YUMA, Ariz. – The border crisis is jeopardizing the nation’s food security as immigrants encroach on farmland and contaminate crops, two Arizona farmers with fields near the southern border told Fox News.
“Obviously there is a concern for food safety because our fields are monitored, audited and tested for different pathogens,” Pasquinelli Produce Company President Alex Muller told Fox News. “If there’s someone coming into our field and then we don’t know why we put up flags and mark it and we don’t harvest that.”
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“That gets to the bottom of it,” Muller said. “It’s not sustainable. It’s not good for the country.”
Alex Muller, whose farmland lines up against the US-Mexico border, said unfinished gaps in the border wall amid an influx of migrants endangered food security.
(Megan Myers/Fox News)
Yuma, the nation’s agricultural leader in producing leafy greens during the winter months, provides about 90 percent of the nation’s supply of romaine and iceberg lettuce, according to the Department of Agriculture. It supplies about 9 billion servings of leafy greens a year, but farmers fear losing crops as more migrants pour through the border wall gaps into their fields.
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“We’ve been getting a fair amount of traffic through and around our fields and throughout the Yuma Valley,” said fifth-generation farmer Hank Auza. His holdings cover several thousand acres with fields near the Morelos dam, where gaps remain in the border wall.
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So-Gov. Doug Ducey ordered the construction of a container wall in August to plug those holes. But the state agreed to remove the shipping containers in early January as a result of a federal lawsuit.
“Where the gaps are, it opens up more farmland for them to cross,” fifth-generation farmer Hank Auza told Fox News. “We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just on our farm for food safety.”
Yuma migrant crossings increased 171% between 2021 and 2022, according to Customs and Border Protection. About 1 million immigrants crossed the southern border from Arizona during the Biden presidency.
“This is the biggest humanitarian disaster we have had in this country,” Auza said. “And part of the country is happy that it’s happening. I don’t understand why.”
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A neighboring farmer lost nearly $100,000 after a handful of immigrants hid on his land for a week, Auza told Fox News. He couldn’t harvest affected crops in case they were contaminated with pathogens that could cause foodborne illness.
Migrants walk across farmland after crossing the insecure US-Mexico border.
(Courtesy: Alex Muller)
“Now you start failing food safety audits and there’s no insurance in the produce business… so you eat that,” Auza said.
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Muller told Fox News that Yuma’s agricultural production is vital to feeding Americans. He called on the Biden administration to close the border wall gaps and enforce tougher immigration policies to ease the pressure on Border Patrol.
CBP announced on January 6 that construction to close the gaps in the Yuma border wall would begin this week, but had not begun as of Sunday night.
“This is a product that we are growing for the entire country and it needs to be protected,” Muller said.
To hear more from Arizona border farmers on food safety concerns, click here.
