Trump Reiterates Willingness to Let Migrant Laborers Stay on Farms

News Nation’s Jeff Arnold reported that “President Donald Trump has pledged to protect American farmers who rely on migrant workers to operate their farms, but until Thursday, details of how that would work remained limited.”

“But at a rally in Iowa, Trump said that he would allow the farmers who hire migrants to take charge and allow the migrants working in the agricultural industry to remain in the country,” Arnold reported. “The plan would not create a path to citizenship as some immigration advocates have called for, but would protect them from the possibility of being detained by ICE agents during workplace raids, Trump said.”

“‘If a farmer has been with one of these people that worked so hard — they bend over all day, we don’t have too many people that can do that, but they work very hard, and they know him very well, and some of the farmers are literally, you know, they cry when they see this happen,’ Trump said,” according to Arnold’s reporting. “‘If a farmer is willing to vouch for these people, in some way … I think we’re going to have to just say that’s going to be good, right?’”

“Trump said that by implementing a plan in which farm workers were able to avoid being taken into custody, it would benefit a farming industry that contributed about $223 million to the nation’s gross domestic product in 2023,” Arnold reported. “Trump said that he doesn’t want to see immigration enforcement efforts that result in farms losing groups of workers. Trump told supporters at Thursday’s event at the Iowa State Fairgrounds that he had heard of migrants who had worked for farms for more than 15 years ‘get thrown out pretty viciously.’”

“‘We can’t have that,’ the president said, adding, ‘We want the farms to do great,’” Arnold reported.

“Trump said that the plan would allow migrants to avoid being deported, but that while being allowed to remain in the country and pay taxes, his protection does not provide a path to U.S. citizenship. Yet, while putting the farmers ultimately in charge of the migrants they employ, Trump said he would hold farmers responsible if trouble arose,” Arnold reported. “‘We’ll let the illegals stay, and we’ll throw the farmer the hell out, okay? Get ready, farmer,’ Trump said.”

How Could Trump’s Plan Work?

The New York Times’ Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Miriam Jordan, and Hamed Aleaziz reported that “the White House remained quiet about any details about the president’s plan. Officials have declined to answer questions seeking clarity about whether there is a plan at all.”

“Mr. Trump will need the help of Congress if he wants to provide a serious legal pathway for the workers to stay longer, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute,” Kanno-Youngs, Jordan, and Aleaziz reported. “She said Mr. Trump could do what his predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., did: ‘Use prosecutorial discretion to not target farmworkers.’”

“Mr. Trump could be focused on improving existing visa programs that allow employers to temporarily hire migrant workers. During a cabinet meeting in April, Mr. Trump said he wanted to strengthen such visa programs,” Kanno-Youngs, Jordan, and Aleaziz reported. “Mr. Trump first indicated a change was coming last month, when he posted on social media that immigrants in the farming and hospitality industries were ‘very good, long time workers’ and that ‘changes are coming’ to his deportation policies.”

Rollins says Trump Administration Streamlining H-2A System

While addressing reporters late last week, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said the Trump administration has been working on improvements to the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers visa system.

“We have been hard at work, we’ve already made some changes,” Rollins said. “We’re going to make it cheaper, more efficient, and more effective for those farmers. We will have a 100% legal workforce very, very soon.”

Trump Reiterates Willingness to Let Migrant Laborers Stay on Farms was originally published by Farmdoc.