Abandoned by Trump, a farmer and a migrant search for a better future

KIRK, COLORADO
There was a saying he'd heard, about how every farmer rooted for all the other farmers to do well, too, until one of those others started farming next door. So JJ Ficken didn't talk much about the grant money with other farmers.
But his bills had mounted, and his ambitions had unraveled, and in Kirk, a town of 61, it was easy to feel alone. Now on that afternoon in mid-April, JJ, 37, unstrapped the bags of seed corn on his trailer for a customer.
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'How are ya?' JJ said, extending his hand to a man he'd known all his life. They'd played ball together, shared in family trips. So JJ decided to tell him.
The federal government had promised JJ a $200,000 grant, spread across two years, to cover the cost of a seasonal farmhand from Latin America. In a place where local, legal help was nearly impossible to keep, the extra worker would give him the freedom to handle more jobs and invest in his own equipment. It was an opportunity that could transform his family's future, but, JJ explained to his friend, President Donald Trump had frozen the money.
'Good,' the man said, grinning. 'Too much spending here and there. I'm okay with a little hurt.'
JJ took a breath.
'It needed to be done,' JJ said, softly, because he was also a Republican who, like nearly every farmer he knew, thought the country wasted too much money.
'But not all of it,' JJ said, because he rejected the notion that his grant was a waste.
'I guess,' JJ said, because he didn't want to argue.
JJ Ficken plants corn on a sunny day in April.
Hurt was something JJ already understood. It had been part of the landscape long before Trump took office. JJ was an American farmer, perpetually subject to weather, labor, loans, overhead, markets, health, politics. None of it was predictable, and all of it was a threat. The industry's survival has long depended on the deals made between millions of Americans willing to brave all that uncertainty and a federal government willing to sustain them, through grants, subsidies, insurance, financing, payouts and disaster relief.
But then Trump, in the earliest days of his second term, threatened to break tens of thousands of those deals, suspending billions in agricultural funding and decimating the staffs that managed it. Swept up in the freeze was JJ and the $50 million grant program he'd signed up for along with 140 other farmers across the country. All of them had agreed to hire and, in many cases, house domestic workers or lawful immigrants willing to take jobs that Americans would not, but with the reimbursements in doubt, farmers worried they'd miss payrolls, default on loans or face bankruptcy. Many feared the checks would never come.
'I tried to do things right,' JJ said, because he could have taken on an undocumented laborer at any time for $14 an hour, as many of his neighbors had, but he didn't believe in supporting illegal immigration. Almost nothing mattered more to him than his word, and he'd kept it to the U.S. government: He'd committed to buy a plane ticket for a 24-year-old from Guatemala named Otto Vargas. He'd rented him a single-wide. He'd bought him an old pickup to use. He'd spent tens of thousands of dollars to do what the grant required, covering most of it with a line of credit at 8.5 percent interest.
Now, he didn't know if Otto would ever get here, or if the government would ever pay him back.
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JJ had joined 81 percent of Yuma County's voters in supporting Trump, whom he considered the better of two bad options. He wanted to believe that the president would honor his many pledges to do right by people like him.
'The USA will PROTECT OUR FARMERS!!!' Trump had posted to Truth Social that very day.
JJ needed that to be true as he climbed into his Dodge, turned onto a gravel road and drove toward the horizon, where eastern Colorado's parched brown canvas converged with a cloudless sky. Nothing else was within view. No people. No cows. No homes or barns, pickups or tractors. Out here, it was just JJ and the dirt.
It was the fall of 2023, and an ad urging farmers to apply for the grant program had been playing for months on the radio when JJ's wife finally brought it up.
'Why not?' Kassidee asked.
Larger farms paid specialists to handle the paperwork, but Kassidee, 36, believed they could take on the applications themselves, and they did, slogging through 40 hours of maddening federal bureaucracy. Each night, they put their two kids to bed and sifted through hundreds of pages of guides and forms in JJ's basement office. Taped to his walls were bits of motivation and financial advice. 'Stay the Course,' read a line at the top, bolded and underlined.
