Aaron Clark, a vice president for Price Warehouse & Cold Storage, focuses on hiring local workers for apple harvests grown on some 3,500 acres of central Washington orchard lands, which include this acreage near Union Gap. (Photo by Hal Bernton)

By: Hal Bernton-December 29, 2025

UNION GAP, Wash. — On a chilly fall morning, farmworkers fanned out through an orchard here to pick rose-hued apples from green rows of trees that flank this central Washington valley’s irrigated slopes. 

These Pink Ladies were one of the last varieties to ripen in a harvest season that began in late summer amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. 

Local farmworkers — many of them immigrants without legal status…

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