At the end of a long week dominated by the Trump administration’s anti-immigration crackdown—and nationwide protests mounted in response to targeted Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids—the president has suddenly reversed course.
In a truly stunning about-face, The New York Times reports that Trump has instructed ICE officials to pause any raids on the agriculture and hospitality industries. It’s a move that suggests the president’s hardline stance was costing him support in key industries, and with constituents he does not want to lose.
According to a report from the Economic Research Service, 42 percent of crop farmworkers in the U.S. hold no work authorization, firmly placing the industry in the Trump administration’s crosshairs.
In addition, of the 15 million people in the U.S. who work in the travel industry, one third are immigrants, and hotels have long struggled to find Americans willing to fill hospitality positions. As a result, travel industry lobby groups have called on Congress to implement broader pathways for legal immigration.
A Trump himself acknowledged in a Truth Social post earlier this week, mass deportations of workers across industries including agriculture and hospitality leave many businesses without valued employees. In his post acknowledging the conundrum, Trump wrote, “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.” He finished his missive with a vague, “Changes are coming!“
Now, those changes are here—and the message is clear: Trump’s commitment to his own anti-immigration agenda cannot withstand pressure from his supporters to stop the damage being done to their bottom line.
Instructions regarding ICE’s change in enforcement rules were emailed by senior ICE official Tatum King to regional ICE department heads on Thursday. It read, “Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.”
Investigations of human trafficking, drug smuggling, and money laundering in those industries was still permitted, but King emphasized that agents were not allowed to arrest “non-criminal collaterals,“ a term that refers to undocumented immigrants who are not suspected of having committed a crime.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the policy shift to the Times, telling the paper, “We will follow the president’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets.”
It is unclear how the change will affect senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s plan for ICE to perform a minimum of 3,000 arrests per day. In recent weeks, ICE has conducted raids at restaurants, factories, and stores across the country, including raids at Home Depot stores across Southern California.
King acknowledged that the change in policy would impair the agency’s ability to implement Miller’s vision, writing, “We acknowledge that by taking this off the table, that we are eliminating a significant # of potential targets.”
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