The Department of Homeland Security on Monday told staff that it was reversing guidance issued last week that agents were not to conduct immigration raids at farms, hotels and restaurants – a decision that stood at odds with President Donald Trump’s calls for mass deportations of anyone without legal status.
Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including its Homeland Security Investigations division, told agency leaders in a call Monday that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants, according to two people familiar with the call. The new instructions were shared in an 11 a.m. call to representatives from 30 field offices across the country.
ICE and HSI field office supervisors began learning about a likely reversal of the exemption policy Sunday after hearing from DHS leadership that the White House did not support it, according to one person with knowledge of the reversal.
An official from DHS had sent an email Thursday telling agents to “hold on all worksite enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.” That message went out hours after Trump suggested he was sympathetic to concerns raised by farmers and hospitality executives about his deportation plan. The Washington Post spoke with four people who confirmed that a call was held Monday with the agency’s leadership.
“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 DHS, said Monday. “Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability.”
ICE has been under significant pressure from White House officials to ramp up arrests in an effort to fulfill Trump’s goal of enacting the largest domestic deportation operation in history. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said last month that the administration wants ICE to make a minimum of 3,000 arrests a day. In an interview last week, Trump border czar Tom Homan told The Post that arrests had increased to around 2,000 a day.
Trump had been pulled in two directions on the issue, recently coming under pressure from executives in the agriculture and hospitality industries to loosen up on a sweeping deportation policy that was costing them migrant workers. The president on Thursday wrote on social media that “changes are coming” to help “protect our Farmers” from losing workers, though a White House official told The Post at the time that no actual policy changes were being proposed by the White House.
Miller, an architect of much of Trump’s aggressive immigration policy, had privately opposed carving out exceptions for certain industries that rely heavily on workers without legal status, according to two people with knowledge of his advocacy in recent days against the measure. Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, meanwhile was on the opposite side of the issue, stressing to Trump the concerns that those in the farming industry had raised about losing workers.
Some immigration experts say ICE would need to ramp up worksite enforcement to meet the administration’s ambitious arrest quotas. Past raids at meatpacking plants, for instance, have led to hundreds of arrests at once. Other labor-intensive industries include farms, factories and clothing manufacturers. The June 12 memo acknowledged that avoiding these large-scale employers would hinder ICE officers’ efforts, saying, “We acknowledge that by taking this off the table, that we are eliminating a significant # of potential targets.”
In the weeks since Miller’s announcement about ramping up arrests, business and industry groups have been heavily lobbying the White House, as well as Senate and congressional offices, pleading for an end to the crackdown. Rebecca Shi, chief executive of the American Business Immigration Coalition, said the pause officials put in place last week had signaled to many employers that the president was “open to a solution.”
Then, on Sunday night, Trump made a post on his Truth Social account that he said amounted to an order for ICE officials “to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,” which he said would require them to “expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities.”
Asked about the post and whether ICE would continue to conduct raids in areas outside large Democratic cities, a White House official said, “While we will expand efforts in sanctuary cities, President Trump remains committed to enforcing federal immigration law – anyone present in the United States illegally is at risk of deportation.”
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Maria Sacchetti contributed to this report.
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