Latest news with #BidenOpenBordersPolicy
Time Magazine
4 days ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
What to Know About the Trump Administration's Reversal on ICE Raids Guidance
U.S. immigration officials will continue conducting immigration raids at farms, hotels, and restaurants, marking an apparently rapid reversal of guidance issued last week to exempt those worksites from the Trump Administration's mass deportations. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials told staff in a call on Monday that agents must conduct raids at farms, hotels, and restaurants, two people with knowledge of the call told The Washington Post. Multiple news outlets, including CNN and Reuters, have since confirmed the news. 'There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE's efforts,' Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, told the Post. 'Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability.' Trump's pledge to 'protect our Farmers' President Donald Trump has launched a mass-deportation operation since he took office for a second time in January, sparking outrage from Democratic lawmakers and prompting thousands of demonstrators to take to the streets to protest ICE raids targeting undocumented immigrants. Trump has recently faced backlash from agriculture and hospitality executives over his hardline immigration agenda, the Post reported. On Thursday, he posted on Truth Social that 'changes are coming.' '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 said in his 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!' What changed—or didn't Despite the public pledge, a White House official told the Post at the time that the White House hadn't proposed any real policy changes. But three U.S. officials familiar with the situation told The New York Times that the Administration had instructed ICE officials to mostly halt raids and arrests at those worksites. 'Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,' Tatum King, a senior ICE official, said in an email that was sent out as guidance to regional leaders of the branch of ICE that typically works on criminal investigations, as reported by the Times. Monday's reversal of that guidance comes after Trump posted on Truth Social over the weekend that he wants to 'expand efforts to detain and deport illegal Aliens in America's largest cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside.'
Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Trump curbs immigration enforcement at farms, meatpacking plants, hotels and restaurants
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration directed immigration officers to pause arrests at farms, restaurants and hotels after the president expressed alarm about the impact of his aggressive enforcement, an official said Saturday. The move marks a remarkable turnabout in Trump's immigration crackdown since he took office in January. It follows weeks of increased enforcement since Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and main architect of Trump's immigration policies, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would target at least 3,000 arrests a day, up from about 650 a day during the first five months of Trump's second term. Tatum King, an official with ICE's Homeland Security Investigations unit, wrote regional leaders on Thursday to halt investigations of the agricultural industry, including meatpackers, restaurants and hotels, according to the New York Times. A U.S. official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed to the Associated Press the contents of the directive. The Homeland Security Department did not dispute it. 'We 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,' Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security spokesperson, said when asked to confirm the directive. The shift suggests Trump's promise of mass deportations has limits if it threatens industries that rely on workers in the country illegally. Trump posted on his Truth Social site Thursday that he disapproved of how farmers and hotels were being affected. '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. '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!' While ICE's presence in Los Angeles has captured public attention and prompted Trump to deploy the California National Guard and Marines, immigration authorities have also been a growing presence at farms and factories across the country. Farm bureaus in California say raids at packinghouses and fields are threatening businesses that supply much of the country's food. Dozens of farmworkers were arrested after uniformed agents fanned out on farms northwest of Los Angeles in Ventura County, which is known for growing strawberries, lemons and avocados. Others are skipping work as fear spreads. ICE made more than 70 arrests Tuesday at a food packaging company in Omaha. The owner of Glenn Valley Foods said the company was enrolled in a voluntary program to verify workers' immigration status and that it was operating at 30% capacity as it scrambled to find replacements. Tom Homan, the White House border advisor, has repeatedly said ICE will send officers into communities and workplaces, particularly in 'sanctuary' jurisdictions that limit the agency's access to local jails. Sanctuary cities 'will get exactly what they don't want, more officers in the communities and more officers at the work sites,' Homan said Monday on Fox News Channel. 'We can't arrest them in the jail, we'll arrest them in the community. If we can't arrest them in the community, we're going to increase work-site enforcement operation. We're going to flood the zone.' Madhani and Spagat write for the Associated Press.
