Trump Chaos Continues: Whether or Not Select ICE Pause is Real, It’s a “Telling Admission” of the Costs and Unpopularity of Mass Deportation

Washington, DC — Following ICE raids on farms in California and Nebraska and restaurant raids in Washington, D.C. and Tennessee in recent weeks, the Trump Administration Friday announced it would “largely pause raids and arrests in the agricultural industry, hotels and restaurants,” per the New York Times.

Unsurprisingly, there already are questions about how real the supposed “pause” is, given the United Farm Workers’ assertion on Saturday that raids against their community continue and in light of President Trump’s Sunday social media post calling to expand detentions and deportations in Democratic-run cities (a Trump post perhaps related to frustration over the Americans who took to the streets in “No Kings” protests, including many immigrants and others animated by support for immigrant communities).

Yet the fact the Trump administration felt the need to announce the “pause” in the first place is, nonetheless, a notable admission about the reality of immigrants’ contributions to America and the shifting politics and public opinion of the issue.

According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:

“The public has caught onto Trump’s act on immigration and the public and political blowback is building. Look no further than Trump saying he now wants to reverse course to stop deportation of farmworkers, restaurant and hospitality workers. Even if Stephen Miller gets his way and the supposed ‘pause’ isn’t real, the initial announcement from the Trump White House is a telling admission about the political and economic blowback of mass deportation.

Many GOP members are feeling the heat in their districts as entire industries are in jeopardy. Yet the solution can’t be simply fewer raids or delivering favors for key industry allies. What about Dreamers, like the University of Utah student Caroline Dias Goncalves who’s now held in a Colorado detention center as just the latest in a string of similar enforcement directed at young immigrants who’ve grown up in America? What about the U.S. citizens being ensnared and targeted in immigration sweeps via racial profiling that’s endemic to any mass deportation agenda?

The truth is this: we are watching the ham-handedness and harms of the Trump immigration agenda in action and one that highlights a broader reality: immigrants in America are very different from the dangerous ‘invaders’ Stephen Miller wants us to picture. Our country relies on immigrants – in key economic sectors and beyond – and the real reforms we need don’t look anything like the mass deportations in action.”

Key voices have been highlighting similar points. Notably:

Read the letter from six House Republicans to Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons detailing the harms of targeting and detaining non-criminal undocumented immigrants (embedded in NPR story here), which notes: “Every minute that we spend pursuing an individual with a clean record is a minute less that we dedicate to apprehending terrorists or cartel operatives. We stand by President Trump to ensure our border security is restored. However, in order to truly claim success, we need to give absolute priority to every violent offender and convicted criminal illegal alien present in our nation. Diverting limited resources to other objectives puts our national security at risk.”
Read the New York Times, “Inside Trump’s Extraordinary Turnaround on Immigration Raids,” noting: “The president’s decision to shield farmers and the hospitality industry — a business he knows well from his years as an owner of luxury hotels — reveals the tension between his deportation efforts and concerns about maintaining crucial support in his political coalition … The scope of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown has unsettled some Republicans as the raids on farms began disrupting operations. More than 40 percent of the nation’s crop workers have no legal immigration status, the Agriculture Department has estimated … Representative Glenn Thompson, Republican of Pennsylvania and the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, said ICE raids at farms were ‘just wrong … They need to knock it off,’ he told reporters this week. ‘Let’s go after the criminals and give us time to put processes in place so we don’t disrupt the food supply chain.’”
In his New York Times column, “The Polls Are In. Trump Is Not Winning in Los Angeles,” Jamelle Bouie captures that, “a draconian use of force against largely peaceful protesters — in service of a brutal campaign of deportations — has turned the public against him … I expect that the manhandling and handcuffing of Senator Alex Padilla of California during a news conference held by Kristi Noem, secretary of homeland security — a stunning abuse of power — will worsen the president’s position with most Americans … the events of this week have activated many Americans in a way that will prove detrimental to the president’s authoritarian goals … Power, real power, rests on legitimacy and consent. A regime that has to deploy force at the first sign of dissent is a regime that does not actually believe it can wield power short of coercion and open threats of violence.”
Also on the growing unpopularity of mass deportation and Trump on immigration, read polling guru G. Elliot Morris on Substack, highlighting new Strength In Numbers/Verasight polling and assessing, “Politically, the increasing focus on deportations may be a warning sign for Trump, whose approval ratings on the issue are low and have recently fallen in ours and other surveys.”
Read Vanessa Cárdenas on the America’s Voice Substack: “Two Visions of Immigration and America,” noting, “I think there’s a better vision that’s aligned with our values and our interests and speaks to the American majority. As a policy direction, it involves a secure and orderly border; a resourced, fair and efficient asylum system; legal immigration channels to sustain our economy; and targeted enforcement against public safety threats paired with a path to legal status, instead of deportation for Dreamers and long-residing undocumented immigrants. And this vision goes well beyond the contours of a policy debate – it also seeks to unite the nation around common sense solutions, not deliberate chaos and cruelty, birthday parades and military deployments to American communities. It recognizes that political dissent and the separation of powers, due process and habeas corpus, aren’t abstract concepts or archaic notions but instead the lifeblood of a democratic system.”