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The Trump administration has ordered a pause on immigration raids targeting farms, hotels, and restaurants after President Donald Trump expressed concerns that aggressive enforcement was hurting key U.S. industries that rely on undocumented labor.
The sudden shift came after weeks of escalated action by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which had ramped up arrest goals to 3,000 per day, a sharp increase from the previous 650 daily average. The directive followed internal pressure from agriculture, hospitality, and food processing employers — many of whom reported struggling to find replacements after mass arrests.
“We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform Thursday. “Our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away…with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.”
The pause was confirmed by Tatum King, a senior official with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, in a memo obtained by The New York Times. A U.S. official who requested anonymity verified the memo’s content to the Associated Press, and Homeland Security did not dispute its authenticity.
Tensions Between Policy and Economic Reality
The decision reflects a key tension in Trump’s immigration agenda: while the administration pushes for mass deportations, business leaders in farming and hospitality warn that those crackdowns are disrupting operations and threatening their survival.
In Ventura County, California, a region known for strawberries and citrus crops, ICE agents recently arrested dozens of workers in field raids. The response has been immediate — workers are skipping shifts out of fear, and growers report labor shortages.
“We are barely functioning,” said a strawberry grower quoted anonymously in the Ventura Daily. “Nobody is showing up.”
Similarly, at Glenn Valley Foods in Omaha, Nebraska, ICE arrested more than 70 people during a raid Tuesday. The plant’s owner said it was operating at 30% capacity as it raced to replace detained workers. The company had been enrolled in E-Verify, a voluntary federal program for checking employment eligibility.
Pushback from Within the Administration
Despite the pause, the White House has not walked back its aggressive stance entirely. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and principal architect of Trump’s immigration policy, reportedly led the push for increased daily arrests.
Tom Homan, the White House border czar, reinforced the administration’s commitment to workplace enforcement in an interview Monday:
“If we can’t arrest them in the jails, we’ll arrest them in the communities. If we can’t arrest them in the communities, we’re going to increase work site enforcement,” Homan said on Fox News. “We’re going to flood the zone.”
That includes targeting sanctuary cities, which limit cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE. Homan said those jurisdictions can expect even more visible enforcement.
Political and Social Fallout
The decision to pause raids is being met with mixed reactions. Advocates for immigrants and labor rights see it as a temporary reprieve, but fear it may only be tactical, not permanent.
“This is not a shift in values; it’s a shift in optics and economics,” said Maria Rocha, director of the Farmworker Justice Coalition. “The administration will resume these raids when they think the blowback has cooled down.”
Meanwhile, critics of sanctuary cities say the enforcement efforts should continue regardless of economic inconvenience.
The move also reveals Trump’s political calculation ahead of the 2026 midterms and looming questions about how far his hardline immigration policies can go without alienating major U.S. industries that form a critical part of the economy — and his support base.
While ICE may be backing off farms and hotels for now, the administration remains unapologetically committed to deporting undocumented immigrants — and insiders warn that this pause could be short-lived.
“Changes are coming,” Trump wrote. And for immigrant communities across the country, the question now is: What kind of changes — and when?
