Americans are fed up with high grocery store bills and they’re hoping President-elect Donald Trump will bring relief. Yet one of Trump’s central campaign promises could exacerbate sticker shock at the checkout.

On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to “bring down prices” at supermarkets and across the economy. Deep-seated frustration with the cost of living helped deliver Trump a resounding victory this fall.

Soon, Trump’s ability to fix America’s affordability crisis will collide head-on with another, perhaps more prominent, campaign trail promise: Mass deportations...

Beyond the moral, legal and logistical questions raised by this campaign promise, mass deportations threaten to starve key industries of badly needed workers. And perhaps no industry relies on undocumented workers more than the food and agriculture industries.

That’s why agriculture executives, farm industry officials and economists tell CNN that if Trump keeps his deportation promises, groceries will get more expensive — perhaps much more expensive.

“If you take away those workers, you’re not going to have production. There’s only one way prices are going to go. They’re going to go dramatically higher,” said Chuck Conner, president and CEO of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives and a former US Department of Agriculture deputy secretary...

“There’s no question that mass deportation of immigrants will disrupt the agriculture and food processing industries, resulting in severe labor shortages, higher costs and thus higher prices for a wide variety of groceries,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told CNN. “The only question is how high prices will go.”...