Unforeseen consequences ...

Adam Perez for The New York Times

When it comes to harvesting crops, immigrants play an incredibly important role as they pick the crops needing harvesting. This is fact but facts don't matter to agent orange and ICE as it's IMMIGRANTS, not the possibility of food shortages when there's no one to pick said crops.

To whit

California is by far the largest food producer in the United States. In 2023, our state’s agricultural economy was worth nearly $60 billion. The state’s roughly 63,000 farms grow over a third of all vegetables and around three-quarters of the fruits and nuts produced nationwide.

The lettuce and tomato on your hamburger very likely came from California. The almonds and pistachios you snack on as well. There’s a good chance the olive oil on your pasta is from California. Did you pair that with a glass of wine? Probably California, too.

This bounty all depends on a reliable, skilled and experienced labor force that is overwhelmingly made up of immigrants: Over 80 percent of California’s hired farmworkers surveyed between 2015 and 2019 were from Mexico, and more than half were undocumented. Nationwide, an estimated 80 percent of farmworkers were born outside of the United States, and around half are undocumented.

These immigrants are nothing less than the backbone of America’s food supply, doing jobs that few native-born Americans seek. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids targeting them now will have real consequences for all Americans, very likely including higher grocery prices and fewer options in the produce aisle.

Blowback looms in the land of the brave and home of the free and we all know about the consequence of unforeseen consequences, right?

A gully erosion in Australia caused by rabbits,
an unintended consequence of their introduction as game animals

The list of these fubars know no bound including ICE and Agent Orange.