Arkansas Democratic Senate candidate Hallie Shoffner is facing criticism after remarks she made on a podcast about immigrant farm labor were seized on by her Republican opponent, Sen. Tom Cotton.
Shoffner, a farmer challenging Cotton in the deep-red state, made the comments during an hour-long conversation on the “Free Arkansas Podcast” that touched on a range of political issues, including immigration.
“I want to talk about the fact that our immigration system is backlogged, bureaucratic and doesn’t actually help anybody, including American employers who want folks who want to follow the law,” Shoffner said.
She described a conversation with a fellow farmer, whom she said was a Republican, about the difficulty of finding labor. “Labor is a huge issue, especially when you don’t have a large workforce,” she said. “And every farmer will tell you, ‘yeah, at one point we did, or still do, employ undocumented immigrants.’ And it’s absolutely ridiculous that these folks are being rounded up because they’re hardworking people. They’re some of the best people we know.”
Shoffner then added: “And honestly, we’d trade five Americans just for one of them because of how hard they work.”
She went on to call for a legal pathway for undocumented workers, saying, “when they’re good workers, we pay them well, they’re good workers, they spend money here [and] they have family here.”
Cotton campaign responds
Cotton’s campaign said Shoffner had not denied having employed undocumented workers herself. “Hallie Shoffner’s campaign isn’t denying that she employed illegal aliens,” campaign spokesman James Arnold told Fox News Digital. “They’re also standing by Hallie Shoffner’s claim that just one illegal immigrant is more valuable than five American citizens.”
“Every Democrat running for Congress needs to answer if they agree with Hallie Shoffner’s belief that illegal aliens are worth more than Americans,” Arnold said.
Shoffner’s campaign manager, Anna-Lee Pittman, pushed back, saying the comments were taken out of context and accusing Cotton of avoiding a substantive conversation on immigration policy. Pittman said Cotton “spends his days combing through video clips of Hallie Shoffner to find any possible inelegant phrase or line that he can chop up to misrepresent an hour-long conversation and present it with no context,” adding that Shoffner had simply “relayed a conversation she had with another farmer about challenges with labor.”
Shifting position on ICE
The controversy comes as Shoffner has also adjusted her public stance on federal immigration enforcement. In June, she said she would support defunding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “as it exists right now,” arguing the agency “no longer serves the purpose it was originally created for” and noting its budget is ten times that of the organization combating child sex trafficking.
Earlier this month, however, Shoffner wrote in a Facebook post that she does not want to defund ICE but instead wants to “reform it.”
Immigration remains a central issue heading into the midterm elections, following the Trump administration’s continued nationwide operations to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants, which have drawn criticism from Democratic officials and activists.
