June 25, 2025 – The Department of Labor (DOL) will no longer enforce a 2024 rule that expanded protections for guest workers who come to the U.S. to work on farms through the H-2A program. At the same time, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer announced she’ll create a new office to more quickly handle farmers’ guest worker applications.
The moves are happening in the midst of a widespread immigration crackdown that is affecting food and farm labor. As raids sweep up undocumented farmworkers and cause others to skip work in fear, the DOL is working alongside the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to make it easier for farmers to use the H-2A program, according to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins.
Advocacy groups said the possibility of more guest workers being recruited quickly means protections are needed now more than ever. “Now is the time to strengthen worker protections in the deeply flawed H-2A agricultural visa program, not leave workers vulnerable to abuse and exploitation,” the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM) wrote in a statement on the decision.
As the program has ballooned in size over the last decade, multiple reports, including from CDM, have found that H-2A workers are particularly vulnerable to wage theft, health and safety violations, and other abuses because their housing, transportation, and ability to legally work and live in the country are all tied to their employers.
The rule finalized a year ago—Improving Protections for Workers in Temporary Agricultural Employment in the United States—made small changes intended to address those risks. It prohibited retaliation against workers who engaged in workforce organizing activities and protected their right to have guests visit employer-provided housing. It required more transparency in the recruitment process, mandated employers share more details of job requirements up-front, and prohibited them from confiscating worker passports or other immigration documents.
But the Biden-era rule was already on hold in 17 Republican states after those states sued and a judge blocked the DOL from enforcing it. In its announcement suspending the rule, the DOL cited legal uncertainty and inconsistency as a reason for its decision. “A temporary, nationwide suspension of enforcement ensures clarity and consistency while existing litigation over the legality of the 2024 Final Rule continues, and the Department considers further regulatory action,” wrote Donald M. Harrison, acting administrator of the Wage and Hour Division, in a bulletin.
But CDM sees the action as an affront to workers. “Farmworkers who participate in the H-2A visa program have fought for years—even decades—for strengthened protections against retaliation, fraud, and trafficking,” they wrote. “And now the Trump administration is dismissing them and their hard-won protections.” (Link to this post.)
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