JJ was a fourth-generation farmer but had been handed no wealth, land or expensive equipment from his parents, who divorced when he was about 6. To make a living, he had baled hay and helped raise neighbors' wheat, soybeans, pinto beans, great northern beans and alfalfa. Now he rented and farmed his mom's two circles of corn, each about 125 acres, and partnered with his dad to sell seed corn.
He and Kassidee, a dental hygienist, married in 2012 and slipped into debt in their early 20s. They dug themselves out with advice from Dave Ramsey's books: Save for big purchases and live below your means. The couple paid off their home early, opened investment accounts, bought a small rental house. They'd avoided serious debt since, but the promise of a grant and another worker inspired JJ to make a bigger bet on himself.
Vivian Ficken, 7, and her brother, Henry, 4, play on bags of seed corn. Henry rides on his father's lap in the tractor. JJ pours a mixture that prevents the seed corn from clumping as it's planted.
In the months after applying, he bought a 2012 combine, a 2013 planter, a 2013 corn header, a 2000 Dodge pickup meant for Otto and a second hay stacker, the only new piece of equipment he'd ever owned. JJ paid cash as much as he could but still owed more than $380,000. At the time, it didn't scare him, because with Otto, the grant money, the farmhand he already had and the extra margin he'd pocket from owning his machinery, JJ figured he could pay it all off in three years.
His investments spoke to the value that even one dependable worker can bring to today's farms, where more than 40 percent of the workforce is undocumented. To address the critical shortage of labor and stem the flow of undocumented immigrants, the U.S. Agriculture Department unveiled the Farm Labor Stabilization and Protection Pilot Program in 2023. With the grant, farms could bring on foreign workers through the H-2A visa program and, in exchange, provide good working conditions.
'I've employed Americans, and they quit after a few days,' said Tracy Vinz, assured $400,000 for her organic farm in Wisconsin. 'They quit after a few hours.'
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'I've had a couple who didn't even last a whole day,' said Mitch Lawson, a Georgia produce farmer who lost nearly two dozen American employees before he qualified for $200,000.
In Trump's first term, he gave farmers $23 billion to cover the losses from his trade war with China, and he expanded support programs through a new Farm Bill, an achievement President Joe Biden's administration would fail to match.
'Nobody's done for farmers what I've done,' Trump, sitting before a pair of John Deere tractors, told a crowd in Pennsylvania this past fall.
Then, four months later, he halted the grant payments. On Jan. 20, his first day in office, Trump signed executive orders intended to block funding from Biden-era climate legislation and purge links to 'diversity, equity and inclusion,' known as DEI. Baffled staffers at the Agriculture Department told The Washington Post they struggled to interpret vague directions dictating who should and shouldn't be paid.
'The process is changing more than once a day,' Tricia Kovacs, a deputy administrator, told managers, according to a record of the meeting. Staff abandoned their normal work to defend programs that appeared to have nothing to do with DEI. Many were snagged in a broad search for key words branded problematic. Among the misfires was the widespread flagging of 'biodiversity.'
JJ's grant was frozen in late January as top administrators considered whether to cancel it. Over the next two months, more than 20 farmers requested $4 million owed to them, according to documents reviewed by The Post. None were paid.
Dozens of farmers in the program met in a virtual call to share updates and commiserate, later starting a chat group JJ joined. Some considered filing lawsuits.
'Why are you ignoring a military veteran?' Jason Harris, a Trump voter offered a $400,000 grant for his farm in Mississippi, wrote Republican senators in early April. 'The longer these funds are not released it is starting to make me think that you do not care for people like me.'
Citing litigation, an Agriculture Department spokesperson declined to answer questions, including whether the agency intended to cancel the program. But the White House defended Trump.
'Farmers helped propel President Trump to victory in November because they knew he would negotiate better trade deals, cut red tape, and boost American exports,' spokesperson Anna Kelly wrote in a statement. 'They were right — since January, President Trump has delivered a historic trade deal with the UK, with more deals on the way, and eliminated bureaucracy and bloat at USDA, which is why farmer sentiment has improved across the country.'
