Industries that rely heavily on immigrant labor decried President Donald Trump’s promotion of his chief architect of deportations on Friday, just days after millions of Americans signaled anger about such policies.
The move elevating Stephen Miller to chief of staff starting Monday, left some leaders of groups representing the agriculture and construction sectors gobsmacked.
“When I got a text message, ‘Hey, have you heard about Stephen Miller?,’ my first thought was: Thank goodness he was let go,” said Chris Herr, president of PennAg Industries Association, which represents farmers and pork and poultry producers. Many of his members helped propel Trump to victory in 2024 but have soured on the president, as some farmers reel from the loss of workers to immigration enforcement, he said.
“The wild card now is what is the president going to do?” Herr said. “Is he going to be engaged or is the Stephen Miller policy going to rule the day?”
Last month, more than 40 farmers and agricultural industry groups wrote to Trump and congressional leaders, warning that the immigration crackdown was hitting the nation’s food supply, hurting farmers and risking higher grocery prices. The letter marked a strategy shift for an industry that had been reluctant to publicly criticize the immigration raids, preferring to lobby the administration behind the scenes. About 66 percent of the country’s farmworkers are foreign-born.
“Time will tell if Stephen Miller continues to wreck the economy, destroy families, tarnish the Republican political coalition and obliterate Trump’s legacy,” said Rebecca Shi, chief executive of the American Business Immigration Coalition, a bipartisan group that lobbies for immigration reform on Capitol Hill, which organized the letter.
For months, immigration raids have targeted construction sites across South Texas, resulting in significant project delays and labor shortages that helped deliver Democrats historic victories up and down the ballot in the Lone Star State this week.
Three-time Trump supporter Mario Guerrero, executive director of the South Texas Builders Association, said he was appalled to learn Miller would be taking a more significant role in the White House.
Guerrero said that when he saw the news, he thought, Trump “doesn’t live on this planet …”
“The reason the GOP lost across the board [on Tuesday] is because of the enforcement that Stephen Miller was pushing,” he added.
A request to the White House for comment on the business community pushback was not immediately returned.
Leaders of industries reliant on undocumented workers or those with temporary protections targeted by the Trump administration said they are hopeful that a Democratic-controlled Congress will create opportunities for bipartisan legislation to pass changes to immigration that have long been elusive.
Matt Teagarden, chief executive of the Kansas Livestock Association, said he was worried about what Miller’s promotion could mean.
“The potential for the president to sign [any immigration bill] may have gone down with Miller being named chief of staff,” he said.
“Doubling down on Miller to the extent that he has been the promoter of mass deportation tactics doesn’t fit the results that we saw in Kansas on Tuesday,” he added.
Rural counties and small cities in Kansas swung 20 points toward Democrats on Tuesday, helping elect the first Democrat to the Senate since 1932.
In September, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations near major meatpacking plants delayed cattle livestock operations, shipments and harvesting in southwest Kansas.
A request for comment from some of the nation’s largest business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was not immediately returned. The Business Roundtable declined to comment.
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