President Donald Trump, addressing a crowd in Des Moines, Iowa, Thursday, promised again that his administration is working on a way to protect the ag workforce from his deportation program by making farmers responsible for longtime workers.
Trump gave Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins credit for bringing the matter to his attention, and acknowledged the difficulty faced by farmers who lose employees that had been working for them for 14 to 15 years.
“Some of the farmers are literally, you know, they cry when they see this happen,” he said. “They get thrown out pretty viciously, and we can't do it.”
“We're working with Kristi [Noem], and we're going to do something that we have the farmers in charge,” he said, referring to the Homeland Security secretary who traveled with Trump along with Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins and other Cabinet members and officials. “We got to work with people that have hotels and leisure properties, too.”
"If a farmer is willing to vouch for these people in some way. Kristi, I think we're going to have to just say that's going to be good, right?" he said. "We're going to be good with it, because we don't want to do it where we take all of workers off the farms. We want the farms to do great, like they're doing right now."
“We're going to work with them, and we're going to work very strong and smart, and we're going to put you in charge,” Trump said. “We're going to make you responsible.”
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Trump has made similar comments over the past few months. In April, he said, “We have to take care of our farmers and hotels and, you know, various places where … they need the people,” he said. And last month, he said, "We can’t take farmers and all their people and send them back because they don’t have what they are supposed to have."
Trump alluded to criticism he has received from some elements of the Make America Great Again movement for saying farmers need to be able to keep their workers.
“You probably saw I got myself into a little trouble because I said, I don't want to take people away from the farmers, and we're going to do something. I think that's going to be good, because we want all the criminals out. Everybody agrees that we're finding the murderers, the drug deals, we're getting them the hell out of here.”
Veering into sarcasm, Trump said, “We have some great stuff being written. And let the farmers be responsible, and then if the farmers don't do a good job, we'll throw them the hell out of the country. We'll let the illegals stay, and we'll throw the farmer the hell out.”
But he added he was “only kidding.”
The speech was held at the Iowa State Fairgrounds to kick off the administration’s year-long America250 celebration for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
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