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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2026 | SPECIAL REPORT & ANALYSIS
SPECIAL REPORT | CATTLE & BEEF SUPPLY CHAIN
ICE Operations Disrupt Beef Supply Chain, Draw Cattle Industry Pushback
Delayed cattle deliveries raise costs and threaten tighter beef supplies
Analysis · September 25, 2026
Immigration enforcement operations in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas are disrupting the beef supply chain, delaying deliveries of thousands of fed cattle and generating millions of dollars in lost revenue and additional costs, according to a Sept. 24 joint statement from the Kansas Livestock Association, Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association and Texas Cattle Feeders Association. The groups warned that the economic effects could persist beyond the enforcement operations themselves.
The associations said they respect federal agencies’ responsibility to enforce the law, but reported that fear is spreading among workers legally authorized to work. Their statement described disruptions across feedyards, dairies, processing plants, feed and grain businesses, transportation operations and community services.
“These ICE operations are having a massive chilling effect on the legal, documented, skilled workers that put beef on the table and keep the cattle supply chain moving,” the groups said. They urged federal officials to respect due process and improve communication with employers and communities.
A packing corridor in one corner of Kansas
In southwest Kansas, the National Beef plant in Liberal notified employees of changed starting times or instructed them to contact supervisors about schedules, according to Kansas News Service reporting on Sept. 23. Local officials and advocates reported federal agents stopping people traveling to and from processing facilities. Liberal, Garden City and Dodge City collectively house four major beef packing plants employing more than 10,000 people, the news service reported.
Those plants are among the largest in the country, and they sit close together. A Kansas State University study puts daily slaughter capacity at about 6,000 head for Cargill in Dodge City, 5,800 head for National Beef in Dodge City and 6,000 head for National Beef in Liberal. Tyson’s plant at Holcomb, just west of Garden City, has been rated at roughly 6,000 head a day. Together that is about 23,800 head of daily capacity in a region that, according to the Kansas News Service, citing the Kansas Livestock Association and USDA, holds about 22% of the nation’s grain-fed beef supply (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Southwest Kansas fed-cattle plants and approximate daily capacity. Source: Kansas State University study; Tyson Holcomb reported capacity.
What is still unconfirmed
The available reporting leaves some details unresolved. A Sept. 24 Midwest Newsroom/Kansas News Service report described accounts of detentions at processing plants as unconfirmed. ICE had not provided local officials with an exact arrest count. The cattle associations’ statement did not identify individual plants’ slaughter losses or explain how its financial estimate was calculated.
Table 1. What has been reported and what remains unresolved. Sources: Kansas News Service/KCUR, Meatingplace, cattle groups’ statement, USDA AMS.
Washington weighs in
The operations also prompted intervention from Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who urged coordination with local law enforcement. Moran said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin assured him that the warrants concerned people charged with criminal activities. Officials in Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal said their local governments and law enforcement agencies received no advance notification of the increased enforcement presence.
The slaughter numbers
The national data now show the disruption. USDA’s estimated federally inspected cattle slaughter was a normal 105,000 head on Monday, Sept. 21, before the enforcement activity began, then fell to 100,000 head Tuesday, 94,000 head Wednesday and 90,000 head Thursday. Week-to-date slaughter through Thursday totaled 389,000 head, compared with 420,000 head a week earlier, according to Western Livestock Journal and Hales Trading, and about 466,600 head a year earlier in USDA data compiled by IndexBox. Wednesday’s kill was 8,000 head below the same day a week earlier and nearly 28,000 head below a year ago; Thursday’s was 17,000 head under the prior week (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Daily federally inspected cattle slaughter, this week vs. prior week (thousand head). Source: USDA AMS estimates via WLJ, Hales and IndexBox; prior-week Tuesday derived from week-to-date totals.