CNBC
6 days ago
- Politics
- CNBC
Trump, in reversal, may exempt farms and hotels from immigration raids
President Donald Trump said in a social media post on Thursday that he is willing to exempt the agriculture and hotel industries from his nationwide immigration crackdown. The surprise move came after executives in both industries complained to Trump about losing reliable, longtime immigrant workers in immigration raids and struggling to replace them. "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 many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs," Trump added. "This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!" The New York Times reported the following day that a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement official had ordered a pause in immigration raids of agricultural businesses, meat packing plants, restaurants and hotels. The senior ICE official also advised agents to stop arresting undocumented people who are not known to have committed a crime. Agents were told to continue to investigate and detain undocumented people with criminal backgrounds, according to the New York Times. In response to a question from NBC News regarding Trump's pause, Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin did not dispute it. "We 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," McLaughlin said in a statement. The potentially significant change in the administration's approach to immigration comes as Trump faces a political crossroads. Immigration raids in Los Angeles sparked days of violent protests there and helped fuel sweeping anti-Trump protests nationwide on Saturday. At the same time, Trump repeatedly promised his supporters during the 2024 campaign that he would deport a million people a year, the largest mass deportations in U.S. history. To meet that goal, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller demanded last month that ICE arrest at least 3,000 undocumented people a day. Three former DHS officials told NBC News that ICE officials will have to significantly increase raids of large workplaces nationwide to meet those goals. Those sites include farms, meat-packing plants, hotels and restaurants — the industries that Trump appears to have exempted. One former ICE official said that only raids on "construction, dairy [and] meat processing facilities, carpet mills" would result in the large number of detentions Miller has demanded. "It's these low-wage jobs, that is where you get the numbers," the former official said. During the 2024 campaign and since taking office, Trump has dismissed warnings from experts that such large-scale deportations would lead to worker shortages in the industries he is apparently exempting now. But groups that support Trump's crackdown expect him to keep his promise. "They should be going after them," said Ira Mehlman, spokesperson for Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that supports a crackdown on undocumented workers. "I don't think there is going to be a huge swath of the country that will be upset if they bust these companies, if they are employing illegal immigrants and passing on the cost to everyone else." For years, slaughterhouses have been one of the industry's best known for relying on newly arrived immigrant labor, in part, due to the difficult and dangerous nature of the work. And many slaughterhouses are located in red states scattered throughout the Midwest and Southeast. Texas alone has almost 500 meat and food processing plants, according to USDA data. Earlier this week, ICE agents raided a locally owned slaughterhouse in Omaha, Nebraska and arrested at least 80 undocumented workers, according to local Hartmann, a spokesperson for Glenn Valley Foods, said in a statement that federal agents searched the company's facility "for persons believed to be using fraudulent documents to gain employment." He said that the company strives to operate within the law, that it is cooperating with agents and that it "is not being charged with any crime." But so far large slaughterhouses have not been consistently targeted by ICE around the country. Since Trump took office in January, ICE's workplace enforcement raids appear to have largely targeted smaller businesses such as a roofer in Bellingham, Washington, a Mexican restaurant in Harlingen, Texas and a small equipment manufacturer in South Dakota. One of the largest workplace raids to date — which yielded more than 100 arrests —was of a construction site in Tallahassee overseen by a privately owned Florida-based construction company. Larry Stine, an employment attorney who represents some of the largest meat-packing plants in the Southeastern United States says his clients are "terrified" of a possible raid and have been actively conducting audits of their employees' paperwork. Trump did not mention an exemption for the construction industry, which also employs large numbers of immigrant workers. So far, though, the construction industry has experienced relatively few ICE raids, industry officials said. Brian Turmail, vice president of public affairs for the Associated General Contractors of America, said that to date, he is only aware of sporadic reports of construction-site raids, such as one in Tallahassee on May 29 where more than 100 allegedly undocumented individuals were detained. The contractors' association continues to prepare members for how to respond if the pace of enforcement actions increases. "We've been reposting compliance information now that it's a bit more real," Turmail said. Turmail said he remains confident that the president is sensitive to the needs of the construction industry, whose decades-long workforce shortage has only grown more acute in recent years. It's one reason why construction costs have been surging, he said, something that, in turn, has resulted in construction spending declining year on year for the first time since 2019. "Between higher labor and higher material costs, it's putting developers on the sidelines because projects don't pencil out anymore," Turmail said. Members of the contactors' association remain hopeful that the administration's promises to reorient more of the workforce toward vocational skills will turn into federal spending to do so. Turmail predicted that worker shortages will persist and likely worsen if the immigration crackdown continues. One way the administration could help address them, he added, would be creating ways for construction workers to enter the country legally. "Even if we got all the funding we wanted, we'd still need to also find some temporary lawful pathways for people to come in and work in construction," Turmail said. Democrats say Trump's campaign promises of millions of mass deportations are hitting economic realities. John Sandweg, who served as ICE director during the Obama administration, said that to maintain its 3,000 arrests per day quota, the Trump administration would have to raid factories owned by large corporations. "No doubt some Fortune 500 will get hit," he said.
