Beef prices are expected to climb even higher after Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps through cattle country kept meatpacking workers home and left thousands of cows stuck waiting to be processed.
The warning came in a joint statement on September 24 from three of the biggest cattle industry groups in the country: the Kansas Livestock Association, the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association and the Texas Cattle Feeders Association. They said thousands of fed cattle, meaning animals that have been fattened up at feedlots and are ready for slaughter, missed their scheduled shipments to processing plants. The groups put the damage at millions of dollars in lost revenue and extra costs.
The hardest hit area is southwest Kansas, home to Dodge City, Liberal and Garden City. Those three towns are among the most important meatpacking hubs in America, with plants that normally process thousands of cattle every day. The Associated Press reported that some of those plants had to shut down temporarily and send cattle back to the feed yards, which costs money and creates health problems for the animals.
Federal numbers show how sharp the slowdown has been. Estimated U.S. cattle slaughter on September 24 came in around 90,000 head, down from 107,000 one week earlier, according to Department of Agriculture data reported by Reuters. That is a drop of about 16 percent in a single week.
Exactly how ICE caused the slowdown is still unclear. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed agents are in Kansas but says they are not conducting worksite raids, meaning they are not going into the plants themselves. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement that ICE has been targeting heinous criminals, though he did not say how many people have been arrested. The Kansas Livestock Association said it had not received reports of arrests at worksites. Industry leaders say the arrests happening around town have scared workers into staying home, and without workers the plants cannot run. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a Republican, went further on NewsNation and claimed ICE raided three packing plants in Kansas and shut them down. That claim has not been confirmed.
Immigrants make up a large share of the workforce in cattle country, from the feedlots to the dairies to the trucks that move animals across state lines. Last year, the Trump administration told ICE to back off raids on farms and in the hospitality industry after heavy lobbying from those businesses. ICE has mostly stayed away from those worksites since then. The workers who live in those communities are a different story.
In Dodge City, the fear is showing up in daily life. Amy Soberanes, a community organizer in town, has been delivering food to families who are too afraid to leave their homes.
For shoppers, the timing could not be worse. Beef prices were already at record highs before any of this, largely because the national cattle herd is the smallest it has been in 75 years. Fewer cows means less beef, and less beef means higher prices. Now even the cattle that do exist are not getting processed on schedule. Industry officials warned that if the slowdown drags on, stores will not have enough beef to meet what shoppers want, and prices will follow.
The Trump administration had been trying to bring beef prices down. It let some beef imports in without the usual high tariffs, which are taxes on goods coming in from other countries, and it reopened the border to cattle from Mexico. That border had been closed because of the New World screwworm, a parasite that can kill cattle. Miller said the imported beef has not lowered the price of hamburger at all. He claimed ranchers are getting $300 to $500 less per head while the big meatpackers buy cheaper meat and keep charging shoppers the same. He called the whole situation a comedy of errors.
Ranchers are some of Trump’s most loyal supporters, and some felt betrayed when the administration opened the door to imported beef. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association publicly said it was disappointed. The ICE disruption has deepened that frustration, with the three trade groups calling it “a costly and unnecessary impact” on producers already dealing with political interference in their markets.
The pushback is coming from Republicans in Washington too. Kansas Senators Roger Marshall and Jerry Moran both said they were concerned and urged the administration to coordinate with local authorities. Marshall is in a tight reelection race against a Democrat. Moran said Mullin assured him the warrants are only for arresting people who have been charged with crimes.
The cattle groups are asking federal officials to carry out immigration enforcement in a lawful, orderly and transparent way, respect due process and communicate clearly with employers and the communities affected. They also warned that the damage does not end when agents leave town. Cattle that miss their processing window still have to be fed, housed and rescheduled, and those costs keep moving down the line until they land on beef prices at the grocery store.