She cited a survey from April that showed farmers were increasingly optimistic about their future.
As that poll was conducted, farmers in Tennessee, Texas, Michigan, Minnesota, California and Georgia who'd signed up for the grant program told The Post they'd drained their savings or taken on debt. In Oregon, a pear farmer had to cash out her children's life insurance policies. In West Virginia, a farmer who'd risked raising a dozen new fruits and vegetables feared she'd have to close if the money never came. In Maine, a broccoli farmer already contemplating bankruptcy doubted he'd last another year without it.
Pictures on the wall of a room the Fickens use as both an office and a home-school classroom.
Otto was the youngest candidate JJ interviewed, but he sounded eager. Through an interpreter, Otto told him he wanted to learn English, and JJ told Otto he wanted to learn Spanish. The language barrier didn't concern JJ when he offered him the job. He already had another worker, a 21-year-old named Riggin Williams, who had grown up in the community. As long as he had Riggin, JJ wouldn't have to ask Otto to deal with customers or operate the most technical equipment.
Then, one morning in mid-April, Riggin quit.
He had found a job with regular hours and didn't want to spend another season baling hay. He gave JJ two weeks' notice and told him he hoped the new guy worked out.
But the new guy was still in Guatemala, waiting for a visa. JJ couldn't even apply for the first installment of his grant money until Otto arrived, which should have happened weeks earlier. He'd heard from a recruiter that the administration's attempt to make the government more efficient had slowed the visa process throughout Central America.
JJ tried not to panic, but suddenly, for him to operate, Otto had to make it to Colorado, and if he did, he had to work out.
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The stakes were still on JJ's mind that afternoon when a neighbor stopped by his shop and, as it often did, the conversation turned to Trump's overhaul of the federal government.
'There'll be some growing pains,' said Eric Smith, who had grown up in Yuma County, joined the Navy and returned to Kirk to raise his two daughters and work the family land. 'There'll be some caught in the fray that, you know, maybe shouldn't have been caught.'
JJ handed cans of Michelob Ultra to Eric and Riggin, who was patching a tire.
JJ had voted for Trump in part because of the president's promises to cut spending, but he'd never imagined the cuts would target a core Trump constituency. It made no sense to JJ, who said he didn't know what DEI stood for, much less what it had come to represent. He didn't hire Otto to promote an agenda, and he didn't think the government owed him a handout. The Agriculture Department had sought out JJ and the other farmers promoting an opportunity intended to lift the whole country.
'I'd like to think a year from now, what's being done now, we see the benefits from it,' JJ said of what Trump was doing and how he fit into it. 'I would hope.'
JJ talks to his father, Kent Ficken, in front of a pallet stacked with seed corn.
He didn't care much for politics, preferring parenting and self-help books to partisan podcasts. The fervor Trump inspired unsettled him — he'd hated trying to explain the 'F--- Biden' flag outside town to his daughter — but JJ found elements of the president's rhetoric appealing. He, too, resented that the country sent billions of dollars abroad when so many people here needed support.
'So you're bringing over help?' asked Eric, who understood why. The 47-year-old had taken on more than $800,000 in debt to manage his hayfields and buy equipment, and he flew commercial airliners to cover the bills.
'Mm-hmm,' JJ replied, explaining that, like all businesses in the H-2A program, he'd first been required to advertise the job to U.S. citizens. None applied.
'People don't want to work,' Eric said.
Riggin sipped his beer. The conversation was not about him, but that didn't make it less awkward. He had originally committed to two more years, prompting JJ to buy the second hay stacker. But Riggin changed his mind. In the new job, as a field tech working on phone lines, he'd earn more money, get health insurance and make it home for dinner.
Eric, meanwhile, wondered what working in Kirk would feel like for an outsider.
'F---ing wind's blowing all the time. It's every shade of brown,' he said. 'It's hard. You can't get people to do it.'
JJ took another swig. He hoped that wasn't true.
