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President Donald Trump is not planning imminent carveouts for the agriculture industry as his aides push ahead with more immigration raids at worksites, two administration officials told Semafor.
After the president sparked confusion with a Truth Social post last week that promised to “protect our farmers” from losing workers to his deportation policies, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement directed agents to pause most “enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture … restaurants and operating hotels.”
But days later, the administration reversed course. And on Thursday, Trump border czar Tom Homan said worksite raids in those industries would continue “on a prioritized basis.”
One senior administration official told Semafor that the original guidance pausing the raids came about as a result of internal confusion over Trump’s Truth Social post. That, combined with the intense focus on protests against ICE raids in Los Angeles, prompted an overcorrection as officials tried to figure out what the official guidance was, the official said.
“To my knowledge, there’s nothing being prepped” at the moment to formally safeguard farms, or the other industries initially given relief from raids, the senior administration official said.
A second administration official and a third person familiar with the situation offered similar comments, though all cautioned that Trump’s policies can change quickly. The first official suggested more specific policies for immigration raids could be a future priority after Trump’s tax and spending bill passes Congress.
The second official suggested Trump was never referring to immigration carveouts for specific industries when he said “changes are coming” in his post last week. Trump, this official noted, has long talked on the campaign trail about lowering the economic burden on farmers through new trade deals and deregulation.
Still, the president did seem to be weighing more help for agriculture — during a news conference shortly after his original post about farmers, Trump said that they’re “being hurt badly” by his deportation policies.
Their workers are “not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be, you know, great,” Trump said. “And we’re going to have to do something about that. We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have maybe what they’re supposed to have, maybe not.”
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The administration’s immigration raid rollercoaster over the last week doesn’t seem to be prompting too much concern among farm-state lawmakers.
“I’m not concerned about the stop-and-go,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, told Semafor. “I would say that employers need to hire legal immigrants; they need to abide by the visas that are given to make sure that it’s within the law. If they are not within the law, they’re on their own.”
Farmers and hotel and restaurant owners are still pressuring Trump to issue exemptions, but for many inside the administration, worksite enforcement is a necessary cornerstone of their deportation plans.
“There’s a right way and a wrong way to hire workers. There are legal programs that bring farm workers in,” Homan told reporters on Thursday. “Worksite enforcement operations are an important part of what we do.”
Although no Trump official would rule out workplace raids on farmers — earlier this month, 76 people were arrested in a single food-industry raid in Nebraska — they said their main focus is on sanctuary cities and alleged criminality.
Notable
- Just before the back-and-forth drama, Homan told Semafor that the administration would be targeting employers that employ illegal workers.
Morgan Chalfant contributed reporting.