White House tries to assuage industry worries over migrant workers amid aggressive deportation campaign

CNN

8 hours ago

As the Trump administration has doubled down on its hardline immigration agenda, behind the scenes senior Trump officials and the president himself have grappled with the consequences of that crackdown against a key portion of the workforce: migrant workers.
President Donald Trump has wavered repeatedly on the topic: At times he has suggested farms and other industries employing migrants should be protected, even as he and some top aides have pushed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to intensify its immigration sweeps.
'We're working on it right now,' Trump said Tuesday. 'We have a lot of cases where ICE would go into a farm and these are guys that have been there 10 or 15 years, and the farmers know them – it's called farmer responsibility. Or owner responsibility. But they're going to be largely responsible for these people. And they know these people. They've worked at the farms for 15 years.'
Senior administration officials have had discussions with stakeholders as they quietly try to find a durable compromise on the fate of migrant workers, floating various new ways of granting them legal status, multiple sources told CNN. But it's unclear what, if any, solution they can reach without Congress, according to experts.
'President Trump is a tireless advocate for American farmers – they keep our families fed and our country prosperous. He trusts farmers and is committed to ensuring they have the workforce needed to remain successful,' said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson in a statement, maintaining that deporting 'dangerous criminals and targeting the sanctuary cities that provide them safe harbor is a top priority for the President.'
The focus on migrant workers reveals the delicate balance the Trump administration is wrestling with as it tries to carry out a historic number of deportations and avoid agitating key industries or unsettling a fragile economy. Similarly, the president faces headwinds from immigration hardliners who view additional protections for migrant workers as an unnecessary form of relief. The ambiguity in Trump's approach has kept both sides of the debate off balance.
CNN reached out to the White House for comment.
'They are working at a breakneck speed to better understand employers' issues with current guest worker visa programs and cut down on paperwork processing delays. Effective reform is a complex undertaking, and initial attempts may not get it entirely right from the start,' said Kip Eideberg, senior vice president of government and industry relations at the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, describing the message he's received from the administration.
'The Administration recognizes this and have been clear that they will make adjustments based on feedback from industry to strike the right balance between border security and immigration reform,' he added.
Undocumented immigrants account for 4% to 5% of the total US workforce and between 15% to 20% in industries like crop production, food processing, and construction, according to Goldman Sachs, which warned in a recent report that losing a 'significant share' of those workers could result in temporary bottlenecks, shortages, and price increase.
Multiple industry representatives have raised alarm over indiscriminate immigration sweeps where undocumented immigrants without criminal records have been picked up for deportation, including in sectors that are critical to the president's broader agenda.
'It will make it damn near impossible to lean into the administration's effort to strengthen manufacturing,' Eideberg said, despite overwhelming support within the industry for that effort.
'We're stuck between a rock and a hard place,' he said, noting that mass deportations will shrink the labor force. One of the primary concerns for customers is that they won't have enough workers to harvest crops, which will likely have a trickle-down effect on equipment manufacturers and reduce demand, according to Eideberg.
But tilting toward helping manufacturers and other employers could cause political problems for the president.
'The more he panders to employers of illegal workers, the more he's going to anger his base of voters who expected – and voted for – tough immigration enforcement across the board without exemptions for politically connected people,' said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for limited immigration.
Representatives from various industries have taken their worries directly to the administration, including the departments of Labor and Agriculture.
In an April Cabinet meeting, Trump appeared to nod to those concerns, telling Homeland Security Kristi Noem after her presentation: 'We're also going to work with farmers that if they have strong recommendations for their farms for certain people, we're going to let them stay in for a while and work with the farmers and then come back and go through a process of – legal process.'
He later tasked Noem, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to work on the issue, according to a source familiar with the move.
Last month, Chavez-DeRemer established the Office of Immigration Policy to try to streamline industry needs and thread the needle of delivering on Trump's mass deportation promise while helping employers navigate existing programs.
'Under President Trump's leadership, I'm working closely with Secretary Rollins, Secretary Noem, and our federal partners on fulfilling this Administration's mission to cut red tape, support agricultural employers, and ensure they have the legal workforce needed to keep our food supply secure,' Chavez-DeRemer said in a statement.