JJ steps inside his shop as he prepares his equipment to plant corn.
In Guatemala, Otto was pleading with God.
From his rural hometown of Aldea Chispán, he'd prayed that he'd get a job interview, and when he did, he prayed he'd do well, and when he did, he prayed he'd receive an offer, and when he did, he prayed the United States would let him come.
Otto had made the six-hour round-trip drive to interview for his visa on April 15 — the same day Riggin quit.
Now, he waited, worrying he would be denied or JJ would back out. The two men had spoken during their video interview for just 17 minutes.
Each week Otto missed because of the delay cost him at least $700 in lost wages, and all of it mattered to Otto. His family's 40-acre farm, he said, had struggled in recent years. Bad winters killed crops. A lost onion harvest squandered five months of work.
He had told JJ that nothing mattered more between a worker and a boss than trust, but he wasn't certain he had the experience to earn that trust. He'd learned on his dad's old tractors, nothing like what he expected to face in Colorado.
Otto Vargas, 24, pleaded with God to help him make it to the United States.
His earliest memories were on the farm, fetching his dad's tools. His father would dig a little hole, and Otto would press fertilizer into the soil by hand. In the flatlands east of the mountains, he'd learned to tolerate temperatures that topped 110 degrees. During planting season, he and his dad would rest in the shade of their lemon trees, sweating and laughing and sharing his mother's empanadas.
Now his dad was 64, and Otto dreaded leaving him. He relied on Otto to manage the land, but Otto also leaned on his dad, who had tried to prepare him for the United States, a place he'd never visited. In the months since Trump took office, Otto said, he'd seen videos on Facebook of immigrants being harassed and arrested.
'You get to thinking about all the people who are here for a better future, for their family,' he said in Spanish. 'It's very difficult.'
His dad insisted that if an officer confronted him, he should do what he was told, never argue. So, Otto made a plan: He would hurry to type a message into the translation app on his phone, asking if he could use it to communicate. He would offer documentation that proved he was legal. He would ask to call his boss, who he hoped could explain that everything was okay.
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JJ loaded his kids and their lunch boxes into the back seat of the pickup, and now, just after 8 a.m. on April 17, a Thursday, he pulled a trailer to his father's place and made a list of the work ahead: Deliver 7,000 pounds of seed corn to a farmer an hour away. Prep his ripper for a neighbor who asked to rent it. Bring his corn header inside in case of rain. Fix a sprinkler and mow the lawn and finish installing the water heater.
Then JJ remembered. He glanced in the rearview mirror.
'Vivi, what's your sugar at?'
In October, Vivian, who is 7, had been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. The whole family changed diets, even her 4-year-old brother, Henry. She needed constant monitoring and frequent insulin shots and regular appointments two hours west in Denver, so the couple decided to home-school both kids.
In the pickup, Vivian reached for her phone, linked through Bluetooth with a monitor on her arm.
'It's at 127,' Vivian said, passing the phone up to her dad. 'See?'
She needed insulin. He sped up.
At his father's shop, JJ figured out the dosage on her phone, and a bottle-cap-size pump on her leg injected the medication. 'Did you hear it go beep beep on ya?' he asked.
Vivian eats lunch in a room at JJ's shop. Henry plays with a tablet while sitting next to his father.
JJ had accepted that farm work would shape their life at home, and he made certain the reverse was true, too. The kids slowed him down, scaling stacks of corn bags and pretending the trailer was a pirate ship, but he still took them along.
He had come to think of himself as the sum of his commitments. First, to the kids and Kassidee and God. Then to his customers, whom he owed fair prices and honest answers. To the country, whose flag he'd pasted along both sides of his grain cart. To the land, so it might survive another generation. To Riggin, until he collected his last paycheck. And now to Otto, a stranger from a faraway place.
JJ sometimes faltered, but when he did, he tried to make it right. He expected the same of others, and that included the president, who he'd never believe in again if the grant didn't come through.
'No way in hell,' JJ said.
