Just days ago, President Donald Trump suggested that his administration would stop targeting undocumented immigrants working in essential sectors like agriculture and hospitality for detention and deportation—proclaiming, “Changes are coming!”

President Trump, in his social media post on Thursday, had said that many undocumented farm workers are “very good, long time workers,” who are “almost impossible to replace.”  He added: “We must protect our Farmers.”

Reports suggest Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was behind the effort to convince Trump to carve out an exemption from detention and deportation for agriculture and hospitality workers.

But on Monday, the pause on immigration sweeps at farms, hotels, and restaurants, was swiftly ended.

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“Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including its Homeland Security Investigations division, told agency leaders in a call Monday that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants,” The Washington Post reported. And specifically, “ICE agents have been told to continue conducting enforcement operations at agricultural businesses despite concerns about negative effects on the food industry.”

A Trump Department of Homeland Security official said, “Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of the White House’s child and family separation policy during the first Trump term, has demanded agents step up arrests to 3,000 per day, even though ICE is currently $1 billion over budget.

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On Sunday night, President Trump announced a new crackdown targeting undocumented immigrants exclusively in Democratic-led strongholds, declaring that blue cities “are the core of the Democrat Power Center.”

Claiming that ICE agents every day face “threats from Radical Democrat Politicians,” he announced “the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,” before baselessly claiming voter fraud.

But support for Trump’s highly-controversial immigration policies is weakening, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll: 49% disapprove, 44% approve.

“Polling overwhelming shows strong support for providing a path to permanent legal status for America’s farmworkers,” wrote attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, on Monday. “In fact, not a single poll shows majority support for deporting them.”

Critics of the new policy, which includes targeting farm, hotel, and restaurant workers for deportation, are blasting the Trump administration.

“Stephen Miller gets his way,” Reichlin-Melnick noted. “Just a few days after Ag. Sec. Rollins convinced Trump to briefly back down, the quotas and indiscriminate raids are back. Farms, restaurants, and hotels are now subject to ICE raids again, with intense pressure on ICE to hit 3,000 arrests a day.”

Dean Baker, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, responded, “That’s what happens when we have a reality TV show star as president. Who are we deporting? Find out after this commercial. What’s the tariff on country X, stay tuned. And which country are we bombing? Just keep watching!”

The United Farm Workers Union blasted the decision, and, like many on social media, questioned who’s making decisions in the White House:

“A ‘shift’ never happened. A chaotic raid at a worksite and a warrantless sweep in our communities have the same outcome. B——- rhetoric aside, they’re hunting us down while we’re trying to feed you. Who’s actually in charge?”

California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, responding to The Washington Post’s report, wrote: “Looks like Stephen Miller is the boss, after all.”

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This article has been updated to include remarks from Gov. Newsom

Image via Reuters

House Republicans have come under sustained fire for their budget bill, which would deliver sweeping cuts to the social safety net—slashing hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid and Medicare. While many expected Senate Republicans to soften those reductions, the Senate’s version—released late Monday afternoon—goes even further, deepening the House’s Medicaid cuts and raising the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, rather than the $4 trillion proposed in the House bill.

Politico reports that the decision to squeeze Medicaid for even more money, to help pay for President Donald Trump’s tax cuts that largely benefit the wealthy, is “already setting off shockwaves through Capitol Hill,” and would be “a huge departure from the House-passed bill.”

The budget legislation, officially President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” also makes permanent his tax cuts from his first term, effectively representing a multi-trillion-dollar expense.

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The Hill reports that the bill also includes Trump’s campaign promise of “no tax on tips.” That is a controversial proposition among critics who say it could open the floodgates for high-wage earners as it could exclude bonuses from taxation.

The GOP Senate’s version also includes provisions that would make it more difficult for Medicaid users to access benefits, by imposing stricter work and reporting requirements, while reducing the amounts the federal government gives to the states for its share of Medicaid payments.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the House’s version of the bill would increase the number of uninsured people by an additional 10.9 million people.

Polls have shown Americans oppose the House version by about a 2-1 margin, largely because of the hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid.

U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) on Monday called portions of the Senate bill “meanspirited,” and “political buffoonery,” according to CNN’s Sarah Ferris.

Michael Linden, a former executive associate director at the Biden White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) summed up the bill: “Huge cuts to health care so that rich people can get another tax cut.”

READ MORE: ‘Gas on the Fire’: Trump Blasted for Targeting Blue Cities and ‘Radical’ Dem Politicians

Image via Reuters

Although President Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is deporting people at a slower pace than President Joe Biden did last year, ICE, under the direction of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, is reportedly $1 billion over budget—even as Trump on Sunday issued a new order directing the agency to carry out “the largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”

Even before that order, Trump’s “immigration crackdown” has been “burning through cash so quickly that the agency charged with arresting, detaining and removing unauthorized immigrants could run out of money next month,” Axios reported on Monday. ICE “is already $1 billion over budget by one estimate, with more than three months left in the fiscal year.”

“Trump’s DHS is spending like drunken sailors,” U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) told the news outlet. “They are spending likely in the neighborhood of a billion dollars more at ICE than we authorized, and that’s patently illegal.”

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But one former federal budget official told Axios, “I have a feeling they’re going to grant themselves an exception apportionment, use the life and safety exception, and just keep burning money.”

Trump could make emergency declarations to get around the law, sources told Axios.

“You could imagine a new emergency declaration that pertains to interior enforcement that would trigger the same kind of emergency personnel mobilization statutes,” former Defense Department lawyer Chris Marisola told Axios.

“These statutory authorities authorizing the president to declare emergencies,” Marisola told Axios, unlock “a whole host of other authorities for these departments and agencies [that] are often written incredibly broadly and invest a lot of discretion in the president.”

Calling out what he claimed are “threats from Radical Democrat Politicians.” on Sunday night, President Trump declared that “ICE Officers are herewith ordered…to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”

But the President also declared that program was to be conducted only in Democratic-led cities.

RELATED: ‘Gas on the Fire’: Trump Blasted for Targeting Blue Cities and ‘Radical’ Dem Politicians

“In order to achieve this, we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside,” Trump continued. “These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens.”

The President went on to claim that “Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities — And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them. That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports.”

Trump reiterated and expanded on his largely false claims on Monday, attacking “Democrat-run cities” and his predecessor, while speaking at the G7 in Canada.

Watch the video below or at this link.

Reporter: Why are you ordering ICE to target Democratic cities?

Trump: I don’t know what you’re saying… Yeah that’s the focus.

(This is what fascism looks like) pic.twitter.com/4ed1lR4y4e

— Ron Smith (@Ronxyz00) June 16, 2025

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Image via Reuters