On August 31, 2026, a workplace dispute at Kansas Dairy Development in Deerfield turned deadly. Adonis Edgardo Aguilar-Juarez, 32, of Lakin, died from stab wounds sustained during an altercation at a calf and heifer facility that houses up to 100,000 head of cattle.
Erlin Lagos-Gonzales, 43, of Garden City, was charged with voluntary manslaughter and is being held on $500,000 bond. According to official documents, Lagos-Gonzales, a Honduran citizen, had a deportation order issued in July 2025 that was never executed. State prosecutors believe he’d been living in the U.S. without legal authorization since 2019.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach seized on the case as evidence that local law enforcement agencies must sign “287g” cooperative agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to track down the estimated 1.5 million “fugitive aliens” nationwide — thousands in Kansas alone.
“This killing never should have happened,” Kobach said. “The problem is too big for ICE alone.”
His Democratic opponent, Chris Mann, countered that local sheriffs are already stretched thin without adding immigration enforcement to their plates.
“I trust our local sheriffs to make the decision that is best for their community,” Mann said, “and as attorney general, I will work with each of them to ensure they have the resources needed to hold violent criminals accountable.”
Kansas Dairy Development’s CEO Jason Shamburg confirmed the fatal alternation, stating, “One employee had worked for KDD for four years and the other for nearly six. This is a very sad and unfortunate situation.”
The Bigger Picture: Dairy’s Labor Crisis
But lost in the political rhetoric is a more fundamental question: What happens to U.S. dairy — and American food security — when the workforce that produces 79% of U.S. milk has no legal pathway to stay?
Kansas Dairy Development isn’t just any farm. It’s one of the nation’s leading contract calf and heifer growers, employing 200 people to care for cattle from 10 states. Shamburg credits their success to one thing above all else: people.
“We’re always looking for any advantage that we can to move the needle, but by and large, day in and day out, it’s absolutely about our team of great people,” Shamburg told Dairy Herd Management in a 2024. “It’s about consistency, it’s about animal husbandry, it’s about cleanliness.”
That team — like dairy teams across the U.S. — is overwhelmingly immigrant. According to the National Milk Producers Federation, immigrant workers represent more than half of all dairy farm labor.
And Kansas is leading the nation’s dairy expansion. The state added 29,000 cows year-over-year, posting 13.9% production growth — the highest in the country. U.S. milk production hit 19.9 billion pounds in August 2026, up 1.7%, with much of that growth concentrated in states like Kansas, Texas and South Dakota.
But that growth is built on a workforce with no legal status and no clear future.
“We’ve Turned Off the Tap”
In spring 2025, Rodney and Dorothy Elliott of Drumgoon Dairy in Lake Norden, S.D., experienced the nightmare scenario firsthand. A Department of Homeland Security audit led to the immediate termination of 38 employees at their 6,500-cow operation. They were left with 16 workers.
“We didn’t just lose employees — we lost years of experience, skills, knowledge and a team culture that we had built over the past 10 years or more,” Dorothy shared with Dairy Herd Management.
The Elliotts fear not just for their own operation, but for the industry’s survival.
“Basically, we’ve turned off the tap, but we’ve done nothing to create a solution to find employees for the dairy industry,” Dorothy said.
Rick Naerebout, CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, puts it even more bluntly.
“This is bigger than just a dairy issue, this is a feeding America issue, which is national security,” he said. “Roughly half of all on-farm labor in America is unauthorized. We cannot feed ourselves as a country without these workers. One of the lessons we learned from WWII is that a country that cannot feed itself without imports is at greater risk from its enemies.”
H-2A: A Band-Aid, Not a Solution
Recent changes expanding H-2A visa eligibility to dairy operations have been touted as progress.
The H-2A program was designed for seasonal agricultural work: planting, harvesting, temporary labor peaks. Dairy is the opposite. Cows need milking 365 days a year. Calves need feeding every single day. There are no off-seasons.
“H-2A changes are a good first step, but dairy isn’t seasonal and we need a 365-day solution,” Naerbout said.
The program also doesn’t address the reality on the ground: many of the most experienced, skilled dairy workers have been in the U.S. for years — sometimes decades. They’ve built lives, raised families and become integral to their operations. H-2A doesn’t provide a pathway for them. It only allows for new, temporary workers with no guarantee of continuity.
Across the country, dairy operations are expanding at record pace while the workforce that makes it possible lives in legal limbo.
What Needs to Happen
1. Year-Round Agricultural Visa Program Dairy needs a visa category that reflects the 365-day reality of livestock agriculture. Seasonal programs don’t work for operations that never shut down.
2. Pathway for Existing Workers The experienced employees already embedded in dairy operations represent billions of dollars in institutional knowledge, animal welfare expertise, and operational continuity. Deporting them and starting over with new workers isn’t just cruel — it’s economically catastrophic.
3. Enforcement That Distinguishes Between Violent Criminals and Workers No one — Republican or Democrat — argues that people who commit violent crimes should avoid accountability. But the current system treats a dairy worker with an expired visa the same as a fugitive with a violent criminal history. That’s not smart policy.
4. Honest Conversation About Who Does This Work Rick Naerebout is right: Americans generally won’t do these jobs. That’s not a moral failing — it’s reality. Dairy work is physically demanding, requires round-the-clock availability, often involves rural isolation.
We can either accept that reality and create legal pathways, or we can watch U.S. dairy and American food security crumble.