NBC News
6 days ago
- Politics
- NBC News
Trump, in reversal, may exempt farms and hotels from immigration raids
President Trump said in a social media post on Thursday that he is willing to exempt the agriculture and hotel industries from his nationwide immigration crackdown. The surprise move came after executives in both industries complained to Trump about losing reliable, longtime immigrant workers in immigration raids and struggling to replace them. '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 many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs," Trump added. "This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!' The New York Times reported the following day that a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement official had ordered a pause in immigration raids of agricultural businesses, meat packing plants, restaurants and hotels. The senior ICE official also advised agents to stop arresting undocumented people who are not known to have committed a crime. Instead, agents were told to investigate and detain undocumented people with criminal backgrounds, according to the New York Times. In response to a question from NBC News regarding Trump's pause, Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin did not dispute it. 'We 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," McLaughlin said in a statement. An immigration crossroads The potentially significant change in the administration's approach to immigration comes as Trump faces a political crossroads. Immigration raids in Los Angeles sparked days of violent protests there and helped fuel sweeping anti-Trump protests nationwide on Saturday. At the same time, Trump repeatedly promised his supporters during the 2024 campaign that he would deport a million people a year, the largest mass deportations in U.S. history. To meet that goal, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller demanded last month that ICE arrest at least 3,000 undocumented people a day. Three former DHS officials told NBC News that ICE officials will have to significantly increase raids of large workplaces nationwide to meet those goals. Those sites include farms, meat-packing plants, hotels and restaurants — the industries that Trump appears to have exempted. One former ICE official said that only raids on 'construction, dairy [and] meat processing facilities, carpet mills' would result in the large number of detentions Miller has demanded. 'It's these low-wage jobs, that is where you get the numbers,' the former official said. During the 2024 campaign and since taking office, Trump has dismissed warnings from experts that such large-scale deportations would lead to worker shortages in the industries he is apparently exempting now. But groups that support Trump's crackdown expect him to keep his promise. 'They should be going after them,' said Ira Mehlman, spokesperson for Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that supports a crackdown on undocumented workers. ' I don't think there is going to be a huge swath of the country that will be upset if they bust these companies, if they are employing illegal immigrants and passing on the cost to everyone else.' Targeting slaughterhouses For years, slaughterhouses have been one of the industry's best known for relying on newly arrived immigrant labor, in part, due to the difficult and dangerous nature of the work. And many slaughterhouses are located in red states scattered throughout the Midwest and Southeast. Texas alone has almost 500 meat and food processing plants, according to USDA data. Earlier this week, ICE agents raided a locally owned slaughterhouse in Omaha, Nebraska and arrested at least 80 undocumented workers, according to local Hartmann, a spokesperson for Glenn Valley Foods, said in a statement that federal agents searched the company's facility 'for persons believed to be using fraudulent documents to gain employment.' He said that the company strives to operate within the law, that it is cooperating with agents and that it 'is not being charged with any crime.' But so far large slaughterhouses have not been consistently targeted by ICE around the country. Since Trump took office in January, ICE's workplace enforcement raids appear to have largely targeted smaller businesses such as a roofer in Bellingham, Washington, a Mexican restaurant in Harlingen, Texas and a small equipment manufacturer in South Dakota. One of the largest workplace raids to date — which yielded more than 100 arrests —was of a construction site in Tallahassee overseen by a privately-owned Florida-based construction company. Larry Stine, an employment attorney who represents some of the largest meat-packing plants in the Southeastern United States says his clients are 'terrified' of a possible raid and have been actively conducting audits of their employees' paperwork. Few construction industry raids Trump did not mention an exemption for the construction industry, which also employs large numbers of immigrant workers. So far, though, the construction industry has experienced relatively few ICE raids, industry officials said. Brian Turmail, vice president of public affairs for the Associated General Contractors of America, said that to date, he is only aware of sporadic reports of construction-site raids, such as one in Tallahassee on May 29 where more than 100 allegedly undocumented individuals were detained. The contractors' association continues to prepare members for how to respond if the pace of enforcement actions increases. 