WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump said he would issue an order soon to address the effects of his immigration crackdown on the country’s farm and hotel industries, which rely heavily on migrant labor.
“Our farmers are being hurt badly and we’re going to have to do something about that… We’re going to have an order on that pretty soon, I think,” Trump said at a White House event, adding that the order would address the hotels sector, too.
He did not say what changes the order would implement or when it would take effect. Representatives for the White House and Department of Homeland Security had no specific comment about the order, while representatives at the Department of Agriculture could not be immediately reached.
“We will follow the president’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.
U.S. farm industry groups have long wanted Trump to spare their sector from mass deportations, which could upend a food supply chain dependent on immigrants.
Nearly half of the nation’s approximately 2 million farm workers and many dairy and meatpacking workers lack legal status, according to the departments of Labor and Agriculture.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told CNBC that Trump was reviewing all possible steps but that Congress would have to act.
Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, a leading farm lobby, said on Thursday that farm workers were key to the nation’s food supply.
“If these workers are not present in fields and barns, there is a risk of supply-chain disruptions similar to those experienced during the pandemic,” Duvall said in a statement.
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in labor shortages and supply-chain snarls, with meat plants forced to idle and dairy farms to dump milk, and consumers encountering emptier shelves at grocery stores.
In recent days, demonstrations have been taking place in major U.S. cities to protest immigration raids.
Trump is carrying out his campaign promise to deport immigrants in the country illegally. But protesters and some Trump supporters have questioned the targeting of those who are not convicted criminals, including in places of employment such as those that sparked last week’s protests in Los Angeles.
On Thursday, Trump acknowledged the impact of the crackdown on sectors such as the hotel industry, which includes his company. The Trump Organization has said Trump’s adult sons are running his business.
“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,” he wrote on his social media platform. “Changes are coming!”
Farmers have a legal option for hiring temporary or seasonal labor with the H-2A visa program, which allows employers to bring in seasonal workers if they can show there are not enough U.S. workers willing, qualified and available to do the job.
Rollins said Trump was “looking at every potential tool in the toolkit” and pointed to the length of the temporary H-2A visas.
“The president understands that we can’t feed our nation or the world without that labor force, and he’s listening to the farmers on that,” she told CNBC.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason, Susan Heavey and P.J. Huffstutter; additional reporting by Bhargav Acharya, Aatreyee Dasgupta, Leah Douglas and Ted Hesson; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
