President Donald Trump announced Thursday that “changes are coming” to protect farmers from losing workers to his aggressive deportation campaign, but no such policy changes are underway, according to three people with knowledge of the administration’s immigration policies.
Trump’s comments in a social media post sought to soothe industry leaders in the agriculture and hospitality fields, said a White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s thinking, as many business leaders remain unnerved by the president’s sweeping deportation campaigns.
The official said there will be “no change” in the current approach to deportations, adding that no carveout exists currently for farm, hotel or other migrant workers who are in the country illegally. The administration previously directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement workers to avoid raiding farms, the person said, noting that agents have swept food production facilities. Immigration enforcement activity appeared to take place at two farms in California this week, however, as the administration escalated deportation efforts.
Trump’s public comments and follow-up remarks Thursday reflected a president pulled in two directions, with some business owners pointing out that whole sectors of the economy depend on the labor of people Trump is deporting, while influential MAGA commentators press him to deliver on the aggressive campaign promises that helped lift him to office. As the day wore on, Trump appeared to swing between the competing factions, explaining farmers’ predicament to reporters and saying he thought the White House would “have an order on that soon,” but also posting on social media Thursday afternoon that undocumented immigrants “have stolen American Jobs.”
Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, said in an interview with The Washington Post that he has not discussed with the president any such changes to protect farm or hotel workers, and that he so far hasn’t been part of creating a policy to protect certain types of workers.
“I have not seen any instruction, anything that changes in the near future,” Homan said.
Widespread deportations of farm workers could have significant impacts on the country’s food supplies — not only causing shortages in grocery stores, but affecting farmers’ bottom line.
While many farmers depend on foreign-born workers, including those without legal status, to work for low wages and in physically demanding conditions, farmers emerged as strong supporters of Trump in November. Farm-dependent counties, defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as counties where at least one-quarter of earnings come from farming, voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2024, despite his focus on illegal immigration — a signature issue since he launched his first presidential bid 10 years ago this month.
Trump administration officials have ramped up pressure on ICE agents to increase arrests to 3,000 per day, up from the roughly 660 per day during Trump’s first 100 days in office. While
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem and other administration officials have emphasized that they are going after people with criminal records, the administration is making “collateral arrests,” during which they are picking up undocumented immigrants they encounter while pursuing an arrest target.
Signaling any retreat from his stated commitment to mass deportations would almost certainly draw swift pushback from Trump’s base.
In his initial post Thursday, Trump sought to contrast people working in the country without authorization with those who enter the country illegally and commit crimes — a distinction that enforcement officials often
do not make in
deportation sweeps.
“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,” Trump wrote around 9:45 a.m. Thursday on Truth Social. “In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
Some conservative influencers scrambled to respond, at times pleading with the president to walk back his plans. Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and an architect of his immigration policy, likewise voiced concerns Thursday about Trump’s comments, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about them publicly.
Several hours later, Trump’s tenor changed as he made a much more blistering post about undocumented immigrants, saying many had entered the country while Joe Biden was president “from some of the most dangerous and dysfunctional Nations on Earth — Many of them Rapists, Murderers, and Terrorists.”
“Those who are here illegally should either self deport using the CBP Home App or, ICE will find you and remove you,” Trump continued in the follow-up post. “Saving America is not negotiable!”
Miller and Vice President JD Vance — another critic of the notion that immigrants should be allowed to stay in the country without authorization to work low-wage and low-skill jobs — both shared Trump’s second post, but not the first one.
Not all top officials in Trump’s administration are opposed to exploring relief for industries that rely on workers without legal status. Brooke Rollins, Trump’s agriculture secretary, has advocated for finding a solution to help farmers. More than 40 percent of crop farmworkers in the country lack work authorization, according to
USDA estimates.
“We have to fix the broken system. We have to make sure our workforce is legal and is here legally, but the president understands that we can’t feed our nation or the world without that labor force,” Rollins said outside the White House on Thursday in an interview with CNBC. “And he’s listening to the farmers on that, which I really appreciate.”
While Washington debates, those working directly with those affected by deportation actions say the administration’s escalated efforts have upended daily life.
On Wednesday alone, Nisei Farmers League, a nonprofit organization that advocates for farm growers and workers, received more than 20 calls from people reporting that the U.S. Border Patrol was in the San Joaquin Valley, but it turned out to be false rumors put out on social media, said the organization’s president, Manuel Cunha Jr. The consequences of misinformation are huge, Cunha said, with panicked laborers often choosing to stay home rather than risk deportation.
“If a Border Patrol [agent] goes into a packing house … tomorrow, nobody going to work,” he said. “Nobody will go to work. 150,000 workers. And what happens with the fruit?”
Some enforcements are happening on farms, said Adriana Mandujano Angel, a spokeswoman for the Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project. She said 40 people were detained in raids Tuesday at farms in Oxnard and Santa Maria, California, according to data that the Mexican Consulate provided to the nongovernmental organization. Reports of potential ICE raids, she said, have been shared across organizing groups and social media in the region, and the community is on high alert.
Many advocates for undocumented immigrants are skeptical that Trump will follow through and protect unauthorized workers.
“We’ll see,” said Leslie Leavens, chair of House Farm Workers, an NGO that works on labor issues. “If Trump is claiming to have a change of heart,” she said, “I don’t believe it.”
