Trump Agriculture Chief Mocked for Suggesting Medicaid Recipients Could Replace Deported Farm Workers

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Tuesday drew instant jeers when she defended the mass deportation of immigrant farm laborers and suggested that they could be replaced by Americans who are currently enrolled in Medicaid.

While speaking in Washington, D.C., Rollins declared that there would be "no amnesty" for immigrant farm workers despite President Donald Trump saying just days ago that he was willing to let these workers stay at their jobs.

Instead, Rollins said that the mass deportations of farm laborers would "continue in a strategic way" and administration policy would be to "move the workforce toward automation and 100% American participation, which, again, with 34 million people, able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do fairly quickly."

The idea that there are 34 million "able-bodied adults" on Medicaid who can be easily relocated to work picking crops is pure fantasy. In the first place, an estimated 64% of American adults who receive Medicaid already work, and most of those adult recipients who don't have jobs are either primary caregivers, are attending school, or have an illness or disability that prevents them from working.

A report released earlier this year authored by Economic Policy Institute economist Hilary Wething also poked holes in the narrative that millions of "able-bodied adults without dependents" ("ABAWDs") were sponging off the system.

"While ABAWDs might not have documented disabilities that result in benefit receipt or have dependent children living at home full-time, they often experience health challenges and must take on some caregiving duties, each of which could provide a genuine barrier to finding steady work," stated the report. "We find that 21% reported having a disability that affects their ability to find and sustain work, suggesting that adults with genuine health barriers are being swept up in overly stringent work requirements... 13.8% of ABAWDs live with an adult over the age of 65 in their household, suggesting that many are potential caregivers in some form and likely have caregiving responsibilities beyond what is captured on paper."

Given this, many political observers were quick to ridicule Rollins for her proposal to replace immigrant farm workers with Medicaid recipients.

"They're like cartoon villains," commented Bloomberg politics and policy columnist Patricia Lopez on the social media platform X. "So send Medicaid recipients in as field hands? Also, what is meant by strategic mass deportations? Just Blue states?"

"We've gone from 'the USAID program analysts will make shoes' to 'people will pick strawberries to keep their healthcare,'" marveled Yahoo Finance reporter Jordan Weissmann on X.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council advocacy group, linked Rollins' statement to the recently passed budget megabill that added nationwide work requirements for many Medicaid recipients.

"The Trump admin's new talking point on the Big Beautiful Bill: we're going to deport all the farm laborers and make people on Medicaid work in the fields to earn their health insurance," he wrote on X.

Writing on Bluesky, NPR host Kai Rysdal appeared to liken the policy to the disastrous "Down to the Countryside" movement carried out in China under Mao Zedong that sent educated urban students out to work as farmhands despite a total lack of experience.

"So urban workers will be sent down to the countryside, then?" he wrote. "If only history could be our guide..."