AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials were told on Thursday to halt raids on farms, restaurants, and hotels, according to an internal email obtained by The New York Times.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump fired off a Truth Social post stating, “Changes are coming” in the administration’s deportation policy.
“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,” Trump said while promising to “get the CRIMINALS OUT.”
The new guidance reflects Trump’s post, as the Times reported on Friday:
The guidance was sent on Thursday in an email by a senior ICE official, Tatum King, to regional leaders of the ICE department that generally carries out criminal investigations, including work site operations, known as Homeland Security Investigations.
“Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,” he wrote in the message.
The email explained that investigations involving “human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are OK.” But it said — crucially — that agents were not to make arrests of “non criminal collaterals,” a reference to people who are undocumented but who are not known to have committed any other crime.
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed the guidance.
ICE agents have been looking for undocumented workers on farms in California. On Tuesday, agents visited nine farms in and around Oxnard in the southern part of the state.
About 40% of U.S. farmworkers are undocumented, according to a 2022 U.S. Department of Agriculture report, and about 75% of California farmworkers are undocumented, according to the University of California at Merced. The state produces more than one-third of all vegetables and more than 75% of all fruit and nuts consumed in the U.S.
ICE raids in Los Angeles sparked a series of protests in the city last week. President Donald Trump responded by federalizing California’s National Guard and deploying 700 Marines to the state over the objection of Governor Gavin Newsom. On Friday, Marines detained a civilian before handing him over to DHS. It is believed to be the first detention of a civilian by soldiers since the deployments.
