Foreign farmworkers in the United States are terrified to talk with strangers or to leave home due to the risk of being deported, hindering efforts to contain the spread of bird flu across the country.

SACRAMENTO, United States, April 20 (Xinhua) -- Fear of deportation prevents foreign farmworkers in the United States from seeking medical care, undermining critical efforts to prevent a potential bird flu pandemic, according to a recent report by KFF, a health policy organization.

Dairy and poultry workers have accounted for most cases of bird flu in the country, and preventing and detecting cases among them is key to averting a pandemic. However, public health specialists said they were struggling to reach farmworkers because many are terrified to talk with strangers or to leave home, the report revealed.

"People are very scared to go out, even to get groceries," said Rosa Yanez, an outreach worker at Strangers No Longer, a Catholic organization that supports immigrants and refugees in the state of Michigan with legal and health problems, including the bird flu.

About 65 dairy and poultry workers across the United States have tested positive for the bird flu since March 2024, but infectious disease scientists warned that the true number of infections is likely higher, as patchy surveillance has likely allowed cases to go undetected on farms.

Health workers said the problem had intensified since the change in administration this January. A Latina outreach worker in Michigan, speaking on the condition of anonymity because she's worried about retaliation against her family, said, "Many people don't go to the doctor right now because of the immigration situation."

"They prefer to stay at home and let the pain or redness in the eye or whatever it is go away," she said. "Things have really intensified this year, and people are very, very scared."

The fear affected all Hispanic communities, regardless of legal status, the KFF said in the report.

"Regardless of immigration status, people who look like immigrants are feeling a lot of fear right now," said Hunter Knapp, the development director at Project Protect Food Systems Workers, a farmworker advocacy organization in the state of Colorado that does bird flu outreach.

This led to a collapse in trust between health workers and farmworker communities. "Dairy workers became even less willing to speak about the lack of protection on dairy farms and the lack of sick pay when they're infected -- even anonymously," said Antonio De Loera-Brust, a spokesperson for the United Farm Workers.

"Being Latinos, we are always identified," said the outreach worker who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I have a visa that protects me, but things are changing very quickly under the Trump administration, and the truth is, nothing is certain."

Late last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rolled out a seasonal flu vaccine campaign targeted at more than 200,000 livestock workers, hoping vaccinations would lessen the chance of a farmworker being infected by seasonal flu and bird flu viruses simultaneously. Yet vaccination rates dropped immediately after immigration raids in January, according to health workers.

Anna Hill Galendez, a managing attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, which is involved in bird flu outreach, said unusually aggressive tactics by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deterred sick dairy workers in Michigan's Upper Peninsula from leaving their homes for care in late January.

"They wanted medical care. They wanted flu vaccines. They wanted personal protective equipment. They wanted to get tested," Hill Galendez said. "But they were afraid to go anywhere because of immigration enforcement."

De Loera-Brust of the United Farm Workers emphasized the universal nature of the health threat: "Every time a worker gets sick, you're rolling the dice, so it's in everyone's interest to protect them. The virus doesn't care what your immigration papers say."

The pandemic threat remains a serious concern for public health officials, who note that each human infection presents an opportunity for the virus to evolve into a form that could spread more easily between people.