Okay to Stay?

For many undocumented immigrants, a surprise reprieve

Credit: Getty Images

While everyone was obsessing over parades and protests last week, Donald Trump made a stunning reversal on immigration. You may not have heard about it, but his decision instantly defanged his deportation initiative. MAGA must be having a meltdown, because now a lot of immigrants aren't going anywhere.

A little background: The acronym TACO has been making the internet rounds, after Donald Trump kept (keeps?) flip-flopping on tariffs. It stands for Trump Always Chickens Out. This term angers the president greatly. He hates criticism of any kind, and anything that makes him appear weak is especially bothersome. He bellowed at and belittled a reporter who asked him about the TACO label.

Whether he likes it or not, TACO is certainly apropos today.

One of Trump’s biggest and most popular campaign promises was mass deportations — he pledged a million in the first year. Since Inauguration Day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has averaged 650 arrests per day. Both undocumented and legal immigrants have been caught up in the dragnet. Even at that rate, Trump wouldn’t come close to his arbitrary quota.

In recent weeks, hardline immigration zealot and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller demanded a massive increase in arrests. He insisted on 3,000 per day. If you do the math, that would achieve the self-imposed million. Miller reportedly screamed at ICE leadership and threatened their jobs if they didn’t increase their numbers.

So ICE ratcheted up their raids on businesses including farms, restaurants, and meatpacking plants. Last week’s protests in Los Angeles were in response to ICE raids in the city’s garment district.

Then, suddenly, Trump did an about-face. On Friday, The New York Times reported that Trump told ICE to stop targeting the agriculture and hospitality industries, which include restaurants and hotels. These industries, along with construction, have the highest share of immigrant workers. Call it chickening out, backing down — choose your term du jour — this was another Trump TACO moment.

“Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,” said an internal email sent by a senior ICE official to regional leadership.

Perhaps The Washington Post poll from June 10 had something to do with it. More than half of those polled disapprove of Trump’s immigration policies, while only 37% approve. It wasn’t the only poll with similar numbers.

But more than likely the reversal came after Trump got an earful, or many, from farmers and restaurant and hotel owners. This was not what they thought they were voting for. The bottom line is, Trump policies are killing their bottom lines. According to The Times, farmers also told Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins that they are losing longtime workers to raids and to fear — and they can’t replace them.

No wonder. The U.S. has a labor shortage. The unemployment rate is 4.2%, and 70% of employers can’t fill vacancies, according to ManpowerGroup. So the old trope that undocumented workers are taking jobs from Americans is simply false. And these workers are doing hard jobs for low wages: picking strawberries, cleaning hotel rooms, bussing tables — jobs that most Americans have long refused to do.

In a surprising admission on social media, Trump posted, “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.”

And even more remarkable, Trump had this to say about undocumented workers in a news conference late last week: “Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers, they have worked for them for 20 years. They’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be, you know, great,” he said. “We can’t do that to our farmers and leisure, too, hotels. We’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”

That, my Steady friends, is a strong candidate for quote of the year.

And just a reminder, Trump and his family have been in the hotel business for decades.

Economists have been warning that Trump’s planned mass deportations would cause food chain disruption; food can’t get to your table if there is no one to plant and harvest it. An estimated 42% of farm workers are undocumented immigrants, with similar numbers in the hospitality industry.

But wait. Nothing with Trump is that cut and dried.

The new directive has proven rather unpopular with the MAGA base. So on Sunday night, in a meandering post full of disinformation and conspiracy theories, Trump declared war on Democratic cities, to try to make up the difference in immigrant arrests.

“We must 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,” he wrote.

“These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State,” he added. The lies and odd capitalization are all Trump.

One small problem in the latest plan: These big cities are chock full of hotels and restaurants whose workers suddenly hold immunity cards. This is quickly turning into a deportation debacle. The only constant with Trump is confusion.

And here’s something else you can take to the bank: These immigrants are people who add billions to the U.S. economy as workers and consumers. Remove them at your peril, TACO man.

* Several hours after posting this piece on Monday evening Trump reversed himself, again. ICE agents have been told to conduct immigration raids regardless of the kind of business. Stay tuned. Who knows what tomorrow may bring.

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