The Forum Daily | Tuesday, January 5, 2026https://www.forumtogether.org

The administration’s continuing deportation efforts are straining the U.S. labor market, pushing businesses to close, and costing tax revenue as immigrants are too afraid to move freely in their communities, reports Patricia Caro of El País [link removed].  

"The effect of stricter immigration controls on the labor market is comparable to that of the Great Recession and the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic," said Edward Flores, associate professor of sociology and director of the labor center at the University of California, Merced.  

With legislation last year providing more money for immigration enforcement, immigrant-dependent industries such as agriculture expect labor challenges to worsen, reports Frank Morris of Harvest Public Media [link removed]. 

"We lost two and a half million pounds of blueberries last year to falling on the ground, just due to the fact that we couldn't harvest," said Brandon Raso, owner of a farm in New Jersey. 

Industries such as child care also are affected, as KJZZ’s [link removed] Lauren Gilger discusses with Chris Herbst, a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs and co-author of a recent report [link removed]. 

"I’m just not sure that we as a society have kind of fully grappled with the potential downsides to this kind of immigration enforcement policy," Herbst said. 

Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of The Forum Daily. Tough one, Illinois State, but what a run. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s VP of Strategic Communications, and the great Forum Daily team also includes Jillian Clark, Nicci Mattey and Clara Villatoro. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected]. 

**CONSTRUCTION, TOO** — U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-Texas) is looking to help the construction industry by working on legal paths for foreign-born workers, reports Berenice Garcia of The Texas Tribune [link removed]. Builders in South Texas are frustrated with immigration restrictions’ effects on their industry, Garcia notes. De La Cruz said she hopes to work with the Department of Labor to find reasonable solutions, perhaps a new type of visa.  

**MINNESOTA** — The federal government is deploying 2,000 agents and officers as part of a 30-day operation in Minneapolis-St. Paul, report Nicole Sganga and Camilo Montoya-Galvez CBS News [link removed]. The effort, already among the largest in a city in recent years, could grow further, they report. Already, the federal government’s tactics as it follows up on alleged fraud cases have elicited "protests, confrontations and widespread fear among immigrant communities — particularly within Minnesota's large Somali-American population," Sganga and Montoya-Galvez report. 

**JUDGES’ DECISIONS** — More than 300 federal judges have refused the administration’s efforts to expand "mandatory detention" in immigration cases, reports Kyle Cheney of Politico [link removed]. Legal challenges have increased in recent weeks, with around 100 cases being brought per day. Meanwhile, almost 200 people are suing the administration over to its decision to pause immigration applications for people from 39 countries, reports Marcela Rodrigues of the Boston Globe [link removed]. 

**A DEADLINE** — Barring court relief, about 350,000 Haitians living in the United States will lose Temporary Protected Status (TPS) Feb. 3. That would roil communities across the country, including in South Florida, writes the Miami Herald [link removed] editorial board. "Forcing them to return to a country increasingly run by gangs, where rape and indiscriminate killings have become the norm, may sound like ‘America First,’ but it only shows how callous and against its own self-interest America can be," the board writes. The Washington Post’s [link removed] editorial board agrees. 

Thanks for reading,  

Dan 

**P.S.** More than 40 Chicago chefs will join forces Jan. 19 to raise money benefiting immigrant households dealing with instability, Ramona Meadors of ABC7 [link removed] reports. 

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