Rollins is getting credit for Trump’s U-turn on immigration raids

SAN JUAN, Texas – Texas native Brooke Rollins, the U.S. Agriculture Secretary, is getting the credit for President Tump’s U-turn on having federal officers raid farms looking for undocumented immigrants.

The Department of Agriculture estimates that more than 40 percent of the nation’s crop workers have no legal immigration status. 

According to a New York Times article, Rollins called Trump last Wednesday to relay “a growing sense of alarm from the heartland.” 

Farmers and agriculture groups, Rollins said, were increasingly uneasy about President Trump’s immigration crackdown. 

“Farmers rely on immigrants to work long hours, Ms. Rollins said. She told the president that farm groups had been warning her that their employees would stop showing up to work out of fear, potentially crippling the agricultural industry,” the NYT reported June 16, in a story headlined, “Why Trump Lets Some Sectors Keep Migrants.”

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins

“She wasn’t the first person to try to get this message through to the president, nor was it the first time she had spoken to him about it. But the president was persuaded,” the NYT story continued. 

“President Trump’s decision to pause most raids targeting farms and hospitality workers took many inside the White House by surprise. It came after intensive lobbying by his agriculture secretary.”

The NYT story continued: “The next morning, he posted a message on his social media platform, Truth Social, that took an uncharacteristically softer tone toward the very immigrants he has spent much of his political career demonizing. Immigrants in the farming and hospitality industries are “very good, long time workers,” he said. “Changes are coming.”

“Some influential Trump donors who learned about the post began reaching out to people in the White House, urging Mr. Trump to include the restaurant sector in any directive to spare undocumented workers from enforcement.

“Inside the West Wing, top White House officials were caught off guard — and furious at Ms. Rollins. Many of Mr. Trump’s top aides, particularly Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff, have urged a hard-line approach, targeting all immigrants without legal status to fulfill the president’s promise of the biggest deportation campaign in American history.”

Editor’s Note: Click here to read the full story, which was written by reporters Tyler Pager, Miriam Jordan, Hamed Aleaziz, and Nolan Kanno-Youngs. The story is behind a paywall.

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