The Department of Homeland Security ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to once again target illegal immigrants working in the agriculture and hospitality industries after rescinding such guidance last week. 

ICE will resume operations targeting workers in these sectors, which are heavily reliant on migrant labor. The new instructions were shared in a Sunday morning call to representatives from 30 ICE field offices across the country, according to the Washington Post. 

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“The President has been incredibly clear. There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE’s efforts,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the Washington Examiner in a statement.

“Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability. These operations target illegal employment networks that undermine American workers, destabilize labor markets and expose critical infrastructure to exploitation,” she continued.

The directive comes as a reversal after the Trump administration ordered ICE to pause arrests at farms, restaurants, and hotels, as well as at aquaculture, food, and meat-packing plants. The relaxed policy came due to Trump’s concerns that harsh crackdowns on such workers could negatively affect business and the labor market.  

White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller had pushed for severe crackdowns on illegal immigrants, but Trump was not aware of the extent of ICE’s expanded push, and “once it hit him, he pulled it back,” according to Reuters. 

“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,” the president wrote in a June 12 post to Truth Social. “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!” 

The same day, Trump promised the country would soon see an executive order addressing the effects of his deportation crackdown on the farm and hotel industries. 

“Our farmers are being hurt badly and we’re going to have to do something about that,” Trump said at a White House event, adding in remarks to reporters that “very good workers who have worked for [farmers] for 20 years — they’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be great, and we’re going to have to do something about that.”

Amid recent ICE raids on her city, Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said last week she worried about “the impact that all Angelenos will begin to feel when the labor of immigrants is absent.” 

“We’ll feel it in the construction industry. We’ll feel it in hospitality. We’ll feel it at grocery stores. People will begin to notice,” Bass continued during an interview with Katie Couric. “You think about the mothers who have nannies and housekeepers. They will feel it when there’s nobody to do child care and there’s nobody to take their kids to school. You know, you will feel it when your gardener goes away, and you don’t know where he or she is.” 

Democrats aren’t the only ones speaking out. 

Six Hispanic Republican members of Congress recently sent a letter to ICE urging agents to get their priorities straight and focus on removing criminals during nationwide operations.

“While we do agree that we are a nation of laws—and that all who crossed our borders illegally are subject to those laws—there are levels of priority that must be considered when it comes to immigration enforcement,” the letter read. 

U.S. businesses and farms that are heavily reliant on immigrant labor have expressed concerns that the Trump administration’s deportation policy will have a negative impact on the economy. 

Farmer Nick Billman, an operator in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, reported having zero workers on his farm for the past week because they didn’t want “to come out and be exposed, to be able to be picked up, whether they are legal or illegal.”

“It could be to the point where we lose our planting and having the ground ready, and even then, why plan if we cannot even harvest?” the farmer questioned, worrying that food supplies nationwide stand to be affected by a loss of labor. “My family and I can harvest by hand ourselves, but the amount we need in order to cover that cost of growing, we have to have much broader personnel than just family hands-on.”

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“One hundred percent. One hundred percent don’t want to come out of fear of being picked up even if they are doing it the right way,” Billman told KVEO. “It has been zero people wanting to come out and be exposed, to be able to be picked up, whether they are legal or illegal.”

The Washington Examiner reached out to DHS and ICE for comment.