‘I really feel for her': Brooke Rollins' impossible Trump administration mandate
It's an unenviable position as the Trump administration weighs how to square its hard-line immigration stance with a basic American need for farm labor — without which everything from fruits and vegetables to meat and milk could become more expensive.
Trump has promised a solution in the coming weeks but there's no answer that won't leave a key part of the MAGA constituency infuriated — and, if the past is prologue, Rollins will bear the brunt of the fallout, possibly endangering her political future.
'I really feel for her, I just do,' said Oscar Gonzales, vice chair of the California Horse Racing Board and a top aide and adviser to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack during both the Obama and Biden administrations. 'I'm on the opposite team, but I feel for the task that she's been given.'
Rollins, who ran domestic policy in the White House in the last year of Trump's first term and was once thought to be in contention to be chief of staff, has spent the past several weeks trying to tame the intensifying political blowback as MAGA allies and immigration hawks blame her for what they see as the president's ever-shifting positions on undocumented farm labor.
The issue flared again Monday when MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk said the 'ruling class' was pushing Trump to offer amnesty to farmworkers, forcing Rollins and other administration officials to declare that there's 'no amnesty' from mass deportations for migrant farmworkers.
On Tuesday, she pledged a '100 percent American' workforce, and suggested that millions of Medicaid recipients, facing new work requirements, would fill farm jobs.
'Secretary Rollins has a strong America first background in public policy and has consistently advocated for securing the border, opposing amnesty, enforcing deportations, and supporting an all-American workforce,' said Seth Christensen, the Agriculture department spokesperson. 'Anyone suggesting otherwise either hasn't done their homework or is deliberately misleading the public.'
He said it was 'completely false' to suggest that she consulted or directed others to consult a lobbying firm to build support for 'her position.'
'Her only position is the President's position,' he said. 'The entire Administration is working in lockstep to carry out his America-first agenda.'
Trump, who has at times appeared sympathetic to both farmers and immigration hawks, vowed on Tuesday that there would be 'no amnesty,' though he again promised to deliver a 'work program' for migrant farm laborers — two statements which appear to be at odds with one another.
The solutions administration officials and Republican allies in Congress have discussed include streamlining the H-2A visa program and providing undocumented workers already in the U.S. a path to legal worker status, according to an administration official and two Republican Hill aides, granted anonymity to relay private policy discussions.
A White House official insisted there would be no amnesty but said the administration is working to streamline existing visa programs to ensure they're more efficient and that farmers have what they need.'
Immigration hawks warn that exceptions for one industry could become a slippery slope.
'Farmworkers are really a pretty small share of the overall illegal population, so it may seem inconsequential, but as soon as they do [amnesty] for farmers, then you're going to have how many other — construction, hospitality, restaurants — everybody's gonna want their exception,' said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. 'That's part of what makes it hard. Where are you gonna draw the line?'
Expanding access to the H-2A program for non-seasonal agricultural industries, like dairy, has long received GOP support, but would fall far short of replacing the estimated 320,000 undocumented farm workers already in the U.S. Trump has publicly discussed a so-called 'touchback' program for those workers — requiring them to exit the U.S., and reenter through a legal pathway — but such an initiative already faces strong partisan winds.
Inside the administration, the debate is focused on how the White House can placate farmers without a policy 'looking like executive amnesty,' said one person close to the Trump administration, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Trump has been so critical of programs like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and the Biden administration's use of humanitarian parole to admit undocumented immigrants into the country that the White House can't now risk looking like they took a similar path, the person said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the 'president's entire Cabinet, including Secretary Rollins, are following his lead.'
She added that the White House and departments of Agriculture, Homeland Security and Labor are all 'working together to carry out mass deportations of illegal aliens while ensuring our farmers and other critical American industries are supported and heard.'
Rollins is viewed among immigration hawks as more sympathetic to farmers' concerns, and in the days leading up to Trump's temporary pause last month, she relayed industry complaints to the president.
Border czar Tom Homan, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller are opposed to giving some businesses a pass on enforcement, said Vaughan and the person close to the administration.
'I think they're sensitive to the fact that [immigration hawks] would hammer them over the fact if they just offered these people parole or some sort of deferred action that allows them to stay and work in the United States,' said the person close to the administration.
Some Trump loyalists — particularly those in the nationalist-populist wing of the GOP, have long distrusted Rollins, considering her an old-guard Republican, and her perceived stance on immigration feeds into that distrust.
The backlash against Rollins, who in 2021 co-founded the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank, concerned top agriculture employers. They view her as a key voice in the president's inner circle on behalf of farmers and have rallied to her cause. During an Agriculture Workforce Coalition member call last month, attendees brainstormed how their groups could help 'blunt' the negative attacks on social media, according to Michael Marsh, president of the National Council of Agriculture Employers.
One idea was to create accounts for the large agriculture employers on Truth Social, in order to engage directly with Trump's staunchest supporters — and Rollins' harshest critics.
'There's this false notion that there are loads of Americans that are there wanting to take these jobs, but that's just not the case,' he said. 'You can't convince some folks that the Earth isn't flat, for whatever reason. But it's not. It really isn't flat.'
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