Headline: Salon, 2/9/2025
Carlyn Zwarenstein writes:
In other words, a lot of dairy workers may be at risk of deportation now as the Trump administration escalates raids in immigrant communities. These are the people who do the hard work of keeping cows healthy, and containing infection when they are not.
“It’s sad and frustrating that we are critical in the farm, vital to the industry, and the owners do nothing to protect workers in this situation we’re in with respect to immigration,” Jimenez said.
What does this have to do with bird flu?
The timing for this crackdown could actually worsen the bird flu situation, with undocumented workers at these massive, tightly cow-packed facilities living in fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE.) Whether this is mostly manufactured fear, or due to new, actual mass raids, given that the people in closest, most attentive contact with the cows are in danger of being involuntarily moved or changing location to avoid deportation, we risk failing to catch infection in cows, failing to report infection in humans, and potentially greater risk of viral transmission due to either workforce movement or lack of workers available to implement emergency measures to prevent or contain an outbreak.. Salon contacted ICE by email but did not receive a response. [emphasis added]
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