Bird flu is spreading untracked through Washington State dairy farms because illegal immigrant workers are hiding infections to avoid ICE arrest — and American families are the ones exposed to the consequences.
United Farm Workers, the union founded by Cesar Chavez, warned Tuesday of a "vast undercount" of avian flu cases in the Yakima Valley. The reason isn't a mystery: ICE enforcement is surging in the region, and workers who are in the country illegally are choosing silence over self-reporting.
"Given the current and ongoing ICE surge in the Yakima Valley, many or most of the workers are understandably reluctant to proactively engage with public agencies," UFW wrote in a thread on X. The union said it has spoken to workers who confirmed that more dairy employees are sick with avian flu symptoms and have not been tested.
Those symptoms range from mild — pink eye and upper respiratory irritation — to severe, including bone pain, severe cough, and high fever. Workers report being given goggles and PPE but say they lack comprehensive training on risk and best practices, according to the UFW thread.
Yakima County has become the top hotspot for ICE arrests in Washington. The city of Yakima saw just over 400 arrests, accounting for 17 percent of the statewide total — more than Seattle, Spokane, or Tukwila, according to the Yakima Herald-Republic. Between March 11 and August 5, ICE arrested more than 2,500 people across Washington state.
The Yakima County Health District said it is "working closely with the impacted producers, dairy workers," and state and federal agriculture and health agencies to provide guidance. The health district acknowledged that "people who work with infected animals are at higher risk of exposure" and recommended PPE to reduce risk. But the statement also conceded the core problem: "Workers are very afraid of ICE-related retaliation if they don't follow employers' instructions."
The Daily Caller reported that the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.
There is the open question nobody in authority wants to answer: what happens when the next mutation crosses from cattle to human and starts moving person to person? The public health apparatus depends on reporting. When a population this large — working this close to infected animals — won't go near a health department for fear of deportation, the case count is fiction. The border policy that created this shadow workforce also created a surveillance gap. American families live downstream of both.