After two hernia surgeries and hundreds of fitful nights, JJ hoped his children found a different path. He and Kassidee had already started saving for their college. The couple suspected Vivian would prefer city life — 'She loves the light,' he said — but Henry was just like him.
Now, as JJ fired up the forklift, his son hurried over to sit beside him, legs straddling the levers. Henry had dressed to match his dad, in blue jeans, work boots and a hoodie. At home, in his bedroom, he'd carefully organized a collection of toy harvesters, grain bins, hay bales and seed boxes. JJ, who had dropped out of college before attending an automotive technology program, had rehearsed what he might someday pitch to Henry: 'Why don't you go be an architect, and then own you a farm — a hobby farm? Do it a different way. Do this for a tax write-off, not to feed your kids.'
Henry rides with JJ in the forklift.
JJ and Kassidee had been a year apart at the only high school in their community. She graduated in a class of eight. JJ, a class of five. Opportunities were scant.
The couple had once imagined the grant might allow JJ more time with the kids, freeing Kassidee to earn her master's degree. She'd worked for years as a dental hygienist in rural offices that turned away people on Medicaid. She and a partner had started their own office, and turned away no one, but Kassidee needed an advanced degree to provide treatments their poorest patients couldn't afford elsewhere.
'Maybe next year,' she told her husband.
One night, in their kitchen, Kassidee prepared a meat loaf as she considered the relentless uncertainty their family navigated. How would the couple, who had no health insurance, pay for their daughter's care if the administration and Congress gutted Medicaid? JJ never stopped accounting for the farming costs that would not quit climbing and the eastern Colorado drought that would not end. And now came the tariffs that could spike the price of equipment and the attacks on subsidies that protect commodity farmers when markets collapse.
Kassidee and JJ gather in the kitchen with their children Vivian, left, and Henry before a meal.
'There are so many variables in farming that things get turned upside down all the time,' Kassidee said. 'Every part of it is a gamble.'
From 2017 to 2022, according to the latest Census of Agriculture, the country lost 141,000 farms and 20 million acres of farmland, an area about the size of Maine.
At dinner, Henry sat at the head of the table, beside JJ. Vivian, in a bunny-ears headband, crunched on a cherry tomato and opened a small box that read, 'TALKING POINT CARDS.'
'What do you think it means to be,' Vivian read from one, pausing to spell out the last word. Kassidee helped her sound it out: 'Suc-cess-ful.'
Vivian asked if making her bed counted.
'Successful people do make their beds,' Kassidee said.
'All of 'em,' JJ added.
His definition had evolved. Money would once have been the measure. Today, he said, it was the family in front of him.
Kassidee, back in the kitchen baking sugar-free chocolate chip cookies, mulled the question for another minute.
'I don't know,' she said. 'Success can mean just making it through the day.'
JJ rests in the living room as Henry plays with a farm toy on the floor.
Otto's alarm sounded at midnight, 13 hours before the flight he hoped would change his life. But first he had to make it to the airport, nearly 100 miles away. It was April 28, a week since his visa had been approved, and a national strike was expected to shut down major highways.
Otto had slept only an hour or so. He'd worked late into the evening on his father's farm picking loroco, an edible flower bud. Now he loaded two bags into his 2005 Honda CR-V and met a man who, for the equivalent of about $150, shuttled people to the airport. It could be dangerous to travel at that hour.
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If he reached Colorado, the money would make a difference, and not just for his father's farm. Otto had applied for residency in the United States in 2023, the same year he married a neighbor from Guatemala who now lives legally in Rhode Island. They hoped to someday move in together and have children.
Otto never considered trying to work in the United States illegally, he said. He knew the abuses other undocumented immigrants endured and hated the idea of living under the threat of deportation.
He had tried to do things right. He hoped it would be worth it.
Otto reached La Aurora International Airport before dawn, but the government official with his approved passport had yet to arrive. In the mountains of Guatemala City, it was chilly, so Otto sat in his car. Every hour, he walked back to the terminal to ask for an update. Without the passport, Otto couldn't board his flight.
