Senator Gallego Attends Yuma Harvest Dinner, Discusses Immigration and Water

Senator Ruben Gallego visited a Western Growers lettuce operation in Yuma County and attended the 2026 Harvest Dinner in Yuma County on Feb. 23, 2026, where he tied local labor and water access to national food supply and grocery affordability. Gallego’s office and his social post framed the visit as part of outreach to one of Arizona’s most productive agricultural regions.

Gallego’s Senate post says he met harvest crews before sunrise, observing the harvest routine that begins with workers waking up at 2 a.m. to travel to the fields. The post describes workers stretching and sanitizing before starting a “labor-intensive harvest,” and it frames Yuma as the “Winter Lettuce Capital of the World,” producing 90% of the U.S.’ leafy greens from November to April. The Senate material also references a video segment on Arizona’s Family that captured his conversations on-site.

Speaking to Arizona’s Family during the farm visit, Gallego described the scale and human effort behind the supply chain: “It gives you a really good appreciation about what happens here, both from the farmers, from the workers, the whole supply chain. It really shows you how intricate it is and how hard it is, and how grateful we should be that we have so many people that want to continue to feed us,” Senator Gallego told Arizona’s Family. “Talking to the workers in Spanish, they told me what they go through every day to come to work, it was really impactful. […] Essentially, if these workers are not here, working, America is not getting fed, or America is going to get fed, but the food’s going to be much more expensive. So this is a good compromise, where we get people that cross over the border, they want to good pay, steady American wages. We get good, steady work, and we get to have mostly stable food”

The senator’s Instagram post, dated February 23, 2026, includes photos from the Harvest Dinner and says, in part, “We're honored to serve as the Title Sponsor of the Yuma Harvest Dinner.” The Original Report accompanying the trip notes Gallego “shared photos from the event emphasizing community backbone.” Those images and the senator’s event presence were presented as part of broader engagement with local growers and community organizations.

Gallego also held a town hall in the San Luis-Yuma area that local coverage described as roughly an hour long and attended by community members who greeted him with applause. KYMA reported the forum focused on immigration, workforce pressures, educational funding for Title I schools, and the energy and water demands of Yuma’s agricultural economy. On immigration, Gallego said, “People that come here legally with Visas are even afraid to cross the border, and they don't like is the kind of antagonistic relationship that we're building with Mexico because this area, and Arizona, has had a great relationship with Mexico for many years that has really been driving the economy for quite awhile.”

KAWC’s Arizona Edition placed Gallego’s town hall alongside the Southwest Ag Summit and Colorado River conversations, noting regional leaders and a San Luis high school student pressing for stronger Colorado River water policies. Together those events underline the overlapping policy pressures in Yuma County: labor and visa policy, water allocation from the Colorado River, and funding for Title I schools in a major agricultural corridor that supplies much of the country’s winter leafy greens.

Gallego’s visit foregrounded local consequences of federal policy choices: the 90 percent production window statistic, early-start farm shifts, and community concern over cross-border relations and water access all tie into congressional decisions on visas, water rights, and support for agricultural communities. With harvest crews, dinner hosts, school advocates, and summit participants all visible in the coverage, the visit framed Yuma County as a testing ground where immigration, water policy, and rural economic stability intersect.