Trump's Deportation Policy Collides With Realities of American Labor Market
President Donald Trump's mixed messaging on immigration enforcement appears to have has caused concern among his base, fear in Democrat-run cities and confusion at the White House.
At the end of last week, Trump reportedly told Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to pause most raids at agricultural facilities and hospitality venues. On Sunday, he said he would increase targeted actions in so-called sanctuary cities. Then on Monday night, the Washington Post reported that the pause on farms, restaurants and hotels was being walked back.
The mixed signals on the president's signature domestic policy caused some dismay among those on the right who made it clear they wanted illegal immigrants out of the U.S., regardless of the jobs they were doing, just as the president promised during his campaign.
"If ICE is being told to go easy or exempt all of agriculture, meatpacking, hotels, and restaurants from enforcement, first of all how many illegal aliens are left to enforce the law against?" Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a right-leaning thinktank in Washington, D.C., told Newsweek Monday.
"If ICE at the same time is supposed to step up enforcement in sanctuary jurisdictions, can they raid restaurants in New York? Can they raid farms in California? Which of those two directives, to exempt certain industries but focus on sanctuary jurisdictions, which of those take priority?"
A farmworker wears protective layers while gathering produce in the summer heat, before receiving heat awareness education outreach from the TODEC Legal Center, on August 2, 2023 near Hemet, California. Inset: US President Donald Trump...
A farmworker wears protective layers while gathering produce in the summer heat, before receiving heat awareness education outreach from the TODEC Legal Center, on August 2, 2023 near Hemet, California. Inset: US President Donald Trump attends an arrival ceremony during the Group of Seven (G7) Summit at the Pomeroy Kananaskis Mountain Lodge in Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada on June 16, 2025. More
Mario Tama/LUDOVIC MARIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Are ICE Raids On Or Off?
Krikorian's questions get at the heart of the complexities of carrying out mass deportations in a country dependent on migrant labor. Trump campaigned on a promise to deport upwards of 11 million people in the country without legal status. While originally focused on those with criminal records, experts repeatedly warned that a deportation effort on this scale would sweep up undocumented immigrants without criminal records — including those who make America's farming and hospitalities industries run.
On Thursday, Trump appeared to concede that his sweeping immigration enforcement efforts were hurting some of those very industries, including agriculture, hospitality and dining.
"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 in a Truth Social post.
"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!"
If Trump were to ease up on workplace raids, he will be going against his base in Republican-majority states who voted for the removal of illegal immigrants writ large. But many red states also have vast rural areas that see immigrants employed on farms, as well as urban and suburban regions that depend on migrants to staff jobs in healthcare and hospitality.
"The president himself is not a restrictionist. He's not a low immigration guy. He's a regular Republican, 'legal good, illegal bad' guy on immigration," Krikorian said. "But his voters are immigration restrictionists. In other words, regular voters who voted for Trump want less immigration overall. Not just illegal but legal, too."
On Monday night, DHS reportedly walked back the directive it had sent to agents days earlier, with the department's leads telling ICE and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) that the White House did not support the pause, per the Post.
Meanwhile, Trump's deputy chief of staff and immigration policy architect, Stephen Miller, has been clear that he wants to see around 3,000 arrests per day from ICE. Exempting workplaces would likely hinder that already difficult goal.
Mixed Messaging From Trump
The president also posted on Sunday night that he was ordering ICE, with its already strained resources, to increase its efforts in sanctuary cities such as Chicago, New York City and Los Angeles – areas which voted strongly in favor of Democratic candidate and former Vice President Kamala Harris in November's presidential election.
"This muddies the president's message about deporting the largest number of illegal aliens ever," Krikorian said. "That's a problem both internally, as far as giving direction to what ICE agents are supposed to do, an externally as to who is going to bother self-deporting now, if Trump has said a huge share of the illegal population doesn't have to flee?"
DHS has urged those without legal status to self-deport, with reports over the weekend that upwards of a million people had chosen to do so before ICE could detain them. That data has not yet been made public.
Law enforcement stand guard outside the Federal Building during a protest on Friday, June 13, 2025, in Los Angeles. A federal appeals court ruled on June 12 that the Trump administration can maintain control of...
Law enforcement stand guard outside the Federal Building during a protest on Friday, June 13, 2025, in Los Angeles. A federal appeals court ruled on June 12 that the Trump administration can maintain control of the California National Guard, overturning a lower court ruling that U.S. President Donald Trump's deployment of troops to Los Angeles without Governor Gavin Newsom's consent as unlawful. More
Ringo Chiu via AP
Krikorian said he believed there was a fight going on within the White House over what the priorities were on deportations, with Trump potentially throwing ideas out on social media and his staff struggling to keep up with the latest conflicting marching orders.
This has the effect of sending illegal immigrants and their employers the same message that previous administrations had, in Krikorian's view: that it was OK to skirt the law.
"If you're going to restore integrity in the immigration system, then you're going to have to inconvenience people who have profited from the earlier arrangements," he said.
When Newsweek asked DHS how it would continue to deliver on what the president promised while protecting American businesses, and whether policies would differ state-to-state, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the department will "follow the President's direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America's streets."
Where's Congress?
Getting a grasp on deportation numbers remains difficult under this administration, but pressure is being placed on ICE to triply daily arrest numbers. Congress is being asked to dramatically increase funding for the agency, but longer-term solutions to keep border crossings low and tighten vetting requirements remain unknown.
"I really think that Trump's comments are a reflection of the decades of Congressional inaction on immigration," Kathleen Bush-Joseph, policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, told Newsweek. "Because these industries are relying on immigrant workers, but they have not been provided a pathway to lawful status, and they have remained in the country, for many cases, for many years."
Trump's back-and-forth over farming and hospitality worksite arrests will not change the status of those illegal immigrants. If or when the president decides to act on tightening legal immigration laws, or to give undocumented immigrants some kind of amnesty, remains to be seen, and bigger changes like this would likely need Congressional approval.
Lawmakers have reintroduced the bipartisan Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would establish an easier pathway for immigrants to gain legal status to work on American farms, but widespread changes to improve the country's legal immigration system rarely make it all the way to the Oval Office.
Bush-Joseph said Congress is currently being responsive to the president's wishes when it comes to ICE funding, so it could be the right time to act.
"So would Congress also be willing to move on more standalone immigration legislation, like they did with the Laken Riley Act, is a question, but of course the topic of legalization remains extremely politicized," she said.
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