“There was finally a feeling of calm,” said Rebecca Shi, CEO of the American Business Immigration Coalition.
This break did not last long.
On Wednesday, the deputy secretary of the Ministry of Homeland Protection Tricia McLaughlin said: “There will be no safe spaces for industries that are intended to accommodate violent criminals or deliberately undermine efforts.
The flipflop amazed companies that tried to find out the actual policy of the government, and Shi now says: “There is fear and worry again.”
“This is no way to run business if your employees are on this level of stress and trauma,” she said.
Trump campaigned for a promise to illegally deport millions of immigrants in the United States – a problem that has painted its GOP base for a long time. A few weeks ago, as Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff of the White House, the US immigration and customs authority gave a quota of 3,000 arrests per day, compared to 650 a day in the first five months from Trump’s second term.
Suddenly ice cream seemed to be everywhere. “We saw ice agents at farms, which showed assault rifles on the cows and eliminated half of the workforce,” said Shi, whose coalition represents 1,700 employers and supported increased legal immigration.
An ice robbery left a dairy products in New Mexico with only 20 workers, 55.
Claudio Gonzalez, a cook in Izakaya Gazen in the district of Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, said many of his Hispanic workers – whether they are legally in the country or not – have recently been targeted due to fears, from ICE. His restaurant is a few blocks of houses from a collection of federal buildings, including an ice rink.
“Sometimes you are too afraid to edit your shift,” said Gonzalez. “You feel like you are based on skin color.”
In some places, the problem is not ice, but rumors about ice. In the Cherry Harvesting period in the state of Washington, many workers born abroad stay away from the orchards after hearing reports on upcoming immigration attacks. An operation in which 150 pickers are normally used is up to 20.
“We haven’t heard any real raids yet,” said Jon Folder, Orchard Manager for the Farm Cooperative Blue Bird in Wenatchee River Valley in Washington. “We heard a lot of rumors.”
Jennie Murray, CEO of the Advocacy Group National Immigration Forum, said that some parents of the immigrants fear that their jobs will be attacked and they will be picked up by ice while their children are at school. You ask herself, she said: “I thieved and then my second grader climbs out of the school bus and has no parent who arouses you? Maybe I shouldn’t appear to work. ”
The horror stories were transferred Trump, members of his administration and legislator in the congress, by business lawyer and immigration reform groups such as the Shi’s coalition. Last Thursday, the president on his social platform provided that “our great farmers and people in the hotel and leisure business found that our very aggressive politics to immigrate takes away very good, long-time workers, whereby these jobs are almost impossible to replace.”
It was another case of Trump’s political agenda that succeeded in economic reality. With low unemployment with 4.2%, many companies are desperate for workers and immigration.
According to the US Census Bureau, workers born abroad made less than 19% of employees in the United States in 2023. But they made up almost 24% of jobs that prepared and served food, and 38% of jobs in agriculture, fishing and forestry.
“It is really clear to me that the people who crowd into these raids who feed the farms and feed and dairies have no idea how farms work,” said Matt Tegarden, CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association, on Tuesday during a virtual press conference.
Torsten Sip, chief economist ate Apollo Global ManagementEstimated in January that workers without papers make up 13% of US farm jobs and 7% of jobs in guest shops such as hotels, restaurants and bars.
The Pew Research Center showed last year that 75% of the US voters – including 59% of the Trump supporters – agreed that undocumented immigrants mainly fill out jobs that American citizens do not want. And an influx of immigrants in 2022 and 2023 allowed the United States To overcome an outbreak of inflation without entering a recession.
In the past, the economists estimated that the employers of America could not add more than 100,000 jobs per month without overheating the economy and igniting inflation. Economists Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson from the Brookings Institution calculated that due to the arrivals of the immigrants, the monthly employment growth could achieve 160,000 to 200,000 without putting pressure on the upward trend.
Now Trump’s deportation plans – and the uncertainty around them – companies and the economy.
“The reality is that a significant part of our industry is based on migrant workers -qualified, hardworking people who have been part of our workforce for years. If there is sudden procedure or raid, this slow down the templates, drives the costs and makes it more difficult to plan,” says Patrick Murphy, Chief Investment Officer during the Florida building up and an earlier Democratic member of disocratic facilities. “From one month to the next, we are not sure what the rules will be or how they are enforced. This uncertainty makes it really difficult to do a future -oriented business.”
Adds Douglas Holtz Eakin, former director of the congress house and now President of the Conservative American Action Forum, “ICE had imprisoned people who are lawful here, and therefore lawful immigrants are afraid of going to work. All of this violates other economic goals that the administration may have.
