{"id":11720,"date":"2025-06-19T10:33:41","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T10:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=11720"},"modified":"2025-06-19T10:33:42","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T10:33:42","slug":"ice-raids-and-their-uncertainty-scare-off-workers-and-baffle-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=11720","title":{"rendered":"ICE raids and their uncertainty scare off workers and baffle businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

WASHINGTON — <\/span>Farmers, cattle ranchers and hotel and restaurant managers breathed a sigh of relief last week when President Donald Trump ordered a pause<\/a> to immigration raids that were disrupting those industries and scaring foreign-born workers off the job.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was finally a sense of calm,\u2019\u2019 said Rebecca Shi, CEO of the American Business Immigration Coalition.<\/p>\n

That respite didn\u2019t last long.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin declared, \u201cThere will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine (immigration enforcement) efforts. Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

The flipflop baffled businesses trying to figure out the government\u2019s actual policy, and Shi says now \u201cthere’s fear and worry once more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not a way to run business when your employees are at this level of stress and trauma,” she said. <\/p>\n

Trump campaigned on a promise to deport millions of immigrants working in the United States illegally \u2014 an issue that has long fired up his GOP base. The crackdown intensified a few weeks ago when Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, gave the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a quota of 3,000 arrests a day, up from 650 a day in the first five months of Trump\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, ICE seemed to be everywhere. \u201cWe saw ICE agents on farms, pointing assault rifles at cows, and removing half the workforce,\u2019\u2019 said Shi, whose coalition represents 1,700 employers and supports increased legal immigration. <\/p>\n

One ICE raid left a New Mexico dairy with just 20 workers, down from 55. \u201cYou can\u2019t turn off cows,\u2019\u2019 said Beverly Idsinga, the executive director of the Dairy Producers of New Mexico. \u201cThey need to be milked twice a day, fed twice a day.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Claudio Gonzalez, a chef at Izakaya Gazen in Los Angeles\u2019 Little Tokyo district, said many of his Hispanic workers \u2014 whether they’re in the country legally or not \u2014 have been calling out of work recently due to fears that they will be targeted by ICE. His restaurant is a few blocks away from a collection of federal buildings, including an ICE detention center. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey sometimes are too scared to work their shift,\u201d Gonzalez said. \u201cThey kind of feel like it\u2019s based on skin color.\u201d<\/p>\n

In some places, the problem isn\u2019t ICE but rumors of ICE. At cherry-harvesting time in Washington state, many foreign-born workers are staying away from the orchards after hearing reports of impending immigration raids. One operation that usually employs 150 pickers is down to 20. Never mind that there hasn\u2019t actually been any sign of ICE in the orchards. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve not heard of any real raids,\u2019\u2019 said Jon Folden, orchard manager for the farm cooperative Blue Bird in Washington\u2019s Wenatchee River Valley. \u201cWe\u2019ve heard a lot of rumors.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Jennie Murray, CEO of the advocacy group National Immigration Forum, said some immigrant parents worry that their workplaces will be raided and they\u2019ll be hauled off by ICE while their kids are in school. They ask themselves, she said: \u201cDo I show up and then my second-grader gets off the school bus and doesn\u2019t have a parent to raise them? Maybe I shouldn\u2019t show up for work.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

The horror stories were conveyed to Trump, members of his administration and lawmakers in Congress by business advocacy and immigration reform groups like Shi\u2019s coalition. Last Thursday, the president posted on his Truth Social platform that \u201cOur 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was another case of Trump\u2019s political agenda slamming smack into economic reality. With U.S. unemployment low at 4.2%, many businesses are desperate for workers, and immigration provides them. <\/p>\n

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, foreign-born workers made up less than 19% of employed workers in the United States in 2023. But they accounted for nearly 24% of jobs preparing and serving food and 38% of jobs in farming, fishing and forestry.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really is clear to me that the people pushing for these raids that target farms and feed yards and dairies have no idea how farms operate,\u201d Matt Teagarden, CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association, said Tuesday during a virtual press conference. <\/p>\n

Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, estimated in January that undocumented workers account for 13% of U.S. farm jobs and 7% of jobs in hospitality businesses such as hotels, restaurants and bars.<\/p>\n

The Pew Research Center found last year that 75% of U.S. registered voters \u2014 including 59% of Trump supporters \u2014 agreed that undocumented immigrants mostly fill jobs that American citizens don\u2019t want. And an influx of immigrants in 2022 and 2023 allowed the United States to overcome an outbreak of inflation without tipping into recession<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In the past, economists estimated that America\u2019s employers could add no more than 100,000 jobs a month without overheating the economy and igniting inflation. But economists Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson of the Brookings Institution calculated that because of the immigrant arrivals, monthly job growth could reach 160,000 to 200,000 without exerting upward pressure on prices.<\/p>\n

Now Trump\u2019s deportation plans \u2014 and the uncertainty around them \u2014 are weighing on businesses and the economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is, a significant portion of our industry relies on immigrant labor \u2014 skilled, hardworking people who\u2019ve been part of our workforce for years. When there are sudden crackdowns or raids, it slows timelines, drives up costs, and makes it harder to plan ahead,\u201d says Patrick Murphy, chief investment officer at the Florida building firm Coastal Construction and a former Democratic member of Congress. \u201c We\u2019re not sure from one month to the next what the rules are going to be or how they\u2019ll be enforced. That uncertainty makes it really hard to operate a forward-looking business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adds Douglas Holtz Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and now president of the conservative American Action Forum think tank: \u201cICE had detained people who are here lawfully and so now lawful immigrants are afraid to go to work … All of this goes against other economic objectives the administration might have. The immigration policy and the economic policy are not lining up at all.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

____<\/p>\n

AP Staff Writers Jaime Ding in Los Angeles; Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas; Lisa Mascaro and Chris Megerian in Washington; Mae Anderson and Matt Sedensky in New York, and Associated Press\/Report for America journalist Jack Brook in New Orleans contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON — Farmers, cattle ranchers and hotel and restaurant managers breathed a sigh of relief last week when President Donald Trump ordered a pause to immigration raids that were disrupting those industries and scaring foreign-born workers off the job. \u201cThere was finally a sense of calm,\u2019\u2019 said Rebecca Shi, CEO of the American Business Immigration […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11722,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11720\/revisions\/11722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}