Department of Labor halts enforcement of expanded labor protections for migrant farmworkers on H-2A temporary visas
On June 20, 2025, the Department of Labor announced that they would suspend all enforcement of a regulation that expanded labor protections for many farmworkers in the U.S. The rule, titled “Improving Protections for Workers in Temporary Agricultural Employment in the United States,” was finalized by the Biden administration in 2024, and provided a much-needed expansion of protections for workers employed under the H-2A work visa.
The H-2A program is explicitly for temporary and seasonal jobs in agriculture, and in practice is mostly used for crop farming. Three separate federal agencies have some jurisdiction over the H-2A visa program – the Department of Homeland Security reviews and adjudicates petitions, the Department of State issues or denies visas, and DOL reviews and adjudicates applications for job certifications and enforces the protections of the visa program, ensuring that employers are following the law when they hire people through the H-2A program. Despite this, employers routinely underpay their H-2A workers and commit other workplace labor violations. But in 2022, federal investigations into wage and hour violations on farms dropped to an all-time low, at just over 1,000, likely because of funding and staffing constraints, a low that was surpassed in both 2023 and 2024, with only 659 completed investigations on farms last year.
For H-2A workers, like other temporary migrant workers, their employment and ability to remain in the United States is controlled by their employer. Unless they can meet certain requirements under a recent regulation and find another employer, they are usually bound to their employer for the duration of their visa. This leaves them particularly vulnerable to workplace exploitation, because agricultural employers know that these workers have no other outside options if they want to stay in the United States. Further, agricultural employment is physically demanding, often dangerous labor, sometimes in isolated areas with limited access to other resources or community support, and where workers are operating within a business model that relies on paying the lowest wages allowed by law, and is rife with employers that steal workers’ wages with impunity as a matter of course. The 2024 final rule was an insufficient but still sorely-needed step toward improving employer transparency and accountability in the H-2A program, by clarifying and establishing some of the fundamental rights that farmworkers should enjoy, for example in the area of safety when in transit to and from work, or being protected against retaliation from whistleblowing. The rule also helped facilitate educating workers about their rights under the law, among other provisions. Notably, the rule extended anti-retaliation protections to prevent farm employers from firing, disciplining, or otherwise retaliating against H-2A workers for joining together with their coworkers to improve their conditions through collective action.
Impact:
There are hundreds of thousands of people working on farms in the U.S. under the H-2A visa program, with nearly 350,000 employed in 2024, accounting for a significant share of farm employment. Much of the rule was already not being enforced due to ongoing litigation against the regulation from the agricultural industry and from several Republican state Attorneys General. However, this announcement means the Trump administration intends to effectively ignore the rule altogether rather than defending it in court, and leaves hundreds of thousands of farmworkers who are legally working in the U.S. without these expanded protections.
https://www.epi.org/policywatch/department-of-labor-halts-enforcement-of-expanded-labor-protections-for-migrant-farmworkers-on-h-2a-temporary-visas/
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