Ex-employee says Arkansas Democrat Hallie Shoffner hired illegal immigrants and put kids’ names on tax forms

A former senior worker says Democrat Hallie Shoffner hired illegal immigrants on her Arkansas farm and put children’s names on W-2s, rivals call it lawbreaking.

A former senior employee of SFR Seed says three workers he described as being in the country illegally worked for Hallie Shoffner’s family farming business, and that the payroll paperwork hid the scheme behind family names.

The account, detailed in a Breitbart News report, clashes with Shoffner’s claim that she hired immigrant labor only through the federal H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers Program. Shoffner is the Arkansas Democrat aiming to unseat Sen. Tom Cotton.

The former employee said one of the workers was full-time and two were part-time. He said he raised the full-time hire as a risk with Shoffner more than once.

"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.’"

He said the arrangement became clear in the spring when he handed out W-2 wage forms. The full-time worker’s form, he said, carried the man’s son’s name. The part-time workers’ forms, he said, carried their daughters’ names.

"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 added that the part-time workers’ W-2s “had their daughters,” and that Shoffner and her parents “always talked about them not being legal.” He said that is how he “figured out how they were getting W-2s.”

Shoffner told Arkansas media she used only legal H-2A hires

Shoffner told the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette 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.”

The former employee’s answer was blunt: “That’s a lie.”

Her campaign demanded “credible evidence” that the workers were illegal, including “documentation that the individuals were not authorized to work in the United States,” and said it would “consult with counsel accordingly.” No names of the three workers, no employment dates, and no city for the farm operation appear in the public account.

Cotton campaign spokesman James Arnold said little. He said Shoffner’s own employee described knowing hires of illegal immigrants and false W-2s “to avoid detection, which is blatantly illegal.” Arnold said she “put illegal immigrants ahead of Arkansans to make a profit, and then lied about it,” and that she “has no business being in the U.S. Senate.”

Voters already watching border-release cases tied to later crimes will hear that charge in plain English: rules for everyone else, a different set of books on the farm.

Podcast remarks undercut the clean-paperwork story

On a September 9 appearance on the Free Arkansas podcast, Shoffner spoke as if illegal labor on farms was ordinary.

"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."

She went further: “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.” She asked why there is “no pathway for them to work here legally when they’re good workers,” adding, “We pay them well. They spend money here. They have family here.”

After criticism landed, campaign manager Anna-Lee Pittman said Shoffner had been relaying another farmer’s labor talk, not describing her own operation. Pittman accused Cotton of lifting an “inelegant phrase or line” from a longer conversation and twisting 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.

That cleanup did not erase the earlier line about trading away Americans. It also did not explain the former employee’s W-2 story. In a party already strained by a leftward primary surge, candidates still have to answer basic hiring questions at home.

Earlier interviews sketched the same worldview

In a January District 3 Podcast interview, Shoffner said she “grew up in an immigrant community because the farm workers for all the farms, um, were generally from Mexico and Honduras.” She said many “were undocumented, but their children, uh, were U.S. citizens or DREAMers.” In that same stretch of remarks she said the farm employed five Mexican workers through H-2A who returned each year.

In a September 2025 interview she called H-2A “how farmers get labor” and said the country had “gotten ourselves into a situation where we rely on foreign-born labor.” She asked what would happen if policymakers went to farmers and employers and asked what they need “as opposed to just blanket policies that make it so that we can’t get affordable labor.”

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 calling immigrants “whether they have documents or not” part of the country’s “social, cultural, and economic fabric.” She later said, “I don’t want to defund ICE. I want to reform it.” On government’s role she said it should “enforce good laws,” avoid laws that “don’t make sense,” “treat human beings like human beings,” and “don’t be an a**hole.”

Those swings matter in a Senate race. Soft enforcement talk on the trail, then a hard denial when a former senior employee describes illegal hires and children’s names on federal wage forms, is the kind of gap Arkansas voters can measure without a lawyer.

Cotton draws a hard line on law and local workers

Arnold’s statement framed the choice as law versus profit. If the former employee’s account holds, the farm did not merely struggle with a labor shortage. It allegedly worked around status rules and Social Security numbers while Shoffner told local media she paid the “added expense and trouble” to stay legal.

H-2A is the legal channel for temporary foreign farm workers. Shoffner publicly planted her flag on that program. The former senior employee says the real practice included three people he called illegal, open talk inside the family about status, and W-2s that did not match the adults doing the work.

Democrats nationally are living through messy internal fights over direction and credibility. A Senate nominee in a red state cannot afford a hiring story that sounds like one standard for speeches and another for the shop floor.

Public trust on immigration already runs thin when leaders praise illegal labor as indispensable, float defunding immigration agents, then insist every hire was clean. Shoffner’s own words put “undocumented” workers at the center of farm life and ranked their work above Americans in a crude head-to-head. Her former employee now says the paperwork told the same story in a different way.

Even voices outside the party have called Democrats weak and evasive on hard issues. Illegal hiring and false wage forms are not abstract theory. They undercut lawful workers, hide risk from the business, and ask taxpayers and neighbors to pretend the forms were honest.

Open questions remain. The three workers are unnamed. The employment window is not pinned to a calendar. Independent documents on status and the W-2s have not been laid out in the reporting. Shoffner’s campaign wants proof before it treats the claim as settled.

What is not open is the collision on the record: a candidate who sold H-2A-only hiring, a former senior employee who says he passed out W-2s with children’s names, and a rival campaign calling the conduct illegal and disqualifying for the Senate.

Arkansas families follow the rules on payroll and status every week. Senate hopefuls who want their trust should live by the same books they praise on the microphone.