President Trump late Thursday signaled deference to farmers in the U.S. who employ undocumented migrants, aiming to shield some of them from his administration’s deportation efforts.
“Farmers, look, they know better. They work with them for years. You had cases where, not year, but just even over the years where people have worked for a farm, on a farm for 14, 15 years and they get thrown out pretty viciously and we can’t do it. We gotta work with the farmers, and people that have hotels and leisure properties too,” Trump told the crowd at the “Salute to America” event in Des Moines, Iowa.
The president indicated during his speech, which formally kicked off the year-long celebration of the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, that his administration is working on legislation that would permit some migrants without authorization to stay in the country and keep working on farms.
“We’re gonna work with them and we’re gonna work very strong and smart, and we’re gonna put you in charge. We’re gonna make you responsible and I think that that’s going to make a lot of people happy,” Trump said, acknowledging that “serious radical right people, who I also happen to like a lot, they may not be quite as happy but they’ll understand.”
Trump then turned toward Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, who was in attendance, and asked if “they’ll understand that.”
“You’re the one that brought this whole situation up. Brooke Rollins brought it up and she said, ‘So we have a little problem. The farmers are losing a lot of people,’ and we figured it out and we have some great stuff being written,” the president said in Iowa, the state that has over 86,000 farms. “Let the farmers be responsible.”
The White House has gone back and forth on the issue of migrant labor on farms and in the hotel industry. The administration has directed immigration agents to mostly halt raids at hotels, plants and farms in early June, though it reversed course days later.
Later in June, Trump said during an interview on Fox News that a temporary pass would be issued to migrants in the hospitality industry and on farms to allow their employers to have more control.
“I cherish our farmers. And when we go into a farm and we take away people that have been working there for 15 and 20 years, who were good, who possibly came in incorrectly. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to do something for farmers where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge,” Trump said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo. “The farmer knows he’s not going to hire a murderer.”
During his speech in Iowa, the president warned that if the farmers do not do a “good job, we’ll throw them out of the country.”
“We’ll let the illegals stay and we’ll throw the farmer the hell out, okay? Get ready, farmer,” he said.
