President Trump is sending conflicting messages about his immigration crackdown, promising a reprieve for certain industries that rely on immigrant labor while doubling down on his promise to arrest and deport anyone who is living in the United States illegally.
The situation has left business owners unclear on exactly what the Trump policy is, just days after the president said “changes are coming” to help people in the farming and hospitality industries whose employees are too scared to show up for work.
“One minute you have a message saying they won’t go after agriculture, the next something else,” said Manuel Cunha Jr., president of the Nisei Farmers League, a growers organization in the Central Valley of California.
Mr. Cunha said it was causing “tremendous havoc” in the country’s largest agricultural region.
“First thing this morning I got calls from my growers asking, ‘Does this mean they are going to come after the workers in the fields?’” Mr. Cunha said.
The muddled messages coming out of the White House and from Trump officials suggest the president is caught between competing factions on an issue that has come to define his political identity and that he credited for his victory last year.
Last week, Mr. Trump drew immediate backlash from even his most fervent supporters after he acknowledged that his hard-line policies were hurting certain industries that rely on immigrant labor, like farming, hotels and restaurants.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials then issued a directive pausing most raids on those work sites to align with Mr. Trump’s position, frustrating many people inside the White House who have pressed for a more aggressive approach.
In the days since that ICE directive went out, Trump administration officials have scrambled to contain the fallout — insisting that the president is fully committed to deporting millions of people. But they have also been careful not to directly contradict Mr. Trump’s attempt to give a respite to business leaders in key industries.
“The president has been incredibly clear,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement. “There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE’s efforts.”
But it was the president who emphasized in a social media post last week the need to protect “very good, long time workers” in the farming and hospitality industries. That message came after a lobbying campaign from Brooke Rollins, the secretary of agriculture, and business leaders who warned about the impacts of the immigration crackdown on key industries.
A few days later, amid the backlash from some of Mr. Trump’s own staff and loyal allies, the president posted again, exhorting ICE officials to intensify their efforts. He called for a focus on the country’s largest cities, specifically calling out Los Angeles, Chicago and New York — and made no mention of workplace raids.
But ICE had already scaled up its operations in New York City since Mr. Trump took office. While the workplace raids that touched off protests in Los Angeles have not been as common in New York, the agency has deployed its agents to conduct home raids across the city and, in recent weeks, has arrested more and more immigrants showing up for routine court hearings in Manhattan.
Over the weekend, Kristi Noem, the secretary of Department of Homeland Security, sent a letter to ICE officials instructing them to be aggressive in their deportation efforts.
“We promised the largest deportation operation in history and that is exactly what we will do,” she wrote in a letter obtained by The Times. “Your performance will be judged every day by how many arrests you, your teammates and your office are able to effectuate. Failure is not an option.”
Ms. Noem said that “worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts,” but she added an important caveat. She said that any “large-scale worksite actions” must be “properly coordinated through leadership.”
The lack of clarity over how the Trump administration is carrying out the deportation agenda continues to divide the Republican Party. Many Trump officials and allies want to see enforcement operations expanded. They see any industry carve-outs as undermining the president’s promise to deport all undocumented immigrants.
“We should not declare any industry or any worksite that uses large numbers of illegal immigrants off-limits for enforcement of federal law,” Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, said on Sunday on CBS.
But other allies of the president continue to stress the importance of immigrant workers, maintaining that they are essential to many industries and that there are not Americans willing to fill the gap if they are deported.
Representative Andy Harris, Republican of Maryland and the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, joined industry leaders to make that case on Tuesday. Mr. Harris said that the president “realizes that, running in parallel with their deportation of criminals and other people here illegally, there has to be an effort to figure out how to make sure that we have the work force we need.”
“With an unemployment rate of 4 percent, you’re not going to find American workers for a lot of these tasks,” Mr. Harris said during a news conference held by the American Business Immigration Coalition, which represents 1,700 employers. “You haven’t found them even when the unemployment rate was higher. And again, to get the economic boost going that the president talked about, I think it’s a great sign the administration finally realized there is a need for foreign workers.”
Rebecca Shi, the chief executive of the coalition, said businesses could not make a plan without clear guidance. But she said the debate had left her with a glimmer of optimism.
“What these last few days of this back and forth has shown,” she said, “is at least there is a willingness to have a debate about this.”
Immigrant communities have been accompanying the twists and turns of the administration on Spanish-language TV and social media.
“Folks were expressing hope that there would be less enforcement on farm workers and hotel workers, and then we hear that the administration is going ahead with enforcement,” said Eduardo Delgado, an official with Migrant Equity Southeast, an advocacy group in Georgia.
“Immigrant families have been on an emotional roller coaster,” he said. “Every day, they have to wake up to news that directly impacts them and still have to go to work to provide for their families while wondering if they will come home to their children.”
Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting from Calgary, Alberta, and Luis Ferré-Sadurní from New York.
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
Miriam Jordan reports from a grass roots perspective on immigrants and their impact on the demographics, society and economy of the United States.
Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times.
Emmett Lindner writes about breaking and trending news. He has written about international protests, climate change and social media influencers.
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