亚利桑那州尤马县广袤的农产品农场高度依赖每天从墨西哥越过边境的外国工人。农民约翰·博尔茨是美国总统唐纳德·特朗普的坚定支持者，他称赞政府的严格边境管控——尽管他表示，相互竞争的共和党派系使雇用外国劳工的努力变得复杂。
The vast produce farms of Yuma County, Arizona, rely heavily on foreign workers who cross the border every day from Mexico. John Boelts, a farmer and staunch supporter of US President Donald Trump, praises the administration’s strict border controls – though he says that competing Republican factions have complicated efforts to hire foreign labourers.
亚利桑那州尤马县的农场工人正在生菜田里劳作。© Barbara Gabel，法国24电视台 约翰·博尔茨一手拿着甜瓜，一手拿着砍刀，眯着眼端详这个瓜，切下一大块塞进嘴里。在他位于亚利桑那州尤马的广阔田地里，他知道如何辨认成熟的哈密瓜。即便在10月初，该地区的气温仍高达43°C（109°F），而9月初气温曾飙升至酷热的47°C——远高于季节平均水平。收获将于下周开始。
Farm workers tend to fields of lettuce in Yuma County, Arizona. © Barbara Gabel, FRANCE 24 A melon in one hand and a machete in the other, John Boelts squints at the fruit, carves off a hunk and pops it in his mouth. Out in his sprawling fields in Yuma, Arizona, he knows how to spot a ripe cantaloupe. Even in early October, the temperature still reaches 43°C (109°F) in the region after having soared to a scorching 47°C at the start of September – well above the seasonal average. The harvest begins next week.
“甜瓜开始积累糖分，它们快要成熟了，”他说，身穿牛仔裤和一件干净的格子衬衫。
“The melons are starting to pull sugar, they are getting ready,” he said, dressed in jeans and a pristine checkered shirt.
“一旦它们准备好收获，你通常只有大约两天时间把甜瓜采摘下来、从藤上取下。”去年春天，这场与时间的赛跑付出了沉重代价。尽管地里的农产品已经成熟，他雇来收割作物的墨西哥劳工却仍未拿到工作签证。他们最终抵达时，已经晚了六天。
“Once they're ready to harvest, you typically have about two days to get the melons harvested and off the vine.”Last spring, this race against the clock took a heavy toll. Even as the produce stood ripe in the fields, the Mexican labourers he had hired to bring in the crop still hadn’t received their working visas. They finally arrived, six days late.
农民约翰·博尔茨在亚利桑那州韦尔顿的田地里查看一个甜瓜，2026年10月15日。© Barbara Gabel，法国24电视台 他说，他们损失了两三块田地的大部分收成，并补充说这可能让他损失高达10万美元。
Farmer John Boelts inspects a melon in his fields in Wellton, Arizona, October 15, 2026. © Barbara Gabel, FRANCE 24 They lost most of two or three fields, he said, adding that it could have cost him as much as $100,000.
“那些田地本来可能是我们今年春季能赚最多钱的田地——我们非常沮丧。”49岁的博尔茨是这个如此深度依赖外国劳动力的农业领域的主要人物之一。他是Desert Premium Farms的负责人，这家农业企业是他与妻子艾丽西亚以及另一对夫妇共同创办的。他还担任亚利桑那州农场局的主席。北美的“冬季沙拉碗”要到达博尔茨一家的农场，首先得经过韦尔顿，这是一个位于索诺拉沙漠腹地的小镇。
“Those fields were the fields we probably could have made the most money off of during the spring season this year – we were super frustrated.”Boelts, 49, is one of the main figures of this agricultural sector that depends so deeply on foreign labour. He sits at the head of Desert Premium Farms, an agricultural operation he set up with his wife Alicia and another couple. He also presides over the Arizona Farm Bureau. North America's 'winter salad bowl' To get to the Boelts’ farm, you first have to go through Wellton, a small town in the middle of the Sonora Desert.
道路笔直地穿行在田地之间，两侧是呈粘土色的群山。这里没有树篱或树木，只有大片大片呈褐色和绿色的田地，遍布拖拉机和工人，他们正照料着一行行生菜，裹得严严实实以抵御阳光。
The roads cut straight between the fields, bordered by clay-coloured mountains. Here, there are no hedges or trees, just vast fields in brown and green, dotted with tractors and workers tending row after row of lettuce, covered head to toe to shield them from the sun.
站在这片干旱的土地上，很难想象，在每年11月至次年4月漫长的冬季里，该地区种植了加拿大消费的所有叶菜类蔬菜的70%至90%。
Standing in the arid landscape, it’s hard to imagine that this region grows between 70 to 90 percent of all the leafy greens and vegetables consumed by the Canada during the long winter stretch between November and April.
灌溉渠从科罗拉多河引水，滋养着大片大片的生菜、西兰花、花椰菜、菠菜和甜瓜田——尤马的田地大规模产出这些绿色蔬菜，让亚利桑那州西南部赢得了北美“冬季沙拉碗”的美誉。
Irrigation channels bring water from the Colorado River to nourish sweeping fields of lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach and melon – the fields of Yuma bring forth these greens on a massive scale, earning southwest Arizona its reputation as North America’s “winter salad bowl”.
这些农场严重依赖外籍工人——其中许多人住在边境另一侧墨西哥的圣路易斯-里奥-科罗拉多。据亚利桑那州农场局称，旺季时，每天约有1.5万名农场工人跨越边境到美国田地务工。
These farms rely heavily on foreign workers – many of whom live on the other side of the border in San Luis Rio Colorado, in Mexico In the high season, around 15,000 farm labourers cross the border every day to work in American fields, according to the Arizona Farm Bureau.
美国总统唐纳德·特朗普实施的强硬移民政策，包括移民与海关执法局（ICE）特工大规模拘留和驱逐涉嫌无证移民，只会让工人流动更加复杂。
hardline immigration policies put into place by US President Donald Trump including the mass detention and deportation of suspected undocumented migrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, have only complicated the flow of workers.