Nineteen hundred miles north, JJ sat at his dining room table that afternoon and studied an instruction manual for a pair of $430 earbuds that translated other languages in real time. They'd just arrived.
'This might just save my life,' he said, six hours before Otto's plane was scheduled to reach Denver.
'First use: place earbuds in charging case,' he read.
Henry, lugging an old drill, checked on his father's progress.
'Are we going to need the tape measure, Dad?' he asked.
'You never know, bud,' JJ said. 'There's not much we do without a tape measure.'
JJ sets up translation earbuds that he hopes will help him communicate with Otto.
It was 1 p.m., and he didn't even know whether Otto had left Guatemala. JJ, who had no social media accounts, had tried and failed to connect with Otto on WhatsApp, which he'd never used before.
He and Kassidee had fretted over whether Otto would settle into their community. Hispanics accounted for 30 percent of Yuma County's population, but there was no easy way to make friends. It was 104 times the size of Manhattan but had 0.6 percent of its population — 4 people per square mile. Kirk had a lunchtime food truck, the Filling Station, but no restaurants or bars. The local grocery store, Super's, closed at 6:30 p.m.
Otto loved soccer, so JJ, who knew nothing about the game, had Googled how to take him to a Colorado Rapids match in Denver.
At 5 p.m., JJ left for the airport, still with no idea where Otto was. An hour into the drive, JJ got a call from a Rhode Island number. The man asked for Jack, so JJ hung up. Then came two more calls.
'Hello,' a woman said, her accent thick and the connection spotty. 'I talk with — from Guatemala.'
'Otto?' he asked. 'From Guatemala?'
'Yes, because he lost — he lost the flight,' she said, and for a moment, JJ felt sick. He pulled onto the shoulder of the one-lane road.
Another relative called to explain that Otto missed a connection and would arrive late to Denver. The man said he'd connect JJ to Otto on WhatsApp, and a few minutes later, a photo appeared along with a message.
'Hi, Jace,' it read, referencing JJ's full name. 'I am Otto.'
'Hey guy! I don't have great service to load your picture,' JJ wrote back. 'But will be there to pick you up!'
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He stopped at a Mexican restaurant outside the city to eat a long, nervous fajita dinner and sip a margarita.
'I am scared to death,' he said. 'It was just easy with Riggin.'
Two hours later, JJ pulled into the parking garage and considered what this experience might mean to Otto. By federal mandate, JJ would pay $17.84 an hour, and to get the grant, he'd agreed to offer overtime after 40. JJ intended to give him as much work as he could handle.
Sitting in the darkness, JJ tried to Google the minimum wage in Guatemala. He saw 33 'quetzals,' a word he couldn't pronounce. Just more than $4 an hour. He shook his head.
Besides the rental, the truck and the $1,134 flight, JJ would cover Otto's gas, internet, phone, household items and workers' compensation.
By then, the grant had technically been unfrozen because of a court order two weeks earlier, on April 15, but an administrator from the Agriculture Department later told the judge it faced a massive backlog. More than 42,000 contracts had been stalled.
On April 23, a national group of nonprofits suing the Agriculture Department accused it of largely ignoring the order and rushing to cancel grants rather than unfreeze them. Government attorneys said that wasn't true, but, according to documents and farmers in the chat group, no one in JJ's program had been paid.
Inside the airport, JJ lingered by baggage claim, checking his phone, scanning faces.
At 10:13 p.m., he waved. Otto, in jeans and a T-shirt, grabbed his bag and walked over, grinning. They shook hands.
JJ greets Otto as he arrives at Denver International Airport.
In the SUV, JJ handed him an earbud.
'It can translate,' JJ said.
'Oh, okay,' Otto said, nodding.
After a few seconds, the words came through, so Otto detailed his flight trouble, eager to explain why he was late.
They talked about his wife, a hairdresser, and the protests back home and how there was lots of traffic in Guatemala but none where they were going. At McDonald's, Otto, who hoped to one day become a U.S. citizen, asked for fries, Coke and a Big Mac.
'Do you have more workers on your farm?' Otto asked, according to the translation in JJ's ear.
'I had one full-time guy,' JJ said, 'and he just quit.'
'Okay,' Otto said, eyebrows raised.
JJ pointed at Otto, then himself.
'Just you and me.'
Otto walks with JJ outside the Fickens' home as a storm passes in the distance.
'Otto speaks Spanish, you guys,' JJ told his kids, strapped in the back seat of the Silverado.
