President Donald Trump keeps saying he’ll solve the politically fraught problem of reconciling the need for undocumented farm labor with his mass deportation plan.
But the White House does not appear close to a policy decision — and farmers are getting frustrated with the delays.
“My understanding is they still really haven’t put pen to paper,” said a person close to the White House, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Even as angst grows among the nation’s farmers, no new policy is imminent, according to White House aides, farm lobbyists and people familiar with the discussions. Border czar Tom Homan also told reporters this week that no “formal policy” had been agreed to.
“There is the possibility that Trump could just come out with an executive order … instructing the agencies to come up with some sort of a plan to help out the farmers, but there still seems to be a lot of discussion about how they’re going to do it,” said the person close to the White House.
Trump, this week on CNBC, attempted to strike a balance between the competing interests that have roiled this debate from the beginning, promising to deport criminals while saying he wants to “work with” farmers to find solutions for undocumented immigrants who’ve lived in the country and paid taxes for decades. He even made it sound as if the White House had finalized a touchback program for some laborers, requiring them to leave the U.S. and reenter through a legal pathway.
The Trump administration said no program has been finalized, but Trump’s tease underscores the concern that any allowance for undocumented workers would cause political blowback, both from the base and from hardliners inside the administration. The president’s aides have spent weeks on defense, repeatedly vowing there will be “no amnesty” for undocumented immigrants.
“I think they think the touchback is a way to avoid it being called amnesty…but there’s still some pushback there, and on the DHS side of things, they tend to be more hardline on this,” said the person close to the White House. “My gut is that this was just Trump signaling, saying, ‘No, we haven’t forgotten about this. We’re just still trying to figure out if we’re going to do something, what it’s going to look like.’”
Still, with no formal policy announced, many in the agriculture industry are growing frustrated, according to a farm lobbyist granted anonymity to avoid angering the administration. Farmers are familiar with a slow-moving policy process, but their patience is running thin as Trump keeps hinting at progress, the lobbyist said.
Another farm group representative, who was granted anonymity to candidly react to Trump’s remarks on Tuesday, said that farmers have “concerns about the mixed messaging and the promises of a plan but no action” from the White House.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson did not provide an update on timing for a new policy but said, “President Trump is a tireless advocate for American farmers.”
“He trusts farmers and is committed to ensuring they have the workforce needed to remain successful,” she said, adding that deporting “dangerous criminals and targeting the sanctuary cities that provide them safe harbor is a top priority for the president.”
And some argue that given the complexities of the topic, it’s better for the administration to go slowly.
“It’s a good thing it’s taking a long time — they’ll be better able to avoid problems if they take their time,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that looks to restrict illegal and legal immigration. “What is not clear is how they’re going to manage the issue of people who’ve been working here illegally, and giving them the impression that they’re going to be able to come back.”
The Trump administration noted that it has already taken action to help farmers, including the formation of a new office inside the Department of Labor to handle work visas, part of an effort to ease the complex process of hiring non-citizens for farmwork and other agricultural jobs.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer are also exploring adjustments to the H-2A visa program, which allows agriculture employers to hire seasonal labor and has traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support. It’s a controversial topic as some inside the White House and the Department of Homeland Security would prefer to target and deport all undocumented immigrants and believe labor challenges can be resolved with native-born workers.
“There is a battle underneath [Trump] with White House staff like [deputy chief of staff Stephen] Miller and more pragmatic elements like Rollins,” the farm lobbyist said.
But Rollins — who has faced the brunt of the MAGA blowback over the issue — has insisted discussions on H-2A are focused more on ensuring the existing program is efficient and helpful to farmers and ranchers without being cost prohibitive.
She said that in Texas, a citrus farmer pays roughly $30 an hour for an H-2A employee, while across the border in Mexico, farmers pay workers $2 an hour. “So, we have to find a balance there,” she said. “We have to support our farmers while making sure that we are moving toward a 100 percent legal workforce.”
The Department of Agriculture did not respond to a request for comment.
While the issue divides the MAGA base, polling suggests swing state Republican voters are sympathetic to undocumented immigrants who have long lived in the United States — working on farms, and in hotels and restaurants. Polling from the American Business Immigration Coalition, conducted in late July by The Tarrance Group, a GOP polling firm, found that 78 percent of Republicans across eight swing states agree with the president’s suggestion that these immigrants should be allowed to get a work permit and stay in the U.S.
As the White House searches for a permanent solution, Trump officials have said raids are being conducted on a prioritized basis, after the president’s temporary pause on worksite enforcement in the agriculture and hospitality industries in early June spurred outrage in some wings of the party.
“We try to prioritize our worksite enforcement on criminal cases — those we have information of forced labor trafficking, those are have information on tax evasion. That’s what we’re doing,” Homan told reporters on Wednesday.
Jordan Wolman and Grace Yarrow contributed to this report.
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