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An Arizona farmer is pushing for a more functional approach to the hiring of skilled labor in agriculture amid President Donald Trump’s border crackdown, telling Fox News Digital that the current system is sowing fear among Hispanic workers.
During a visit to the remote, mountainous landscape of Dudleyville, Ariz., farmer Scott Heartquist expressed a desire for more collaboration between business owners, workers, and immigration authorities to find practical solutions that address labor needs — while also upholding the law of the United States.
“There’s a humanitarian side that everybody’s like, ‘I feel for them,’” Heartquist said, referencing skilled workers looking to enter the country. “And I even understand that our system isn’t set up for them to easily come in.”
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While some farmers have experienced issues with migrants trespassing on or stealing from their properties, Heartquist said his personal relationship with and support for the Hispanic community has allowed him to run his business without issue.
“Immigration is such a touchy subject and, you know, we were just talking about it — my staff. They’re all legal, but a good portion of the people in the community aren’t. And so, we see it, we have it around. We have much less of an issue with it now,” he continued.
The family farm began on a small piece of land in Arizona. After surviving bone cancer, Scott Heartquist’s wife, Christie, worked with her husband to teach their children where their food comes from by growing and raising a healthy meat supply.
The family operates its own inspected processing plant at the ranch, providing hormone-free, steroid-free, vaccine-free, and antibiotic-free grass-fed and grass-finished beef, pork, and lamb to locals.
The Heartquist family has cultivated not just a solid business but also a close-knit commune. Several family members and staff live on the Heartquist Hollow Farm property in Dudleyville — often sharing fresh meals and stories after a hard day’s work.
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During a warm summer’s evening dinner, Saúl Márquez, a butcher at the farm, said he is thankful that the family has provided good working conditions and strong benefits to their immigrant workers.
Márquez also praised God for allowing his daughter to flourish as a citizen in the U.S. — a milestone that helped him and his wife obtain permanent residency three years ago.
“My friends say that you earn very well here. So, you risk coming here illegally because it’s the American dream. It’s the American dream. And everyone is going to take a risk. Before, it was easy, now it’s not easy,” he told Fox News Digital.
He also recommended that immigrants explore legal pathways to come to the U.S., such as work visas for farm jobs, rather than trying to enter illegally — stressing that the current political climate has heightened concerns among both documented and undocumented Hispanic workers.
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“You hear a lot of things about the new administration,” Márquez said. “We are, and the people are, very scared. Because I have friends and family who, unfortunately, do not have documents yet. So right now, there is a lot of fear with this administration that people do not want to go out to the stores.”
A combination of factors — including labor shortages for meat cutters and the cumbersome process of obtaining visas — has made it difficult for the Heartquists to hire workers with the skill set needed to provide the community with a wide range of grass-fed, pasture-raised meats.
Heartquist claimed that many of these issues stem from the Obama administration.
“You had some abuses going on in some areas, and instead of dealing with the individual abuses, they just cut visas. And so, they made it more challenging for us to get the visas,” he said.
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“I can tell you right now, there are 16-and-17-year-olds in Mexico and Central America that are cutting meat. To be able to bring them in, give them more training, teach them food safety issues, and all of those pieces would be amazing. We just can’t. It’s not built into our system,” Heartquist continued.
Without a more robust system and discussions about the potential to bring in workers from other countries to fill these labor needs, Heartquist predicted that immigration issues will continue to proliferate.
“We’re going to have mass deportations that are going to happen right now. The administration will change in three years,” he said. “Maybe it’ll still be strict on the border, maybe it won’t, and so we’ll have another onslaught, another flood of people coming in. The problem that we face is… There’s a small portion of that community that’s really just not good people, and it gets bled out onto the whole community and that’s not fair.”
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