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.
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“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. {snip}
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. {snip}
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 {snip}
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.
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