July 21, 2025:
White House border czar Tom Homan said last week that the Trump administration is considering possible changes to its immigration enforcement policy as it relates to farm and hospitality workers. In an interview on NewsNation’s “Cuomo,” Homan said people in the White House are talking about various policy solutions, and he expects to see an announcement sometime soon. The Trump administration has sent mixed messages about its approach to immigration raids that affect farms and migrant farmworkers. A week ago, President Trump announced a program intended to support the agriculture industry, which has complained to the White House that the deportation efforts have disrupted business. Many farms rely on migrant workers, including workers in the country illegally. The program would not provide “amnesty,” Trump and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins stressed at the time, though they offered few details about what it would do.
July 8, 2025:
Once again, President Donald Trump emphasized his willingness to protect American farmers who rely on immigrant workers to operate their farms. At a rally in Iowa last week, the president said he would allow farmers who hire migrant workers to take charge and permit the migrants working in agriculture to remain in the country. News Nation says this plan wouldn’t create a path to citizenship that many immigration advocates wanted, but it would protect them from the possibility of being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during workplace raids. The president said that by implementing a plan for farmworkers to avoid being taken into custody, it will benefit a farming industry that contributed about $223 million to the nation’s gross domestic product in 2023. During the event in Iowa, Trump said he’s heard of migrants who worked for farms for more than 15 years getting thrown out pretty violently.
June 24, 2025:
President Donald Trump is again considering how to shield American agricultural industry stakeholders from the effects of his illegal immigration crackdown. USA Today says that comes only days after the administration reinstated workplace raids at U.S. agricultural operations.
“We can’t put farms out of business,” Trump said on June 20. “We’re looking at doing something where good and reputable farmers can take responsibility for the people they hire and let them have the responsibility. At the same time, we don’t want to hurt people who are not criminals.”
The messages have been mixed as raids continue despite the President promising changes to protect migrants in the farming, hotel, and leisure industries in a social media post on Truth Social on June 12, 2025. After directing immigration officials to largely pause the raids on farms, hotels, restaurants, and meatpacking plants, the administration reversed course only a few days later and resumed the raids.
June 23, 2025:
Following a week of immigration whiplash, President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan confirmed late last week that immigration raids will continue in the agriculture and hospitality industries. The Trump administration had said it was pausing some ICE raids that would hurt those industries, but Homan’s comments reaffirm that it is reversing course. While workers at places like farms, restaurants, and hotels will be targeted, people with criminal backgrounds will be a priority for immigration enforcement officials, Homan said.
“We’re going to continue to do worksite enforcement operations, even on farms and hotels, but based on a prioritized basis. Criminals come first,” Homan told reporters. Asked what he would say to farmers concerned the raids will hurt their jobs and the U.S. economy, Homan said, “Well, first of all, there’s a right way and wrong way to hire workers. There are legal programs that bring farm workers in. Second of all, I’ve been saying for years, Congress needs to address this. But because Congress failed, it just doesn’t mean we ignore it. It’s illegal to knowingly hire an illegal alien.”
June 20, 2025:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Farmers, cattle ranchers and hotel and restaurant managers breathed a sigh of relief last week when President Donald Trump ordered a pause to immigration raids that were disrupting those industries and scaring foreign-born workers off the job. But the respite didn’t last long. On Wednesday (June 18, 2025), Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin declared that worksite enforcement “remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability” and that there will be “no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals” or undermine enforcement efforts. The flipflop has baffled businesses trying to figure out the government’s actual policy.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Farmers, cattle ranchers and hotel and restaurant managers breathed a sigh of relief last week when President Donald Trump ordered a pause to immigration raids that were disrupting those industries and scaring foreign-born workers off the job.
“There was finally a sense of calm,’’ said Rebecca Shi, CEO of the American Business Immigration Coalition.
That respite didn’t last long.
On Wednesday (June 18, 2025), Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin declared, “There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine (immigration enforcement) efforts. Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability.’’
The flipflop baffled businesses trying to figure out the government’s actual policy, and Shi says now “there’s fear and worry once more.”
“That’s not a way to run business when your employees are at this level of stress and trauma,” she said.
Trump campaigned on a promise to deport millions of immigrants working in the United States illegally — an issue that has long fired up his GOP base. The crackdown intensified a few weeks ago when Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, gave the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a quota of 3,000 arrests a day, up from 650 a day in the first five months of Trump’s second term.
Suddenly, ICE seemed to be everywhere. “We saw ICE agents on farms, pointing assault rifles at cows, and removing half the workforce,’’ said Shi, whose coalition represents 1,700 employers and supports increased legal immigration.
One ICE raid left a New Mexico dairy with just 20 workers, down from 55. “You can’t turn off cows,’’ said Beverly Idsinga, the executive director of the Dairy Producers of New Mexico. “They need to be milked twice a day, fed twice a day.’’
