Tractors stand at the ready along rolling wild blueberry barrens Downeast, where fields of naked stems offer no hint of the glorious techno-color display to come. By late spring, roughly 47,000 acres across Washington and Hancock counties will be carpeted in white blossoms before bursting into tiny blueberries.

But new federal immigration policies and ramped-up deportations have businesses across the state — especially in rural, agricultural communities — concerned about migrant workers showing up to rake those fields — out in plain sight.

“Our producers are very careful about vetting their workforce to ensure that they all have the necessary and proper documentation if they are coming from outside of the U.S.,” said Eric Venturini, executive director of the Wild Blueberry Commission. “But I am concerned about a decrease in the agricultural workforce due to shifting immigration policies that could make it more challenging for farmers to get their crops.”

Wild blueberry farms aren’t the only businesses statewide that could be facing a labor shortage, compounded by escalating threats of deportation and revoked visas. Agricultural farmers of all types, as well as wreath factories, restaurants, hotels, fisheries, and other businesses have come to rely on the largely Latino migrant and year-round immigrant communities. 

According to the most recent 5-year estimate reported in the American Community Survey, Maine’s foreign-born population is about 53,600. Among those aged 16 and over, 63 percent are in the workforce, or about 31,500 workers, according to Jessica Picard, communications director for the State of Maine Department of Labor.

Among those who employ foreign-born workers is the group of Whitney Family Companies, which owns and operates Whitney Wreath, Whitney’s Tri-Town Marina, Machias Glassworks, and Downeast Packaging Solutions, all located in Machias. Owner and CEO David Whitney employs an undisclosed number of seasonal migrant workers at his companies, workers he depends on to supplement his local workforce.

Whitney said he fully supports the Trump administration’s tightened immigration policies. In 2011 Whitney’s company became the first in the state to sign on to the federal IMAGE program, a voluntary partnership initiative between the federal government and private sector employers that strengthens hiring practices and monitoring of migrant worker documentation through an electronic verification system, regular audits, and payroll reviews.

“We’re under tremendous scrutiny, which is all the more reason that I continue to be motivated to follow the letter of the law. Always have,” Whitney said. “I sleep very well at night.”

But as federal immigration officials ratchet up surveillance around the nation, advocates say many immigrants — even those who are documented — fear deportation, with more of them choosing to lay low, avoiding school or work. 

Along the shores of Englishmen’s Bay, sea spray wafts over the wild blueberry fields of Welch Farm in Roque Bluffs, owned and operated for more than a century by Lisa Hanscom’s family.

Everyone pitches in on this small but productive farm, including Hanscom’s 77-year-old father. But come harvest time, they still rely on a handful of migrant workers to help get the tender berries raked and crated before they rot in the field.

So far this season, Hanscom hasn’t heard from the two Mi’kmaq migrant friends from Canada and the young Guatemalan man who she’s counted on in past years.

“The young man was legal, working on his citizenship and everything. But I don’t know what that means for me this year, whether he’s even going to be around,” Hanscom said.

Hanscom chairs the volunteer Wild Blueberry Commission in addition to running the farm and her full-time job as director of the Washington County Emergency Management Agency. She knows the blueberry business and is used to dealing with unexpected crises. But Hanscom said it’s hard for farmers to come up with contingency plans to deal with such a rapidly evolving immigration landscape.

Nationwide arrests and detentions are up sharply since Trump took office, and worries are mounting among seasonal employers in Maine. In late March, the detention of a teenager on his way to work in Lewiston rattled the local community; he was reportedly taken to New York City, more than 300 miles away from his mother and three younger siblings, according to the Bangor Daily News. His family was told by a Border Patrol agent that he would likely be deported to El Salvador, according to Maine Public.

In early April, the Wells Police Department in southern Maine entered into a formal agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, allowing the police department to enforce certain aspects of federal immigration law. While ICE has similar agreements in place with other municipalities around the country, this is the first of its kind in Maine.

The Internal Revenue Department also struck a deal with federal immigration authorities to share the sensitive data of migrants who pay federal taxes under formerly shielded tax ID numbers. The exposure could make migrants reluctant to file taxes or share documentation with employers.

During an online presentation in February, Patrick Woodcock, the executive director of the Maine Chamber of Commerce, said that employers need to be aware of the potential ramifications on Maine’s workforce.

“Regardless of the merits of the polic[ies], we really do want to ensure that employers understand how to be in compliance,” Woodcock said. “There may be employees that were authorized to work that may be affected by changes and may not be authorized to work now or in the coming months.”

The Trump administration has signaled that it is considering eliminating, scaling back, or revoking some visas that employers have relied on to augment their work teams for decades.

The Monitor reached out to more than a dozen business owners and managers to gauge concerns. Half of those responded, with only one business expressing concern about losing the visa program it uses to supplement its summer staff of about 30. 

Victor Trafford, who owns the Fishermen’s Wharf Inn and Restaurant in Lubec, said the business typically employs 4-6 young women, mostly from Eastern Europe, each summer through the J-1 visa Exchange Student Worker Program. 

“I think we’re going to be okay. But laws can change — can change without notice,” Trafford said. 

The Trump administration has also revoked the visas of hundreds of international students and detained roughly a dozen others from college campuses across the US, often without any warning or recourse for appeals, according to a recent report by the BBC.

