, stated Taneeza Islam, the CEO of South Dakota Voices for Peace, which gives authorized companies for immigrants. They’ve obtained calls from purchasers, together with these with U.S. citizen youngsters, asking if they need to ship their children to highschool or if they need to go to work.
“It doesn’t even matter what’s truly occurring or truly being completed, as a result of this concern is so pervasive,” Islam stated.
The concern is actual for Carlos, who moved from Guatemala greater than a decade in the past on a brief visa to work a seasonal agriculture job, and stayed after it expired, constructing a life in the US. POLITICO shouldn’t be utilizing his final identify to guard his identification. He feels safe dwelling in a rural space, removed from the large cities — and he believes the president is concentrated on the criminals, not folks like him.
However the specter of deportation hovers behind his thoughts, particularly now that his total household is right here. He’s seen the small shifts even in his rural, small city, just like the vacancy of the native Walmart, which is usually full of different immigrants on weekend procuring days. Now, the cabinets are totally stocked.
It’s one other reminder that his day could come.
“I understand how I’m right here. So I do know that sometime, unhealthy instances, one thing will occur,” he stated. “I’m aware about it.”
