Nobody in Wilder, Idaho expected this. The tiny farming town of 1,725 people—where nine out of ten voters backed Donald Trump in 2024—is now scrambling to figure out what comes next after federal immigration agents swept through in mid-October and arrested more than 100 Hispanic workers at a local horse racetrack. So far, 75 people have been deported, and the farms that keep this place running are facing a labour shortage with no easy fix in sight.
73 Comments
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world · 151 pts · 186d
Well, sounds like they had the day they voted for.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 20 pts · 185d
I would bet my next paycheck that he's still a Trump supporter.
apftwb@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 185d
"look, there's a lot I disagree with the president on, including pointing a gun at my daughter. But I'm really... But I really like what he's doing with immigration."
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 9 pts · 185d
Can we call them nazis yet, or is that still an "exaggeration"?
Archangel1313@lemmy.ca · 84 pts · 186d
That just confirms how out-of-touch these folks are. It still boggles the mind, that so many people had no idea that Trump was actually going to do the things he kept saying he was going to do.
BCsven@lemmy.ca · 24 pts · 186d
Trump is a horrible person, but as a politician he says the quiet part out loud. Anyone that is surprised by his actions is an idiot.
Manifish_Destiny@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 185d
I'm from the area. I'm not kidding when I tell you most of these people are too fucking stupid to draw the connection. Out-of-touch is such an under-exaggeration that its fairly depressing. The vast majority of people in that valley have no capability to correlate who they voted for to what is happening to them.
PapaStevesy@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 185d
It's actually even more mind-numbingly stupid, these people (read: racist rural Americans) have been calling for this for decades without considering just how much they directly benefit from illegally-cheap immigrant labor.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 185d
I mean, it gives me pause to think about how I benefit from cheap exploitative migrant labor.
I was talking with my mom recently, and we came to the conclusion that it's not possible to buy something new in the US that does not have inhumane practices as part of the product at some point. Basically, the are no morally "good" things you can buy.
BCsven@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 185d
Hand made items from local merchants...and for example I don't mean ordering gems/beads from China and stringing them, I mean like a person who makes wooden or ceramic beads and threads them. But then there is the cord, so you'd have to spinbyour own twine etc
Bytemeister@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 185d
Unless every part of it came out of that merchants back yard, then it probably had exploitation at some step. Roads are frequently cleaned and maintained using prison labor. Cars are partially assembled all over the world in order to find the cheapest labor and materials...
I literally can't think of a single thing I've bought in my lifetime that didn't have industrialized human misery as a component or result of it's production.
BCsven@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 185d
I know. You'd have to have your own forest and farm land, raise sheep to make yarn, etc. Best we can do is as local and artisan as possible
Bytemeister@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 185d
Even then, I live on stolen land. I didn't steal it myself, but at some layer I'm complicit, because I bought it from someone who bought it from someone else... Until you get to the guy that stole it in the first place, and he probably stole it because of the value it would have in the future. I don't want to be here, but I don't have anywhere else to go. Even my own backyard is rooted in human misery.
BCsven@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 185d
We have to move forward and make reparations where possible, and try to live a better consumer lifestyle. But until billionaires are brought into check this world is rife with exploitation.
howrar@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 185d
Products made without exploitation exist. But if you're among the people being exploited, you won't be able to afford them.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 185d
I'd be curious to see one of those products.
obviouspornalt@lemmynsfw.com · 8 pts · 185d
thlibos@thelemmy.club · 2 pts · 185d
I guarantee you that a non-neglible percentage of these maroons knew exactly what Trump is and exactly what would happen to the migrant workers in their town, and happily voted for him anyway. A good chunk of them actually hate the browns (and trans, and students, etc.) that much.
ArmchairAce1944@lemmy.ca · 54 pts · 186d
He is going to cause a famine, isnt he?
Archangel1313@lemmy.ca · 30 pts · 186d
Don't worry. Elon Musk will just build robots to do all that labor. Just wait. 5 years, tops.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 186d
You said five years ten years ago!
ArmchairAce1944@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 185d
People give the Soviet Union a lot of shit for their 5 year plans that never seem to fully pan out. But no one gives a fuck about Elon Musk's predictions.
Similar to how the Ford Pinto is still a joke in the auto industry even though Teslas are much, MUCH more fire/explosion prone than a junk car from the 1970s and have killed far more people. The death rate of Pintos vs. other cars of the period was not as different as some people think, but the death rate of Teslas? That is higher.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 185d
Teslas are also a joke, especially in the industry, and Elmo's bullshit is similarly panned.
jaybone@lemmy.zip · 9 pts · 185d
We’re on mars now, just like he said we would be ten years ago when he said we would be there in ten years. Just like he’s converting his tesla factories to build AI robots that will totally be ready ten years from now.
WoodScientist@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 185d
It turns out robots are much more useful as an excuse to suppress workers rights and wages than they are at doing real work.
Canconda@lemmy.ca · 9 pts · 186d
No that's climate change and hyper integrated global food supply chains you're thinking of.
FireRetardant@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 186d
He'd still happily take credit for it
RamenJunkie@midwest.social · 5 pts · 185d
I mean, theybare pushing Coal again and shitting all over Wind and Solar.
So....
Canconda@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 185d
Fully agree!
But IMO regardless there is going to be major global food supply chain interruptions, as industries that take years to decades to mature disappear faster than they can be re-established.