Otto had made it to Kirk 29 days late. Now, at 10 o'clock the next morning, JJ was headed back to the rented mobile home to pick him up.
'He's gonna be saying, like, 'comprendo' and stuff?' Henry asked. 'To say 'okay' in Spanish, you say 'comprendo.''
So, JJ practiced: 'Comprendo. Comprendo.'
By then, Otto said, he'd already been up for hours. He understood that thousands of people from his home country would have taken this job, and he wanted to prove to JJ, on this first day, that he'd made the right choice.
He took a shower and cleaned the glass with a squeegee. He got dressed, slipped on his sneakers, combed his hair, passed the sign on the wall that read, 'Dream the impossible.'
He made the bed.
As JJ pulled up, Otto walked outside.
'How are ya?' JJ asked, and Otto nodded and smiled.
JJ and Otto use the translation earbuds to talk about the work to be done. Otto, sitting on a lawn mower, listens to JJ discuss the farming equipment.
That afternoon, they went to JJ's house to plant a row of young Rocky Mountain junipers. It was a laborious, low-pressure task, a good way to ease Otto in.
JJ ran a line of twine on stakes to keep the row straight. Otto raked sticks into piles. Henry lugged them to a trailer.
They had just unfurled a black weed tarp when JJ's phone rang. It was a woman from Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, a national organization that provides seasonal workers in the grant program with a 'know your rights and resources' training. Until Otto attended a session, JJ couldn't request the first half of his money.
He dropped his shovel.
'How are you, ma'am?'
It would take time for Alianza to arrange a training near Kirk for just one worker, but the woman said Otto could join a session north of Denver, 165 miles away.
'What day?' he asked.
'Tuesday.'
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'Ahhh, Rosa. I can't do Tuesday,' he told her, aware that Kassidee had to work that day. 'I've got the kids.'
But he would do Tuesday, because he would do whatever it took, even a six-hour round-trip drive with Otto and the kids. He'd already accepted that he needed to ask for an extension on the $46,000 hay stacker payment due the next month. JJ leaned against the hood of his pickup and bowed his head.
He didn't know it then, but in early May, a few people in his grant program who'd waited since winter for installments would finally receive them. That did little to calm the fear that political appointees running the agency would kill the program. Already, they had canceled the research component of the grant, which was intended to show whether the program helped farmers or curbed illegal immigration. 'DEI,' officials called it.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins would announce a 'Make Agriculture Great Again' initiative on May 19 that proposed her department address the labor shortage in the same ways JJ's pilot program already did: by working with other government agencies and relying on the H-2A visa process. A month later, at least three farmers yet to receive installments would say they'd soon be unable to make payroll. JJ, who'd send eight emails to the Agriculture Department pleading for answers, would still be waiting for his check.
Vivian and Henry watch JJ and Otto organize seed corn containers at Kent Ficken's shop. JJ and Otto prepare the ground before planting trees together near JJ's house.
Now, in Kirk, the tree line had been set and the sticks cleared, and JJ was trying to say, in Spanish, that they would stop in 45 minutes, at 5 p.m. He figured Otto must be exhausted from the day before.
'So we'll work 'til,' he said, pausing to count, 'cinco — de la noche?'
'La tarde,' Otto corrected, and they laughed.
'We're all still pretty tired,' JJ said. He picked up a posthole digger and spiked it into the hard, dry earth, and when he was done, Otto planted the first tree.
Vivian listed all the words she knew in Spanish. 'The trees are verde,' she said.
Otto, now digging the holes, pointed to his jeans.
'What is the color?' he asked her.
'Azuuuuul.'
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JJ knelt to plant the next tree. He looked up at his daughter.
'This is going to be good for us, Viv.'
About 4:45 p.m., a white pickup sped past on their dirt road. It was Riggin, who honked and waved. He was finished for the day, headed home. JJ waved back.
Ten minutes later, he picked up the tape measure and dropped it into the toolbox. He told Otto they could finish later.
'I'm beat,' JJ said.
Otto asked how many more trees they needed to plant.
'Probably 20,' JJ answered.
Otto reached for the posthole digger. 'No problem,' he said.
So JJ grabbed another sapling and followed him back to work.
JJ and Otto work late into the afternoon planting trees near JJ's home.