'We've been reposting compliance information now that it's a bit more real,' Turmail said. Turmail said he remains confident that the president is sensitive to the needs of the construction industry, whose decades-long workforce shortage has only grown more acute in recent years. It's one reason why construction costs have been surging, he said, something that, in turn, has resulted in construction spending declining year on year for the first time since 2019. 'Between higher labor and higher material costs, it's putting developers on the sidelines because projects don't pencil out anymore,' Turmail said. Members of the contactors' association remain hopeful that the administration's promises to reorient more of the workforce toward vocational skills will turn into federal spending to do so. Turmail predicted that worker shortages will persist and likely worsen if the immigration crackdown continues. One way the administration could help address them, he added, would be creating ways for construction workers to enter the country legally. 'Even if we got all the funding we wanted, we'd still need to also find some temporary lawful pathways for people to come in and work in construction,' Turmail said. Democrats say Trump's campaign promises of millions of mass deportations are hitting economic realities. John Sandweg, who served as ICE director during the Obama administration, said that to maintain its 3,000 arrests per day quota, the Trump administration would have to raid factories owned by large corporations. 'No doubt some Fortune 500 will get hit,' he said.
6 days ago
- Politics
Trump curbs immigration enforcement at farms, meatpacking plants, hotels and restaurants
WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration directed immigration officers to pause arrests at farms, restaurants and hotels, after President Donald Trump expressed alarm about the impact of aggressive enforcement, an official said Saturday. The move follows weeks of increased enforcement since Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and main architect of Trump's immigration policies, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would target at least 3,000 arrests a day, up from about 650 a day during the first five months of Trump's second term. Tatum King, an official with ICE's Homeland Security Investigations unit, wrote regional leaders on Thursday to halt investigations of the agricultural industry, including meatpackers, restaurants and hotels, according to The New York Times. A U.S. official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed to The Associated Press the contents of the directive. The Homeland Security Department did not dispute it. 'We 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,' Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security spokesperson, said when asked to confirm the directive. The shift suggests Trump's promise of mass deportations has limits if it threatens industries that rely on workers in the country illegally. Trump posted on his Truth Social site Thursday that he disapproved of how farmers and hotels were being affected. '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. '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!' While ICE's presence in Los Angeles has captured public attention and prompted Trump to deploy the California National Guard and Marines, immigration authorities have also been a growing presence at farms and factories across the country. Farm bureaus in California say raids at packinghouses and fields are threatening businesses that supply much of the country's food. Dozens of farmworkers were arrested after uniformed agents fanned out on farms northwest of Los Angeles in Ventura County, which is known for growing strawberries, lemons and avocados. Others are skipping work as fear spreads. ICE made more than 70 arrests Tuesday at a food packaging company in Omaha, Nebraska. The owner of Glenn Valley Foods said the company was enrolled in a voluntary program to verify workers' immigration status and that it was operating at 30% capacity as it scrambled to find replacements. Tom Homan, the White House border czar, has repeatedly said ICE will send officers into communities and workplaces, particularly in 'sanctuary' jurisdictions that limit the agency's access to local jails. Sanctuary cities 'will get exactly what they don't want, more officers in the communities and more officers at the work sites,' Homan said Monday on Fox News Channel. 'We can't arrest them in the jail, we'll arrest them in the community. If we can't arrest them in community, we're going to increase work site enforcement operation. We're going to flood the zone.'