In my region we have had entire fruit crops destroyed by cold snaps following an unseasonably warm winter. Meaning there was multiple year gaps in output from an entire region.
grue@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 186d
In some other country, maybe (assuming the USAID cuts haven't done it already). Even poor people in the US are rich enough to outbid people in the developing world on food imports, if it were truly necessary, so if we did fuck up our own harvest enough to cause a real shortage we'd just buy somebody else's.
ArmchairAce1944@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 185d
so he's going to cause famines in OTHER countries then? That isn't much better. Just like this destruction of USAID (as you mentioned) had already killed hundreds of thousands of people.
lobut@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 185d
Not for leopards apparently though.
LodeMike@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 186d
No
kent_eh@lemmy.ca · 51 pts · 186d
Yet most of them voted for exactly this to happen (to someone else...)
yesterday@lemmy.ca · 50 pts · 185d
They actually said it. Incredible.
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca · 16 pts · 185d
The only moral immigrant worker is my immigrant worker.
kent_eh@lemmy.ca · 9 pts · 185d
You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land—the common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca · 36 pts · 186d
Dear Wilder, Idaho, welcome to the find out phase that follows fucking around. Enjoy getting what you voted for. I hope your whole town goes fucking bankrupt.
thesohoriots@lemmy.world · 36 pts · 186d
They finally got their own private Idaho.
RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 185d
Golf clap
Rentlar@lemmy.ca · 34 pts · 186d
I hope every Latino immigrant leaves or refuses to work the fields in these Republican towns, so they can figure out what their votes and immigration policy stances mean.
Soleos@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 185d
Most immigrants were there in the first place because they have people to feed. What do you suppose they should do as an alternative after they refuse to work in those fields?
howrar@lemmy.ca · 6 pts · 185d
Whatever the alternative, it's better than dying in a prison cell.
Rentlar@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 185d
If staying on a farm, something like a field in Vermont or in the PNW Cascades area. If something like construction, it's in demand all over the place.
WoodScientist@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 185d
Work in another area that's had many immigrants deported, but in an area and industry that doesn't fellate Republicans.
Afaithfulnihilist@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 33 pts · 185d
This is the first step, the next one is buying those farms when the farmers default and then the final step is rich people gobbling up all of this property to turn it into factory farmland.
During the transition we're going to see Americans starve. Some of us will die but that is a sacrifice they are willing to make for more profits.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 185d
They also plan on renting those people back to the farms.
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 5 pts · 185d
Nah, we won't starve, they'll just start a new brand of food called soylent green.
rekabis@lemmy.ca · 30 pts · 185d
Ragallos@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 26 pts · 186d
Having grown up in Idaho, not too far from Wilder. All I gotta say is, fuck em. Stupid bootlickers only "didn't know to expect this" because they're fucking stupid. Glad I can continue to hate Idaho forever. Disgusting place.
Manifish_Destiny@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 185d
Land is pretty though. Big shame about the people.
Ragallos@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 185d
Agreed, especially central Idaho. Thos mountains hold some magnificent unblemished (as far as I remember) nature. But the people.....
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca · 23 pts · 185d
Thing Conservatives were warned was going to happen, happens. Conservatives shocked: "who could have seen this coming?"
douz0a0bouz@midwest.social · 13 pts · 185d
They might not have actually seen it coming. I grew up in a place like that and the echo chambers are real and debilitating. There is a reason most rural areas only have fox as their news broadcaster. Information deprivation and misinformation has been the plan for decades.
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 185d
"Nobody could have seen this coming" said about an event that everyone else saw coming still doesn't make me very sympathetic.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 17 pts · 185d
Oh no, white people will have to harvest their own potatoes!
Well, they can't sell them anyway cause the processing facilities are having labor shortages too. Wonder why...
KingGordon@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 186d
You can tell it’s fascism by the way the fascists fascist!
electric_nan@lemmy.ml · 16 pts · 186d
Forgot to pay the protection fee.
BigMacHole@sopuli.xyz · 15 pts · 186d
Thanks OBAMA!
-This Town
Probably!Daedskin@lemmy.zip · 14 pts · 185d
As someone who used to live out in the farmland past Wilder — having to drive through Wilder to get to Boise — basically all the farm workers you see are Hispanic. Wilder itself is this tiny town surrounded by farmland. It boggles my mind that people presented with those facts day-in and day-out never put two and two together that removing or scaring away the demographic that makes up all your workers means your town becomes worthless.
WoodScientist@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 185d
Conservatism is built in reality denial and magical thinking. That's literally the entire foundation of it. Anything that isn't politically correct to the current party narrative is immediately dismissed or denied. The modern Republican party is a Maoist cult of personality.
Etterra@discuss.online · 11 pts · 185d
seangibbz@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 185d
MehBlah@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 185d
It doesn't matter. They will vote red next time.
Mongostein@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 186d
Harvest in February?
Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca · 20 pts · 186d
jaybone@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 185d
Did they wait four months to publish the article?
Dalkor@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 185d
If i had to guess they scrambled to hire help and the helps not coming so the consequences of their actions are finally sinking in and theyve reached the acceptance stage of grief.
jaybone@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 185d
They must have realized a few months ago time to harvest was over. What are they staring at dead crops until February and are finally like “gorsh, sure wished we had picked these…”
Mongostein@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 185d
That’s what I’m sayin’
whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 185d
Underfunded, understaffed, undermined US public education
Darkness343@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 185d
Weren't those idiot rednecks supposed to breed like rabbits and have their kids tend to the fields?
Where did we go wrong?
The_Almighty_Walrus@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 185d
"I never thought the leopards would eat MY face!" Says woman who voted for the leopards eating faces party