President Donald Trump’s border czar seemingly failed to get the memo on the president’s plan to ease immigration enforcement for farmworkers and hotel staff.
Trump vowed on Thursday to ease deportation efforts to avoid targeting workers in agriculture and the leisure industry—sectors that heavily rely on migrant labor.
But in an interview with The Washington Post, Tom Homan said no such plans exist.
“I have not seen any instruction, anything that changes in the near future,” Homan said.
A White House official, speaking anonymously, also told the Post there has been “no change” in the administration’s push to carry out the largest mass deportation of undocumented migrants in United States history. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were initially told to avoid targeting farms, but two California farms were raided this week as the administration ramped up its efforts.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
Trump’s immigration crackdown threatens to hit America’s food supply hard. From 2020 to 2022, about 42 percent of crop farmworkers lacked full legal status to work in the U.S., according to the Department of Agriculture.
In a Thursday Truth Social post, Trump acknowledged the impact of his policies, writing that farmers and the hotel industry are losing “very good, long-time workers” due to his administration’s “very aggressive policy on immigration.”
“This is not good,” Trump added. “We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
Speaking later to reporters at the White House, Trump floated a possible policy shift for certain workers.
“They’ve been there for 20, 25 years, and they’ve worked great, and the owner of the farm loves them, and then you’re supposed to throw them out,” Trump said. “And you know what happens? They end up hiring the people—the criminals—that have come in, the murderers from prisons and everything else. So we’re going to have an order on that pretty soon, I think.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has frequently clashed with Trump amid the ICE protests in Los Angeles, said the president’s backpedaling shows that the demonstrations and pushbacks are “working.”
“Let’s keep up the pressure, and let’s do it peacefully,” Newsom said in a video posted on X.
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