Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins clarified that President Trump has no plans to give amnesty to farm workers, despite his recent comments hinting at leniency.
Trump has expressed concerns that aggressive deportation efforts have battered farms, but Rollins explained that there are existing programs the administration will use — rather than amnesty.
“Listen, this president has been resolute on no amnesty, mass deportation — but there are programs currently within the government under Lori Chavez de Rimmer, our secretary, our great secretary of labor, the H2A visa program,” Rollins told Fox Business’ “Mornings with Maria” on Thursday.
“This president, his heart is with the farmers,” she added. “It always has been. And we will work nonstop until we find the right solution, but it does not include amnesty and certainly moving toward the American workforce that he envisions.”
Over recent weeks, Trump has made vague comments about needing to mitigate the repercussions that his mass deportation effort has had on farms.
“If a farmer is willing to vouch for these people in some way,” the president mused during his rally-style event in Iowa last week. “I think we’re going to have to just say that’s going to be good, right? We don’t want to do it where we take all of the workers off the farms.”
Elements of the MAGA base such as “War Room” host Steve Bannon seemed uneasy that an amnesty policy of sorts could be in the works.
Trump had taken a hardline against immigration since the start of his second term.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, a hawk on immigration, is widely believed to be playing a critical role in putting pressure on enforcement agencies to step up their game.
But last month on Truth Social, Trump had signaled plans to ease up.
“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 wrote.
“That is not good…Changes are coming!”
Farms have been an important part of Trump’s base.
Rollins teased that the Trump administration is exploring policy options to better “effectuate the president’s vision” on that front.
“At the end of the day, moving toward an American workforce based on automation, a lot of able-bodied adults in this country who are not working, we will get there,” she added.
Rollins also defended her decision to shutdown live cattle, bison, and horse trading across the US-Mexico border due to the rapid spread of flesh-eating New World Screwworms.
“Last night, about 10 o’clock, we shut down the ports. No more imports from Mexico with live animals due to the New World Screwworm, another threat to our homeland,” she explained.
“We shut the border down earlier, about two months ago, and we were able to push the pest back, partnering with Mexico. But it started to trickle back up within about 500 miles of our border. So we had to shut it down again,” Rollins went on.
“These inactions that were never taken by the Biden administration, we are now having to deal with.”
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