President Donald Trump on Thursday admitted that his draconian immigration raids against farm, construction, and hospitality workers are hurting businesses, and said that changes to his mass-deportation agenda are coming.
The announcement came in an otherwise incomprehensible Truth Social post, in which Trump couldn’t figure out who to blame for how his own immigration policy is harming business. And he didn’t say what changes are coming, only that some are.
Here is the full post:
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. 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!
Polling shows that Trump’s efforts to deport immigrants without criminal records are unpopular. And as he sends the military to police the Los Angeles protests against the raids, his approval rating has taken a steep decline over the past few days, according to The New York Times’ polling average. In fact, a poll from the Associated-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released Thursday found Trump’s job approval at just 39%, with a whopping 60% disapproving of the job he’s doing as president.
But it’s likely not those numbers that moved Trump to admit that having masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raiding workplaces, rounding people up in Home Depot parking lots, and chasing workers through crop fields to meet arbitrary deportation quotas set by racist White House adviser Stephen Miller is a bad idea. (But that’s something Trump should have known since his real estate and hotel empire relies on undocumented workers.)
Instead, it appears to have been an outcry from Trump-supporting business people—who, by the way, are getting exactly what they voted for—that got Trump to admit that maybe being a racist asshole who kicks out peaceful, hard-working immigrants is not a great idea.
“Turns out, chasing hard working people through ranches and farms and snatching women and children off the streets is not good policy,” California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote in a post on X, in response to Trump’s post.
Still, given the fact that Miller—who has a fetish for watching immigrants suffer—appears to be running the show on Trump’s unpopular immigration agenda, it’s unclear how Trump’s policy will change.
Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona was happy to give Trump some ideas.
“Make the workers go through a background check, the employer and employee pay a fine. Get a 2 year work visa to start,” Gallego said.
No matter what changes Trump eventually makes to his immigration crackdown—if the policy changes even a little—this is yet another “TACO Don” moment. It turns out the “Trump Always Chickens Out” motto applies to immigration as well as trade.