Claudio Gonzalez, a chef at Izakaya Gazen in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo district, said many of his Hispanic workers — whether they’re in the country legally or not — have been calling out of work recently due to fears that they will be targeted by ICE. His restaurant is a few blocks away from a collection of federal buildings, including an ICE detention center.
“They sometimes are too scared to work their shift,” Gonzalez said. “They kind of feel like it’s based on skin color.”
In some places, the problem isn’t ICE but rumors of ICE. At cherry-harvesting time in Washington state, many foreign-born workers are staying away from the orchards after hearing reports of impending immigration raids. One operation that usually employs 150 pickers is down to 20. Never mind that there hasn’t actually been any sign of ICE in the orchards.
“We’ve not heard of any real raids,’’ said Jon Folden, orchard manager for the farm cooperative Blue Bird in Washington’s Wenatchee River Valley. “We’ve heard a lot of rumors.’’
Jennie Murray, CEO of the advocacy group National Immigration Forum, said some immigrant parents worry that their workplaces will be raided and they’ll be hauled off by ICE while their kids are in school. They ask themselves, she said: “Do I show up and then my second-grader gets off the school bus and doesn’t have a parent to raise them? Maybe I shouldn’t show up for work.’’
The horror stories were conveyed to Trump, members of his administration and lawmakers in Congress by business advocacy and immigration reform groups like Shi’s coalition. Last Thursday, the president posted on his Truth Social platform that “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.”
It was another case of Trump’s political agenda slamming smack into economic reality. With U.S. unemployment low at 4.2%, many businesses are desperate for workers, and immigration provides them.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, foreign-born workers made up less than 19% of employed workers in the United States in 2023. But they accounted for nearly 24% of jobs preparing and serving food and 38% of jobs in farming, fishing and forestry.
“It really is clear to me that the people pushing for these raids that target farms and feed yards and dairies have no idea how farms operate,” Matt Teagarden, CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association, said Tuesday during a virtual press conference.
Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, estimated in January that undocumented workers account for 13% of U.S. farm jobs and 7% of jobs in hospitality businesses such as hotels, restaurants and bars.
The Pew Research Center found last year that 75% of U.S. registered voters — including 59% of Trump supporters — agreed that undocumented immigrants mostly fill jobs that American citizens don’t want. And an influx of immigrants in 2022 and 2023 allowed the United States to overcome an outbreak of inflation without tipping into recession.
In the past, economists estimated that America’s employers could add no more than 100,000 jobs a month without overheating the economy and igniting inflation. But economists Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson of the Brookings Institution calculated that because of the immigrant arrivals, monthly job growth could reach 160,000 to 200,000 without exerting upward pressure on prices.
Now Trump’s deportation plans — and the uncertainty around them — are weighing on businesses and the economy.
“The reality is, a significant portion of our industry relies on immigrant labor — skilled, hardworking people who’ve been part of our workforce for years. When there are sudden crackdowns or raids, it slows timelines, drives up costs, and makes it harder to plan ahead,” says Patrick Murphy, chief investment officer at the Florida building firm Coastal Construction and a former Democratic member of Congress. “ We’re not sure from one month to the next what the rules are going to be or how they’ll be enforced. That uncertainty makes it really hard to operate a forward-looking business.”
Adds Douglas Holtz Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and now president of the conservative American Action Forum think tank: “ICE had detained people who are here lawfully and so now lawful immigrants are afraid to go to work … All of this goes against other economic objectives the administration might have. The immigration policy and the economic policy are not lining up at all.’’
June 17, 2025:
President Trump’s administration directed immigration officials to largely pause raids on farms, hotels, restaurants, and meatpacking plants. Reuters said that information came from an internal email, a senior Trump official, and a person familiar with the matter.
The order to scale back on immigration raids came from President Trump himself. It appears to slow down a late-May demand from White House aide Stephen Miller for more aggressive immigration raids. The source told Reuters that the President wasn’t aware of the extra enforcement push, and once it hit him, he pulled it back. The President posted on his Truth Social site that he disapproved of how farmers and hotels were being affected.
The United Farm Workers union said last week that it was skeptical the new directive would help workers without legal status. The New York Times reported the turnaround in deportations of farmworkers came after Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins raised concerns.
June 16, 2025:
President Donald Trump, citing pressure from the agriculture and hospitality sectors, says farmworkers who are in the country illegally shouldn’t be deported and reiterated that the administration would be taking action on the issue.
“We’re going to have an order on that coming out soon,” he said Thursday (June 12, 2025) in response to a reporter’s question at a White House ceremony. Trump didn’t elaborate on what the administration would do about farmworkers and hospitality industry employees. Trump had previously suggested that farmworkers would be allowed to stay but required to return to their countries temporarily.
Trump’s latest remarks followed enforcement actions last week on farms in California and at a meatpacking plant in Omaha, Nebraska. Trump said, “Our farmers are being hurt badly. They have very good workers. They’ve worked for them for 20 years. They’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be great. We’re going to have to do something about that.”
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