"Anything Else is Bullshit."
Farmworker groups say that Trump's order to suspend immigration raids, arrests, and disappearances is bullshit. This week, federal migration cops confirmed they had not stopped their thug tactics.
President Donald Trump directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents to stop conducting immigration raids at farms, agricultural businesses, restaurants, and hotels last week. On Monday (June 15, 2025), the Washington Post reported that ICE and DHS announced that those raids would continue. The federal migration police were able to buck the President in order to keep their brutal, disgusting (and possibly illegal) campaign against migrant workers charging ahead.
That means that farmworkers are rightfully fearful of going to work during planting season, that dairy and livestock factory farm workers are deeply worried for their futures, that dishwashers worry they have a target on their backs, that laundry workers are scared for their lives, that meatpacking workers wonder if they’ll ever see their children again.
“There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine ICE’s efforts,” Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary for DHS, told the Washington Post Monday. “Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability.”
Migrant workers are already failing to show up for work due to the chilling effect of potential arrest.
This “reversal,” after just a few days, was always just a farce according to most farmworker organizers. They have experience in dealing with Trump.
Edgar Franks, political director for Familias Unidas por la Justicia in the Skagit Valley of Washington, told the Yakima Herald-Republic that workers he knows are doing no shopping, no recreation, or other activities. They’re going to work and going straight home.
“We don’t believe what Trump is saying,” Franks told the Herald-Leader. “He’s shown his face already, that he can’t be trusted, no matter what. He’ll say something one day and the next he’ll flip-flop.”
The United Farmworkers Union of America also saw the writing on the wall when Trump made the post last week. They issued the following statement:
“If President Trump is actually in charge, he needs to prove it: stop the sweeps on hardworking Californians. Get serious about building a path forward.
Anything else is bullshit.”
The Cocklebur covers rural policy and politics from a progressive point-of-view. Our work focuses on a tangled rural political reality of dishonest debate, economic and racial disparities, corporate power over our democracy, and disinformation peddled by conservative media outlets. We aim to use facts, data, and science to inform our point-of-view. We wear our complicated love/WTF relationship with rural America on our sleeve.
The current roundups have little to do with upholding laws (this is an administration led by a convicted felon that pardoned hundreds of convicted criminals that attacked out democratic institutions). Instead, they are exercises in racism and flexing authoritarian muscle at considerable public expense, nothing more. Illegal immigration is the fault of a broken immigration system.