President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said Wednesday workplace immigration enforcement will “massively expand” in an interview with Semafor.
His comments come days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents removed dozens of immigrants allegedly without legal status working at a meat packaging facility in Nebraska as Los Angeles protesters continue to demonstrate against the Trump administration’s widespread push for deportations.
“They’re coming here for a better life and a job, and I get that,” Homan told Semafor.
“The more you remove those magnets, the less people are going to come. If they can’t get a job most of them aren’t going to come,” he added.
Most immigrants without legal status are able to find work as delivery drivers or in the fields of agriculture or the service industry, according to the Center for Migration Studies.
Farmers and food delivery companies have begun to complain about the removal of immigrants without legal status, arguing deportations threaten their workforce and ability to operate.
“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 wrote in a Thursday Truth Social post.
“In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming,” he added.
However, in March, DoorDash warned that modifying immigration policies could thwart their business model.
“Changes in certain laws and regulations, including immigration and labor and employment laws, or laws that require us to make changes to our platform that decrease the accessibility, including removing access to our platform, or flexibility provided to Dashers in certain jurisdictions, may result in a decrease in the pool of Dashers, which may result in increased competition for Dashers or higher costs of recruitment and engagement,” DoorDash wrote in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“If we fail to attract Dashers, retain existing Dashers on favorable terms, or maintain or increase the use of our platform by existing Dashers, we may not be able to meet the demands of merchants and consumers and our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be adversely affected,” they added.
The Nebraska business owner whose facility was raided by ICE on Tuesday said he’s worked to ensure that employees are legally in the United States by checking their identity with E-Verify, a system managed by the Department of Homeland Security.
However, officials told him the system was “broken” after the raid, which left him clueless on how to properly process individuals who’ve applied for employment.
“I mean, what am I supposed to do with that? This is your system, run by the government. And you’re raiding me because your system is broken?” Chad Hartmann, president of Glenn Valley Foods, told The Associated Press.
ICE officials told him they’d help him figure out the best method for hiring, while Trump on Thursday pledged to sign an executive order guaranteeing “common sense” policies for farm workers that could be roiled by deportations.
“Our farmers are being hurt badly. They have very good workers. They’ve worked for them for 20 years. They’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be, you know, great,” Trump told reporters.
“We can’t take farmers, take all their people and send them back because they don’t have maybe what they’re supposed to have, maybe not.”