As their workers are arrested and deported, flee the country or stay away, coffee farmers are struggling to bring in a bumper crop.

The farmer walked between the lines of coffee trees, their branches heavy with bright red, yellow and green cherries glimmering through emerald green leaves.

“Look, every single tree is full,” said Berta Miranda, co-founder of Miranda’s Farms, in Hawaiʻi island’s Kaʻū coffee district, spread along Mauna Loa’s southern flanks. “It’s so gorgeous.”

In the same breath, Miranda’s voice was overtaken by unease and frustration — by the uncertainty gripping the Big Island’s coffee industry amid a nationwide immigration crackdown that is applying near constant pressure on its farmers and workers alike.

“We’re so worried about the pickers because we’re not going to

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