It started with a knock. Then a pause. Then silence.
The morning shift at MoDak Dairy was halfway through the second milking when the ICE vans pulled up. Two unmarked SUVs, four agents in tactical vests, and one clipboard with twenty names. None of the farmers had ever seen anything like it. Greg Mo watched from the edge of the barn. He didn’t move.
“We knew it would come,” he said. “We just didn’t know when.”
“Within two days, we will not have food.”
Mo wasn’t being dramatic. South Dakota’s dairy industry has grown by 70% since 2019, feeding a $7.2 billion economy. But it runs on a truth nobody wants to say out loud: without immigrant labor, the entire system collapses. Three shifts a day. 208,000 cows. Zero locals applying. One farmer put it this way:
“Most Americans wouldn’t last 20 minutes baling hay.”
Kristi Noem knows this. She was governor when the herd boom happened. She backed land deals with operations like Riverview Dairy, where immigrant labor wasn’t a secret—it was the only way the cows got milked. Now she’s Homeland Security Secretary, leading an administration that’s promising to deport 12 million undocumented immigrants. That includes the workers in her own state’s barns. That includes the men and women who helped build her dairy surge.
“We have to trust officials won’t do what they’re saying.”
Greg Mo still supports Trump. Still believes in strong borders. But he’s hedging his bets.
“We have to hope it’s just talk. Because if it’s not—”
He stops himself. The fear isn’t abstract. It’s literal. In February, eight workers were arrested at a South Dakota manufacturing plant. In May, Homeland Security announced a crackdown on “willful failure to depart.”