(NewsNation) — President Donald Trump on Thursday acknowledged his administration’s deportation efforts are hurting some businesses and vowed “changes are coming.”
“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 posted on social media.
Trump has demanded that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement sharply increase arrests of migrants in the United States illegally. At the start of his administration, the target was 1,000 per day. But now, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a daily quota of 3,000 arrests.
“We need to talk about the human beings who are being affected,” said Teresa Romero, president of United Farm Workers. “If President Trump is in charge and he believes what he just said, if he’s concerned about the farmworkers and the people who put food on our tables every single day, these raids would stop right now. He has the power to do that.”
Trump also claimed “criminals” were applying for those jobs filled by migrants.
It hits at one of the issues critics have pointed to regarding Trump’s immigration strategy: Some migrants have lived in the U.S. peacefully for years and have taken under-the-table jobs that business owners say are difficult to replace with American workers.
Their circumstances can be similar to those rounded up in raids like last week’s at a Los Angeles-area Home Depot that sparked protests and riots, or at an Omaha, Nebraska, business, which NewsNation was exclusively allowed to observe.
“All the actions from ICE are not transparent,” said Romero. “They don’t have court orders. They don’t even have the names of people they’re looking for. They’re just going to the agricultural areas and just taking them because they are there and brown.”
Until Thursday, Trump had not expressed an interest in carving out exceptions to his plan to deport as many people who crossed the U.S. border illegally as he could.
“We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!” Trump wrote.
Of the more than 250,000 total workers on California farms, about half are estimated to be undocumented.