According to an agriculture industry source, a similar idea had been discussed in a meeting with Rollins earlier this year that would include setting up a program for farmers to ensure they had enough laborers. It's unclear how that program would be different from existing temporary farm visas known as H-2A.
The source said Trump has also raised the idea to Rollins of creating a mechanism that would allow farmers to sign a document or affidavit for undocumented workers, who would self-deport and then be allowed to return legally. But that kind of proposal would draw objections from hardliners.
'It ends up being who's going to win this tug of war,' said Chris Chmielenski, president of the Immigration Accountability Project, which advocates for limited immigration, describing a form of relief for undocumented migrant workers akin to 'amnesty.'
'I have no idea which way it's going to go,' he said.
There are 2.4 million farmworkers in the United States, according to the Economic Policy Institute, 40% of whom the Agriculture Department estimates lack legal status. United Farm Workers President Teresa Romero previously told CNN that she's been getting calls from concerned farmworkers across California about ICE crackdowns in the state.
Separate from the existing undocumented population, the administration has also made a series of moves to strip temporary protections from migrants who had been given permission to legally work and live in the country – suddenly depriving some employers of workers.
'We might keep losing legal workers from the system,' said Jennie Murray, president and chief executive officer of the National Immigration Forum. 'All of them (industries) are extremely worried. They're worried they don't have future flows of workers coming into the country. They're extremely worried to lose these temporary workers they've become dependent on.'
An immigration raid at an Omaha meat production plant on June 10 that resulted in dozens of workers being taken away sparked fresh concerns about the administration's priorities – culminating in a phone call between Rollins and Trump the following day over the issue.
Two days later, Trump posted on his Truth Social: '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… This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!'
Immigration and Customs Enforcement quickly issued guidance to agents limiting immigration raids at farms, hotels, and restaurants.
Just a few days later, Trump posted on his Truth Social account telling ICE officials 'to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.' ICE soon announced worksite enforcement would continue.
ICE has conducted sweeps at construction sites, popular vacation destinations like Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, as well as local Home Depots, which are a common spot for contractors and homeowners to approach and hire laborers.
Rosanna Maietta, president and CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, told CNN in a statement that the organization has also held meetings with administration officials 'to convey our acute workforce shortage challenges and underscore the importance of a strong hospitality and tourism sector.'
Trump seemed to shift course again in the last week, saying the administration is working on a temporary pass for migrant workers, particularly those working on farms and in the hospitality industry, arguing he's on 'both sides.'
'I'm the strongest immigration guy that there's ever been, but I'm also the strongest farmer guy that there's ever been,' Trump said in an interview on Fox News' 'Sunday Morning Futures.'
The whiplash has been indicative of the two factions within the administration – one focused on the impact on labor, and another intent on arresting and deporting as many people as possible. The latter has been led by White House deputy chief of staff and architect of Trump's hardline immigration policies Stephen Miller.
Miller has argued on CNN that the administration's immigration crackdown wouldn't disrupt the agriculture industry and result in higher prices, saying that migrants who recently arrived to the US 'aren't doing farmwork.'
Rollins sees the issue differently.
'The labor question is a significant one. It is one that is perhaps not the very top of the list, but for some they would say the very top of the list,' the agriculture secretary told lawmakers at a congressional hearing in mid-June.
In a CNBC interview Wednesday, Rollins said Trump's 'goal, that he has tasked me with effectuating, is making sure that we have a 100% legal workforce. That anyone that is here illegally must pay the consequences, return to the country, and then eventually, as he's talked about in different ways, come back. So, we are working on all of that right now.'
She cited reforms to temporary worker visas, arguing: 'There will be zero amnesty. We will ensure all laws are followed.'
Sources familiar with the dynamic between Rollins and Miller told CNN the relationship between the two is professional and despite the different viewpoints on immigration policy, it hasn't devolved.
'There's a respect between the two, and also a very clear understanding that Trump likes and is deeply reliant on both,' one administration official said.
'This is an area where their equities overlap and are quite different. They both understand that – or at least have up to this point. But POTUS cares deeply about farmers and ranchers and beyond his personal affinity for the Secretary, really values hearing directly from her about what the industry is saying,' the official said. 'And they're freaking out right now – and have been for months.'