By Breitbart News Network | Created at 2026-10-08 19:37:07 | Updated at 2026-10-09 22:49:27
1 day ago
A former senior employee of Arkansas Democrat Senate nominee Hallie Shoffner says she knowingly employed three illegal aliens at her family farming business, including one full-time worker whose employment he repeatedly discussed with Shoffner as a risk, contradicting her public statement that she only hired immigrant workers through the federal H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers Program.
A former senior SFR Seed employee told the Washington Free Beacon that three workers he said were in the country illegally worked for Shoffner’s family business, including one full-time employee and two part-time employees. The Free Beacon did not identify the former employee because his current employer had not authorized him to speak about the matter.
“Me and her talked about the full-time one quite a bit, being a risk to us. She referred to him as having a ‘questionable social security number,’” the former employee said.
He said he became aware of how the workers were receiving W-2 forms while distributing tax documents.
“But I realized what was going on when I had to pass out W-2s in the spring, and his W-2 I know had his son’s name on it, so I’m gonna say they were using his son’s social security number,” he told the Free Beacon. “The part-time [workers], their W-2s had their daughters.”
“Her and her parents always talked about them not being legal,” he continued. “And so I figured out how they were getting W-2s.”
The account conflicts with what Shoffner told the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette after questions arose over her previous comments regarding illegal immigrant farm workers.
When asked whether she had employed illegal labor, Shoffner said she “only hired immigrants through the federal H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers Program” and “went through the added expense and trouble to make sure her hires were legal.”
“That’s a lie,” the former employee told the Free Beacon.
Shoffner’s campaign demanded “credible evidence” that the employees in question were illegal, including “documentation that the individuals were not authorized to work in the United States,” and said it would “consult with counsel accordingly.”
Shoffner is seeking to unseat incumbent Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), whose campaign responded to the report in a statement to Breitbart News.
“Democrat Hallie Shoffner’s own employee says she lied to Arkansas media, knowingly hired illegal immigrants, and used false W-2s to avoid detection, which is blatantly illegal,” Cotton campaign spokesman James Arnold said. “Shoffner broke the law, she put illegal immigrants ahead of Arkansans to make a profit, and then lied about it — she has no business being in the U.S. Senate.”
The dispute stems from comments Shoffner made during a September 9 appearance on the Free Arkansas podcast.
“Every farmer will tell you 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,” Shoffner said. “They’re some of the best people we know, and honestly, we’d trade five Americans for just one of them because of how hard they work.”
“And why is it that there’s no pathway for them to work here legally when they’re good workers? We pay them well. They spend money here. They have family here,” she continued.
After the remarks drew criticism, Shoffner campaign manager Anna-Lee Pittman said Shoffner had been relaying a conversation with another farmer about labor challenges rather than describing her own farming operation.
Pittman accused Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) of taking an “inelegant phrase or line” from a longer conversation and misrepresenting it. She said Shoffner supports a secure border, enforcement of U.S. laws, and an immigration system that works for American farmers, businesses, workers, and communities.
The campaign’s response did not clarify whether Shoffner’s statement that “we pay them well” referred to workers employed by her own farm.
Shoffner has also previously spoken about undocumented farm workers and her family farm’s use of foreign labor.
“I grew up in an immigrant community because the farm workers for all the farms, um, were generally from Mexico and Honduras,” Shoffner said during a January interview on the District 3 Podcast. “Um, many of them were undocumented, but their children, uh, were U.S. citizens or DREAMers.”
During the same interview, Shoffner said her farm employed five Mexican workers through the H-2A program who returned annually.
Shoffner had also described H-2A in a September 2025 interview as “how farmers get labor” and said the United States had “gotten ourselves into a situation where we rely on foreign-born labor.”
“What if we build an immigration system where we actually went to these farmers and went to these employers and asked what they need as opposed to just blanket policies that make it so that we can’t get affordable labor?” Shoffner said.
Shoffner has also faced scrutiny over her positions on immigration enforcement and specifically Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In June, she said she would vote to “defund ICE as it exists right now” and “would not spend one more dime on ICE,” while describing immigrants “whether they have documents or not” as essential to the country’s “social, cultural, and economic fabric.”
Discussing what she believed the government’s role on immigration should be, Shoffner said it should “enforce good laws… don’t make laws that don’t make sense… treat human beings like human beings,” and “don’t be an asshole.” She later denied wanting to defund the agency, writing, “I don’t want to defund ICE. I want to reform it.”