Market analyst Cassie Fish, writing in The Beef, attributed the shortfall to “heavy absenteeism, reducing throughput sharply,” according to Western Livestock Journal. She put Wednesday’s kill about 16,000 head below schedule, estimated that fed slaughter for the week would be cut by 30,000 head or more, and flagged concern for the following week. Packer economics argue against a voluntary slowdown: with plants profitable, Fish noted, Tuesday’s kill would normally have run 106,000 to 108,000 head. Hales Trading also reported that at least one packer shorted customer orders because of workforce disruptions. Without plant-level data, which packers do not publish, not every head of the national decline can be assigned to southwest Kansas, but the timing lines up closely with the enforcement operations.
How it moves through the market
The market risk is pressure on cattle prices alongside support for beef prices. If workforce shortages reduce slaughter capacity, affected packers may need fewer cattle immediately, weakening nearby feedyards’ bargaining position. Meanwhile, reduced beef production could tighten wholesale availability. Those are potential consequences of a processing disruption; the reports reviewed do not establish that the operations have already caused a measurable national price change.
Early price action fits that pattern, although other forces are also at work and the moves cannot be attributed to the enforcement operations alone. For the week through Thursday, the Choice boxed beef cutout rose about $4 to $376.12 per cwt, while negotiated live steers traded around $221, about $1 lower on the week, and the CME Feeder Cattle Index fell about $6, according to Western Livestock Journal. Live cattle futures gained about $3; Fish argued that futures had been slow to price the lost production because the disruption drew little media attention (see Table 2).
Table 2. Cattle and beef market scorecard, Sept. 24, 2026, and weekly change. Source: Western Livestock Journal; USDA AMS.
There is a recent template for how lost southwest Kansas capacity moves through prices. When fire shut Tyson’s Holcomb plant in August 2019, CattleFax estimated the loss equaled about 6% of U.S. fed cattle packing capacity and 23.5% of Kansas fed capacity, the Kansas Livestock Association reported at the time. Cattle futures went limit-down in the first days after the fire while the reported Choice carcass value climbed, according to The Fence Post, the same wedge between cattle and beef prices described above. The difference this time is that the constraint is labor rather than a damaged plant, which could make it shorter-lived but also harder to forecast.
Costs for cattle feeders
For cattle feeders, delayed shipments mean additional days of feed, financing and animal care, while payment is postponed. Longer delays can also push cattle beyond preferred marketing weights. Rerouting animals may help, but depends on transportation, delivery appointments and available capacity at other plants.
The weight issue is not hypothetical this fall. Steer carcass weights averaged 977 pounds for the week ended Sept. 12, a record for that time of year and 18 pounds above a year earlier, according to Hales Trading. Extra days on feed add pounds to an already heavy supply, raising the risk of discounts on overweight carcasses and further eroding feeders’ leverage with packers.
How long it lasts
The duration of the disruption will determine its broader significance. Brief interruptions may be recovered through rescheduled production. Persistent absenteeism could create cattle backlogs and missed beef deliveries, increasing the likelihood that wholesale supply pressures eventually reach consumers.
Early signals on duration are mixed. The Liberal Police Department said ICE told local authorities it would depart Liberal on Wednesday, with some agents remaining to finish processing, according to Meatingplace. But the Kansas News Service reported the operation was continuing across the region on Thursday, and the cattle groups warned that the harm to producers lasts days and weeks after operations end, consistent with fear-driven absenteeism outlasting the enforcement presence itself.
What to watch
The immediate indicators to watch are plant operating schedules, regional cash cattle bids, daily slaughter estimates and boxed beef prices. A sustained decline in processing accompanied by delayed cattle marketings would signal that the workforce disruption is developing into a more consequential supply bottleneck.
Bottom line
The southwest Kansas operations have moved from a local story to a measurable national one: federally inspected cattle slaughter ran 31,000 head behind the prior week through Thursday, in a region that holds about 22% of the nation’s grain-fed beef supply.
The classic signature of a packing bottleneck, firmer boxed beef and softer cash cattle, has begun to show, though it cannot yet be separated from other market forces. If plant staffing normalizes next week, much of the lost kill can likely be made up through added shifts; if absenteeism persists, feeders face mounting carrying costs and heavier cattle, and consumers eventually face tighter beef supplies.
AG POLICY & MARKETS DAILY | SPECIAL REPORT | CATTLE & BEEF SUPPLY CHAIN — FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2026
