Inside the White House ‘battle lines' over immigration raids, and which illegal migrants ICE should target

New York Post

17-06-2025

A tense tug-of-war has erupted in the White House over illegal immigration enforcement as the Trump administration whipsaws between targeting exclusively hardened criminals and going after low-hanging fruit like farm workers to meet arrest quotas.
'Battle lines' have been drawn between Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins over the issue, a source close to the White House told The Post.
Miller, an avowed immigration hawk, along with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, uncorked on Immigration and Customs Enforcement leadership last month, demanding agents triple the number of daily migrant arrests being made to 3,000, according to reports.
3 White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has pushed for a sharp increase in the number of daily ICE arrests.
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This promptly led to a 'leadership alignment' at ICE involving more than half a dozen personnel changes, a shake-up the agency said would help it 'achieve President Trump and the American people's mandate of arresting and deporting criminal illegal aliens and making American communities safe.'
As the agency clamored to meet the new Trump-blessed edict, ICE agents began casting a wider net in their raids, rounding up meat processing plant workers, farmhands and day laborers at Home Depot, instead of strictly detaining those with criminal records or active deportation orders.
Days later, ICE raided a meat processing plant in Omaha, Neb., and detained workers at a California blueberry field, according to the Los Angeles Times.
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Last week, Rollins warned Trump that US farmers were concerned that the spike in arrests was harming their business.
'Severe disruptions to our food supply would harm Americans,' wrote Rollins on X Sunday. 'It took us decades to get into this mess and we are prioritizing deportations in a way that will get us out.'
That same day, the hotel magnate president took to Truth Social to acknowledge that the crackdown was negatively impacting American industries, including hospitality and agriculture.
3 Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins warned against excessive targeting of farm workers by immigration authorities, saying 'severe disruptions to our food supply would harm Americans.'
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'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, adding that, 'Changes are coming.'
The 'unmaintainable' marching orders also stretched federal immigration officers thin as they grappled to achieve the new sky-high arrest figures, dampening the spirits of agents, according to ICE insiders.
'All that matters is numbers, pure numbers. Quantity over quality,' one source The Post.
'It's killing morale,' they added.
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White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson on Tuesday emphasized the 'critical' need for ICE to receive more funding from Congress through 'Trump's One, Big, Beautiful Bill' to continue the mass deportation raids. The bill would fund 'at least' one million deportations, 10,000 new ICE officers and 3,000 border agents, she said.
It would also give immigration agents 'bonuses,' which Jackson said 'they've more than earned.'
The enforcement shift Trump outlined came swiftly, with the administration ordering immigration agents to stop busting farm, restaurant and hotel workers — which have higher proportions of illegal migrants in their workforce — just two days later.
3 ICE agents have been pushed to the brink by the new mandates, which see them going after low-hanging fruit like agricultural workers rather than wanted criminals or those under deportation orders, sources tell The Post.
James Keivom
'Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,' senior ICE official Tatum King wrote in an agency-wide email, the New York Times reported.
But the back-and-forth wasn't over yet. Just a day later, Trump was back on Truth Social, emphatically restating his intention to initiate 'the largest mass deportation program in history,' and heralding a broadening of ICE's mandates in migrant-laden US cities including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
The abrupt about-face was buttressed by Homeland Security, which ordered ICE leadership to continue raiding the very same businesses Trump was defending just 24 hours earlier.
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'Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability,' DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement, adding, 'These operations target illegal employment networks that undermine American workers, destabilize labor markets and expose critical infrastructure to exploitation.'
Echoing Trump's mass deportation push, Jackson at the White House said 'anyone' who is in the US illegally is at risk of deportation.
'President Trump is working hand-in-glove with DHS and ICE agents to deliver on his campaign promise to remove criminal illegal aliens from the country while executing the largest mass deportation program in history,' she added.