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Fox News

42 minutes ago

• Fox News

Israeli hostage families make desperate plea to Trump as 'time is running out'

JERUSALEM—The family members of Israeli hostages held in captivity by the U.S.-designated terrorist movement Hamas published an open letter on Thursday to President Trump, urging him to intervene to help free the 53 remaining people held in Gaza. "As Iranian missiles streak across the sky above us, our hearts remain consumed by thoughts of our beloved family members enduring brutal Hamas captivity. 53 precious souls—our children, parents, siblings, and spouses—remain trapped in hell. "For over 620 endless days, they have had no shelter, no family's embrace, no whispered words of comfort. Their time is running out. We write to you united in this unique anguish, yet bound by unshakable faith in your leadership and commitment to bringing our loved ones home," wrote the Israeli group Hostages and Missing Families Forum on the social media platform Truth Social -Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) is the parent company of Truth Social. The family members urged the President to "seize the opportunity while Iran and Hamas are at their weakest point." President Trump secured the freedom of the 21-year-old American-Israeli Edan Alexander from Hamas captivity on May 12. Eden returned to his hometown in New Jersey on Thursday after nearly 600 days in captivity. Fox News Digital sent press queries to the White House and the U.S. State Department, seeking comment about the open letter published on Truth Social to President Trump. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters at Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheva—the site of an Iranian missile strike—that "The real barrier of Hamas is Iran. It will bring down Iran . . . Hamas is dying, and it will undoubtedly help to return the hostages." Netanyahu said Israel's military campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran is aiding the Jewish state's efforts to secure the release of hostages held by the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza. He added, "I do not close my eyes for a moment" about the hostages. Netanyahu told Isarel's Kan public broadcaster that "Hamas relies on Iran." Hamas' recalcitrance about agreeing to a ceasefire that would enable the hostages to be released has been the major obstacle for America's efforts to secure their freedom after 623 days of war. Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, and massacred over 1,200 people, including Americans. and kidnapped more than 250 people. Netanyahu stressed, with respect to the hostages and the war against Iran, that "I am determined to bring all of them home . . . I will not give up on this, and there are also steps that we will take in these moments for this goal. . . . The destruction of the nuclear weapons, the destruction of missiles, the elimination of our targets." The Hostages and Missing Families Forum Headquarters released a statement from family members about the burial of murdered hostage Yair Yaakov on Friday, who was laid to rest at Kibbutz Nir Oz after 623 days in captivity. Or Yaakov, Yair's son, who was released from Hamas captivity as part of a deal, said, "Dad, you were such a special person. An exemplary father, a true friend. You left behind an enormous void that nothing will ever be able to fill. But I promise you, I will keep your memories alive within me. I will tell your stories, I will laugh at and with your jokes, and most importantly, I will live the way you would want me to live - with flow, simplicity, and contentment. Rest in peace, my dear father. You will always be in my heart, with every breath I take. I love you forever." The Times of Israel reported that the operation to recover Yair Yaakov was carried out by the army's 36th Division following precise intelligence from military and security intelligence. Reuters named Aviv Atzili as the second person recovered during the operation. Atzili, a warrant officer in the reserves and a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz's civil defense squad, was killed battling Hamas-led terrorists in the Gaza border community on October 7, 2023.

CNN

an hour ago

• CNN

Smerconish: Where's the Evidence on Iran's Nuclear Weapons? - Smerconish on CNN - Podcast on CNN Audio

Smerconish: Where's the Evidence on Iran's Nuclear Weapons? Smerconish on CNN 45 mins CNN Michael Smerconish dives into the conflicting messages from the Trump administration about Iran's nuclear weapon capabilities. Then, Retired Admiral James Stavridis and New York Times National Security Correspondent David Sanger join Smerconish to weigh on the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. After that, Retired Lt. General David Deptula discusses U.S. military capabilities in case tensions between Israel and Iran becomes a wider regional conflict. Finally, the L.A. Dodgers are taking a stand against the Trump administration's ICE raids. Los Angeles Times Writer Jack Harris sets the record straight about conflicting reports about a stand off between the L.A. Dodgers stadium and DHS officials.

Buzz Feed

an hour ago

• Buzz Feed

Trump Asks White House Workers If They're Undocumented

This week, Donald Trump held a press conference on the White House South Lawn to show off his new gigantic American flag pole. While surrounded by a group of White House service workers, a reporter questioned Trump about his policies surrounding ICE raids at worksites, and that's when things got extremely awkward. "DHS said this week that worksite enforcement would remain in place, that it's a cornerstone, so what's your message to farmers?" a reporter asked Trump. "We gotta get the bad people out of here first. We're doing that. We're taking them out by the thousands. Murderers, drug dealers, uh, people that are mentally insane from insane asylums," Trump replied. He then turned around to face the service workers and asked: "Any illegal immigrants here? No? I'll tell you what, if they were, they'll find out," he said, gesturing towards the press. "They'll be checking you, you won't believe. You're whole life will be destroyed because of this press conference. They'll destroy these people." Some of the workers laughed as Trump continued: "I didn't want to tell them that before they stood out. They'll end up being, he's so-and-so, and this one is from you know where. Don't worry, I think you're going to be ok," Trump said, chuckling. "How the F*CK is this funny???" this person asked. "What a disgusting question. If someone had said yes, would #donaldtrump go and get Holman?" another person wrote. This person called Trump, "Fucking shameful." "Trump says the lives of the construction workers with him would have had their lives destroyed if they were 'illegal.' He knows he's destroying lives, and jokes about it. He's deporting working people and destroying their families. This BS about 'insane' immigrants is disgusting," another person wrote. What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments.