Farms, hotels and restaurants will continue to be targets of immigration raids conducted by the Department of Homeland Security, the department says, reversing itself only a few days after ag producers thought they had gotten a reprieve.
"The President has been incredibly clear,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a brief statement issued late Monday. “There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE’s efforts.”
“Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safe guard public safety, national security and economic stability,” she continued. “These operations target illegal employment networks that undermine American workers, destabilize labor markets and expose critical infrastructure to exploitation."
Just last Thursday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement had told regional staff to “hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,” according to the New York Times.
The email added that investigations involving “human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are OK” but that arrests should not be made of “noncriminal collaterals.”
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In the Oval Office Thursday, Trump said that farmers and the hospitality industry shouldn’t lose long-term workers who had been working for them without incident. The comments followed a social media post from the president on the issue and a series of attempts by ICE to arrest laborers at farms in Ventura County, California, and at milk and meat processing facilities.
In a statement, the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives said it was "deeply concerned with reports that [DHS] has issued new guidance reversing course on last week’s actions and urging a resumption of enforcement actions on farms and other agribusinesses. This directly contradicts the commitments made by President Trump to America’s farmers and ranchers, first in April and again last week. We continue to monitor the situation on-the-ground at farms, packing houses, and other ag facilities around the country so that all parts of this Administration are held to that commitment. In addition, the uncertainty created by these seeming policy shifts are doing grave damage to producers and their ability to help feed their fellow citizens.”
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