As Food Prices Climb, Global Refuge Warns Immigration Crackdown Is Adding to Families’ Grocery Bills

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 10, 2026

Contact: Timothy Young | timothy[dot]young at globalrefuge[dot]org

WASHINGTON – Food prices rose 0.5% in October, outpacing overall inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Grocery prices climbed 0.4%, and fresh vegetables, among the most labor-intensive crops to harvest, jumped 2.2% in a single month.

Global Refuge, one of the nation’s largest nonprofits serving refugees and other immigrants, warned that federal immigration policy is adding to the cost of putting food on the table. The administration has itself warned of the risk. In an October 2025 rule, the Labor Department wrote that labor shortages were “threatening the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers.”

“The affordability crisis and the immigration crackdown are two sides of the same coin,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, President and CEO of Global Refuge. “You cannot purge the people who pick, pack and process our food and expect prices to come down. Fewer hands in the supply chain means fewer goods on the shelves and higher prices at the register.”

Many of those being pushed out of the workforce are legally present in the U.S. In recent months, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has ended automatic extensions for many immigrants’ work permits, and has moved to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of people with permission to work.

“Every time the government cancels a work permit, a home health aide is barred from showing up for an elderly patient, a delivery truck sits idle, and an American family somewhere pays more,” Vignarajah said. “If Washington is serious about addressing the affordability crisis, it should keep legally authorized workers on the job and build legal pathways to strengthen the workforce our economy depends on.”

Global Refuge urges the administration and Congress to act quickly to protect the ability of refugees and other lawfully admitted humanitarian entrants to work, warning that policies that force authorized workers out of the labor force only deepen workforce shortages and increase costs for American families.

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