President Donald Trump announced Thursday that “changes are coming” to protect farmers from losing workers to his aggressive deportation campaign, but no such policy changes are underway, according to three people with knowledge of the administration’s immigration policies.
Trump’s comments in a social media post sought to soothe industry leaders in the agriculture and hospitality fields, said a White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s thinking, as many business leaders remain unnerved by the president’s sweeping deportation campaigns.
He also said it in a press avail:
Unfortunately for our great farmers and people in the hotel and leisure business:
The official said there will be “no change” in the current approach to deportations, adding that no carveout exists currently for farm, hotel or other migrant workers who are in the country illegally. The administration previously directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement workers toavoid raiding farms, the person said, noting that agents have swept food production facilities. Immigration enforcement activity appeared to take place at two farms in California this week, however, asthe administration escalated deportation efforts.
They were chasing them through the fields:
Trump was torn and his people had no idea what he was talking about:
Trump’s public comments and follow-up remarks Thursday reflected a president pulled in two directions, with some business owners pointing out that whole sectors of the economy depend on the labor of people Trump is deporting, while influential MAGA commentators press him to deliver on the aggressive campaign promises that helped lift him to office. As the day wore on, Trump appeared to swing between the competing factions, explaining farmers’ predicament to reporters and saying he thought the White House would “have an order on that soon,” but also posting on social media Thursday afternoon that undocumented immigrants “have stolen American Jobs.”
Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, said in an interview with The Washington Post that he has not discussed with the president any such changes to protect farm or hotel workers, and that he so far hasn’t been part of creating a policy to protect certain types of workers.
“I have not seen any instruction, anything that changes in the near future,” Homan said.
[…]
Some conservative influencers scrambled to respond, at times pleading with the president to walk back his plans. Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and an architect of his immigration policy, likewise voiced concerns Thursday about Trump’s comments, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about them publicly.
Several hours later, Trump’s tenor changed as he made a much more blistering post about undocumented immigrants, saying many had entered the country while Joe Biden was president “from some of the most dangerous and dysfunctional Nations on Earth — Many of them Rapists, Murderers, and Terrorists.”
“Those who are here illegally should either self deport using the CBP Home App or, ICE will find you and remove you,” Trump continued in thefollow-up post. “Saving America is not negotiable!”
Miller and Vice President JD Vance — another critic of the notion that immigrants should be allowed to stay in the country without authorization to work low-wage and low-skill jobs — both shared Trump’s second post, but not the first one.
Trump was clearly overwhelmed yesterday. ( He went back and forth on Israel and Iran the same way.) He doesn’t really understand any of the details of his policies so when it gets complicated his method of repeating whatever the last person told him doesn’t work very well. He was all over the place.
This carve out for “nice, hard-working immigrants” was so far out of policy that I’m sure Miller had an aneurysm when he heard Trump make that promise. Unless Trump gets rid of Miller, which I doubt will happen since he’s running the administration, nothing is going to change.