A J-1 visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows students to study, work, or conduct research in the United States for three months or longer, depending on the visa. It’s one of roughly 200 types of U.S. non-immigrant and immigrant visas that grant foreign nationals permission to stay in the country for residence, study, or work. Another category is the H-1B visa program, which allows highly educated foreign professionals to work in “specialty occupations.”

But the visas that most impact farmers seeking to boost their local workforce are H-2A agricultural visas, which allow foreign workers to come to the U.S. to perform seasonal agricultural labor. Employers in the service industry, meanwhile, often rely on H-2B visas, which allow workers to temporarily come to the U.S. to perform non-agricultural services or labor, such as hotel and restaurant work. 

Last year in Maine, 41 agricultural companies each received anywhere between one and 140 H-2A visa approvals. Cherryfield Foods, Inc., a grower and producer of wild blueberries located in Cherryfield and Machias, received the most agricultural visas of any business in the state, a total of 140 H-2A visas.

A 2015 Maine Department of Labor 2015 survey, the most recent report available from the Department, found that 56 percent of migrant farm workers were from Mexico, with others from Haiti, Canada, Honduras, El Salvador, and the Philippines. A 2019 University Maine report found that Maine’s migrant workers also come from Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Guatemala and from elsewhere in the United States.

Ricker Hill Orchards in Turner was granted 33 agricultural visas in 2024. The tenth-generation small farming business has survived 200 years of challenges, including a slumping local workforce that began during WWII.

Although it’s bureaucratically burdensome and costly — north of $80,000 some seasons — company president Harry Ricker and his wife Nancy, who is the CFO, said H-2A visas have helped them hang on to the farm, allowing them to bring in dozens of hard-working apple pickers each harvest season, mostly from Jamaica. 

“There are a lot less local people that want to do it, so we have to have this program,” Ricker said. “Without it, we’ll just be out of the industry. We go away.”

Since businesses foot the bill for all visa fees, travel, and lodging, Ricker sees no reason for the administration to tamper with the H-2A visa program. 

Some critics, however, including authors of the controversial Project 2025, are pushing the Trump administration to cap and then phase out the program because they say it squeezes American workers out of the market. Nationally, DOL certified over 378,000 temporary H-2A jobs in FY 2023 — more than six times the number certified in 2006.

But H-2A visa advocates point to data that show persistent workforce shortages and the federal laws that tightly regulate migrant worker pay to make sure it doesn’t undercut the local market.

Employers must recruit U.S. workers, including posting jobs on the US Department of Labor’s seasonal jobs website, and give preference to U.S. workers over H-2A workers. The employer also must pay all workers at the same federally mandated Adverse Effect Wage Rates (AEWRs), which in Maine is $18.83 per hour, compared to the state’s current minimum wage of $14.65 per hour.

Non-agricultural workers also nervous

The authors of Project 2025 also have the H-2B non-agricultural temporary visa program in their sights, calling for the elimination of the visas that a host of industries depend on, from tourism and hospitality to restaurants and services at some national parks. 

The H-2B program is capped at 66,000 each year for the entire country, with an additional number of visas typically added to the cap each year, including an extra 64,716 for 2025 announced earlier this month. 

Although Trump recently signaled support for businesses that rely on H-2B temporary workers, the release of the supplemental visas was delayed this year. According to a recent U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services press release, only employers who will “suffer irreparable harm,” will be approved for additional H-2B workers, and must attest to that harm in writing on a new form as part of their petition for the workers.

There are never enough visas allotted to meet demand, requiring employers to compete in a lottery system, according to Kathryn Ference, director of Workforce Development for the Maine Tourism Association. 

“The programs are incredibly important to the [tourism] industry in Maine and making sure that we have what we need to make this industry run, which brings so much economic value to the state, adding $16.3 billion to the Maine economy in 2023, [is very important.]” Ference said.

Downeast’s largest tourism draw, Acadia National Park, doesn’t use any visa-permitted workers at the park. The seasonal National Park Service jobs all have U.S. Citizenship as a condition of employment, according to Perrin Doniger, vice president of communications and marketing for the Friends of Acadia.

But in neighboring Bar Harbor, 99 lodging facilities and 66 restaurants rely heavily on H-2B visas, including five of the six Witham Family Hotels, said Managing Director Jeremy Dougherty .

According to Dougherty, the Witham chain employs roughly 500 people, with about 200 at the Bar Harbor Inn alone, including about 82 foreign nationals working on temporary H-2B visas. Dougherty said many are from Jamaica, as well as El Salvador, Haiti, and other countries. He said they are some of his best workers and that some have returned for 15 summers — if they are lucky enough to secure a visa lottery slot.

Dougherty said the visa process is arduous for both the company’s human resource department and for the migrant workers, requiring months of applications, interviews, waiting, and then travel and housing arrangements before they even get to their first day on the job. This year, he said, some of the migrants are a little nervous, and not just about the possibility of being confronted by ICE agents.

“Some of our staff have asked how to best handle it if somebody were to say something that would maybe be inappropriate,” Dougherty said. “In the last few years, people are a little more emboldened to say things to people of color than they used to, and it just puts us more on alert, a little more protective, you know, like protective parents.”

This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit civic news organization. To get regular coverage from The Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.