Blue state deportation belies a red state problem

Trump’s focus on blue state deportation belies a red state problem

His allies acknowledge Republicans are divided on how to handle undocumented labor in the agriculture industry — and Trump himself has listened to both sides.

By Samuel Benson, Myah Ward and Jake Traylor

President Donald Trump’s vow to focus mass deportations in Democrat-led cities reveals a crack in his plans to fulfill his top campaign priority.

For months, the president has promised to deport millions of undocumented immigrants across the country. But last week, as immigration enforcement hit rural communities — with raids at farms in California, a meatpacking plant in Nebraska, a dairy in New Mexico, and elsewhere — he was faced with rare criticism from Republican lawmakers and a spooked agriculture sector already reeling from economic headwinds, trade uncertainty and labor shortages.

The president is juggling a highly combustible combination of political pressures and policy problems, as the White House’s efforts to ramp up deportations spark anger from GOP allies, farmers and ranchers in the nation’s agricultural areas, which overwhelmingly voted for Trump and yet heavily rely on foreign workers for its food supply.

Trump allies acknowledge Republicans are divided on how to handle undocumented labor in the agriculture industry — and the president himself has listened to both sides of the argument.

“He’s willing to listen to everybody,” said a person close to the administration, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the dynamic. “They’re having a debate on it, and there’s pushback.”

The person added: “This is something that I do believe is a soft spot for Trump.”

For now, Trump appears to be siding with the farmers. He responded last week with a vague Truth Social post acknowledging that his immigration policy was hurting farmers and vowed that “change was coming.” He followed with another post late Sunday, directing immigration officials to “FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role. You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!”

At the G7 summit Monday, Trump explained, “That’s the focus. Biden allowed 21 million people to come into our country.”

“Of that, vast numbers of those people were murderers, killers, people from gangs, people from jails — they emptied their jails out into the U.S. Most of those people are in the cities, all blue cities,” he said.

The president attributes his return to the White House in large part to his vows to end illegal immigration. And while administration officials spent the early days of his second term saying the mass deportations campaign was focused on criminals, they’ve reached well beyond violent offenders as ICE works to meet an aggressive goal of arresting 3,000 people a day.

Trump’s hardline immigration supporters acknowledge tensions in the party — and inside the White House — between business-minded Republicans and immigration hawks like White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller who want to target all immigrants without legal status and believe labor challenges in the nation’s agriculture sector can be resolved with native-born workers.

“There’s a tension between talking about deporting criminals and actually regaining control over our immigration because if you focus on just the criminals, you have conceded that immigration is unlimited,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports limiting immigration. “So is that where the president is? I don’t think so.”

But the president also recognizes support from farmers and ranchers as critical, said a White House official, granted anonymity to discuss the dynamic. In the lead-up to the November election, Trump criss-crossed farm states declaring he “saved” the agricultural industry by delivering $28 billion in relief to farmers in his first term after his trade war with China crimped income.

Trump’s shift came after he met last week with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who for months, alongside Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, has said the administration is working on a short-term fix for migrant labor. That reform involves the controversial H-2A visa program, which allows agriculture employers to hire seasonal labor but is viewed as exploitative by labor rights groups. Republicans in Congress are pushing to make it easier and more affordable to employ these migrant workers in this summer’s appropriations legislation.

Rollins, in a post on Sunday following reports that she played a key role in changing Trump’s mind on the raids, said she fully supported Trump’s immigration agenda, including “deportations of EVERY illegal alien.”

“The President and I have consistently advanced a ‘Farmers First’ approach, recognizing that American households depend upon a stable and LEGAL agricultural workforce,” she said in a post on X. “Severe disruptions to our food supply would harm Americans. It took us decades to get into this mess and we are prioritizing deportations in a way that will get us out.”

For months, farmers and ranchers across the United States operated with a cautious understanding that Trump’s deportation spree would not touch their workforce, with some lawmakers saying the White House had promised to spare the industry from aggressive enforcement — until last week.

House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) said the raids on agriculture producers were “just wrong,” and suggested the president agrees — but it “must be somebody a little lower in the food chain that’s making those mistakes.”

“They need to knock it off,” Thompson told reporters Thursday. “Let’s go after the criminals and give us time to put processes in place so we don’t disrupt the food supply chain.”

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) said he was told “straight to my face” that the Trump administration was “not going after agriculture.”

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said Trump has “always stood up for our farmers,” and will continue to “strengthen the agricultural industry and boost exports” while also enforcing the country’s immigration laws and removing undocumented immigrants.

Trump’s statements on protecting the farm workforce came as a relief to the ag sector. Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau, said in a statement he looks “forward to working with the President on solutions that ensure continuity in the food supply in the short term.” On Saturday, Michael Marsh — president of the National Council of Agriculture Employers — sent a letter expressing his willingness to collaborate with the Trump administration on a solution that “enhances national security and simultaneously recognizes that America’s ability to feed itself is integral to our national security.” The letter was sent to Chavez-DeRemer, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

Marsh noted that Trump relies on migrant workers at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and his winery in Virginia: “I think that there was a recognition by the White House and by the president that this could really harm a lot of people,” Marsh said in an interview Monday.

Among labor activists, however, there remains doubt whether Trump’s announcement signals a real change in policy.

“If President Trump is serious about protecting our agricultural economy, then he needs to show not tell,” United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero said.

Two-thirds of the U.S.’ crop workers are immigrants and 42 percent are undocumented, USDA estimates. Across the nation, harvest season for staple produce commodities — like lettuce, strawberries, spinach and broccoli — begins this month.

Immigration enforcement activities are “highly disruptive” to ensuring those commodities reach American consumers, said John Hollay, the International Fresh Produce Association’s director of government relations.

California — which produces over three-quarters of the U.S.’ fruits and nuts and half of its vegetables — was among the states hit hardest by immigration enforcement last week. As intense anti-ICE protests raged in Los Angeles, immigration agents raided farms and processing facilities in Ventura County and the surrounding area, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The fear of encountering ICE agents caused many migrant agricultural workers in California and across the country to avoid work last week, exacerbating the existing labor shortage. In Oxnard, 60 miles west of Los Angeles, workers returned cautiously to the fields Wednesday, a day after a video went viral of a man sprinting through rows of strawberries while ICE agents chased him. Many skipped work the day of the early-morning raids, after warnings of ICE activity. When they arrived a day later, they found boxes — half-filled with strawberries — strewn across the field, hastily abandoned.

“All of this work, who’s going to do it?” said one worker in an Oxnard field, who was granted anonymity for her safety. She came to the U.S. with her family when she was 12 and worked in California’s fields for nearly two decades. Her three daughters were born in the U.S.

“Someone who’s here legally isn’t going to work those eight, nine hours in the field,” she said, “lifting 20-pound boxes.”