The Trump administration’s goal of deporting as many immigrants as possible is colliding with farming industry dependence on undocumented labor, leading to a clash of competing interests.
One industry source told Agri-Pulse the result has been “whiplash” as the Department of Homeland Security attempts to carry out a nationwide deportation program while balancing President Donald Trump’s desire to spare the agricultural and hospitality industries from enforcement actions that can cripple their businesses.
The farmer sector initially seemed to have won a reprieve from DHS raids that have resulted in arrests of dozens of workers on farms and at dairy and meatpacking plants. On Thursday, guidance went out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement staff telling them to put a “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 directive went on to say that investigations involving “human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are OK.” It added, however, that arrests were not to be made of “noncriminal collaterals,” a reference, the Times said, “to people who are undocumented but who are not known to have committed any crime.”
The ag industry was pleased with the news and praised Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins for advocating for farmers. Rollins, who spoke with Trump last Wednesday before appearing at the House Agriculture Committee, distanced herself from efforts to change ICE policy. Her statement said she agrees with the administration’s immigration enforcement strategy.
But on Monday night, ICE appeared to reverse itself, telling staff in a phone call that nothing had changed, according to a report in The Washington Post.
ICE and officials in its Homeland Security Investigations division “told agency leaders in a call Monday that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants, according to two people familiar with the call,” the Post said.
Sudden shift raises new questions
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.”
But Jaime Castaneda, executive vice president for policy and strategy at the National Milk Producers Federation, said his understanding is that DHS would indeed halt unannounced raids on businesses, but would continue to conduct I-9 audits designed to assess compliance with immigration law.
Jaime Castaneda (NMPF photo)“I think that audits will continue. I think that the only thing they're going to stop is the raids,” Castaneda told Agri-Pulse Tuesday.
ICE spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs, said in a statement Tuesday that “worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safe guard public safety, national security and economic stability. These operations target illegal employment networks that undermine American workers, destabilize labor markets and expose critical infrastructure to exploitation."
"The President has been incredibly clear,” she said. “There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE’s efforts.”
DHS did not respond when asked to clarify whether raids at farms would stop but audits of operations would continue.
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A June 3 raid on a New Mexico dairy that resulted in the loss of more than half its workforce spurred Trump to carve out an exception for the farm and hospitality industries last week, according to Beverly Idsinga, executive director of New Mexico Dairy Producers.
Trump saw footage of the raid at Outlook Dairy Farms, which Idsinga said led him to say that long-term, valued employees at farms, hotels and restaurants should not be deported.
House Ag Committee Chair Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., and Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., were made aware of the dairy raid, where agents pointed guns at cows, Idsinga said.
Last week Thompson criticized DHS’s approach, telling reporters that “to come in here with guns blazing and what you're taking out are hard-working dairymen … it's just wrong. They need to knock it off. Let's go after the criminals. I think the president agrees. I don't know where the disconnect is. It must be somebody a little lower in the food chain that's making those mistakes.”
"The president needs to go back to his commitment to focus on violent offenders, because indiscriminately going after farmworkers is nothing of that kind," said Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
Trump seen as committed to protecting farmers
James O’Neill, director of legislative affairs at the American Business Immigration Coalition, told Agri-Pulse that the official announcement of a pause on raids “was very clearly and very publicly co-signed by the president, and the announcement that came last [Monday] night, as far as I've heard and read, came from DHS officials, and so did not come directly from the president.”
Rollins has relayed farmers’ concerns to the president. At a June 11 hearing before the pause became public, she noted that Trump had said April 10 that farmers’ needs must be considered.
“We have to take care of our farmers and hotels and, you know, various places where … they need the people,” Trump said at that time after hearing from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about the department’s deportation efforts.
“The president himself, in a cabinet meeting, discussed this,” Rollins told Rep. Andrea Salinas, D-Ore. “There is a recognition that there has to be a balance. He remains committed to ensuring that no laws are broken, but while realizing that [with] our agriculture community, specifically our dairy farmers, a lot of our row croppers, our specialty crops, there is a massive labor issue that we have to work to solve in partnership with Congress.”
The next day, Trump again addressed the issue, saying in the Oval Office that “our farmers are being hurt badly. They have very good workers. They’ve worked for them for 20 years. They’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be great. We’re going to have to do something about that. We can’t take farmers and all their people and send them back because they don’t have what they are supposed to have."
The raid at Outlook Dairy shrunk the workforce there from 55 to 20, leaving the business scrambling to find people to milk cows, Idsinga said.
The back-and-forth over the issue resulted in criticism of Rollins online by supporters of mass deportation, but she had support on a call arranged by ABIC Tuesday.
Matt Teagarden (KLA photo)“We … thank Secretary Rollins for her steadfast support of agriculture,” said Kansas Livestock Association President Matt Teagarden.
And Texas Restaurant Association President and CEO Emily Williams Knight said she is “hopeful because there is this dialogue. There is an open dialogue. Secretary Rollins is a huge champion. President Trump understands the issue, understands hospitality, hotels, agriculture.”
The apparent reversal by DHS “means there's a lot of internal dialogue happening, and there's a real appetite to hear from the business community about these impacts directly to the workforce,” Knight said.
“I haven't heard anything that would indicate [Rollins has] changed her opinion on the matter, and she's been pretty clear that doing deportations in a targeted way that focuses on dangerous criminals, which is what the administration has been saying they're doing anyway, is the way to go about immigration enforcement,” ABIC’s O’Neill said.
Castaneda, who said Rollins "has the president's ear," said the problem with raids is they end up snaring more people than were initially targeted.
“I think that the biggest concern for us is that they have a specific warrant in order to arrest one person, but they end up arresting a lot more people,” he said.
Disagreement over the deportation strategy is leading ag groups to seek a legislative solution.
“We stand ready to work with the president and members of Congress to address this issue in a reasonable way,” Teagarden said. “Reform is important. The system today is dysfunctional.”
Michael Marsh, who heads the National Council of Agricultural Employers, issued a statement Tuesday:
“Agriculture needs to have a conversation with the administration. Agricultural employers are not and will not harbor violent criminals nor purposely try to undermine ICE's efforts. We look forward to a dialogue that collaboratively identifies solutions that promote our nation's food and national security.”
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