“Millions of migrants work for low wages in
service and agricultural industries. Their removal would increase production
costs and leave many jobs to go unfilled.
Fields would lie fallow, output would fall, inflation rise.” - WSJ Letter to the Editor, June 14-15, p. A14
Question 1:
Why did Trump, virtually on day one of his misrule, declare a state of emergency in respect of an "immigrant invasion" - thereby supposedly giving him carte blanche authority to deport millions minus due process and court hearings?
From where I see it, the answer is he wanted a short cut. He wasn't about to allow for the long, unwieldy legal process. Hence would rather act by dictate then by law, especially when his consigliere Stephen Miller declared at least 3,000 deportations a day would be needed: a) to keep the exaggerated promises made during the campaign and (b) to try to ensure the country remains majority white. (See first link at bottom).
Here's the skinny which Capt. Bonespurs might not wish to hear: immigrants in the U.S. - documented or not - are not supposed to be deported without court hearings. Just because they entered the country illegally doesn't mean they must "self deport", get hijacked to an El Salvador Gulag, or be rousted off the street by ICE or masked agents.
Once they touch U.S. soil they are entitled to due process, in an immigration court where they have the chance to seek asylum or seek another avenue to remain in the country. The problem is our immigration courts are so backlogged (according to the WSJ, Jan. 2, p. A5) hearings have effectively now been scheduled as far ahead as 2029.
As noted by that WSJ piece ('Immigration Plan Faces Big Roadblocks):
"Outside experts estimate that Congress would have to hire at least 5,000 immigration court judges, given the system now has barely 500."
But the problem has also been the lack of manpower to carry out such a task. As the WSJ piece further notes (ibid.):
"The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency currently has roughly 6,000 agents on staff and funding to jail about 40,000 immigrants at any given time. It doesn't have nearly the fleet of planes needed to deport millions of immigrants back to their home countries.".
This deficit immediately explains why Trump recruited so many "irregulars" as well as creating a separate group inside Homeland Security (called HSI or Homeland Security Investigations ). This lot are needed to supplement ICE agents (and are often confused with ICE) to assist in sudden deportations or seizures of immigrants - often under suspicious circumstances. E.g.
ICE Invades Wrong Home, Steals Their Life Savings, and Then Leaves
The incident was only later clarified by Rachel Maddow who affirmed the agents were not from ICE, but HSI.
Worse their raids are often accompanied by different groups of masked irregulars -with no identifications, or unwilling to give such. The assaults operate outside the bounds of law, and include incidents such as those presented by Chris Hayes several nights ago, e.g.
‘Menacing’: Hayes sounds alarm on rise of ‘secret police’ under Trump
This sort of performance fascism is what has so many blue state citizens enraged. That and not allowing for due process, with Trump acting as some kind of Viktor Orban or Hitler clone. These actions are interspersed with batshit crazy lies, i.e. "undocumented workers are robbing hardworking American citizens of good paying jobs and benefits." Ignoring that, while the jobs' pay and benefits are good, Americans want no part of them. As the recently raided Green Valley meat packing site owner noted:
"It's tough work. Marinating, pressing and slicing meat in a room chilled to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. These workers we have, almost all Hispanics, are hardworking, show up on time and don't complain."
Would Americans - e.g. white, native born Anglos - work like that? In your dreams. Thus it was that the meat packing representatives argued strongly to the ICE bunch (including Kristi Noem) that major labor shortfalls loomed if current policies continued, which would lead to higher food prices.
The Blue states (CA, NY, IL, MD etc.) have large enclaves of immigrants but they will not sit quietly and just allow Trump's Storm Troopers to barge in and drag them out. One big reason? The critical labor they supply to not only harvest 90% of our crops - like in the Oxnard region of California - but also doing the nasty butchering in meat packing plants.
Their arguments are supported by a Goldman Sachs paper from last year based on an analysis of 2023 census data. That paper found:
- Immigrants living in the U.S. illegally accounted for 4.4 percent of the U.S. workforce.
- In a number of industries the proportion is even higher, e.g. 19% in landscaping services, 17% in crop production, 16% in animal slaughtering and processing and 13% in construction.
So it doesn't take a Mensa level I.Q. to see if all these workers were deported the U.S. economy would literally crater because of the massive labor shortfalls. But evidently, Trump's Gruppen Fuhrer Steven Miller can't see that.
Wednesday's scenes were instructional in that regard. In one we saw ICE agents (presumably) chasing laborers working in a strawberry field - e.g.
ICE agents are seen chasing farmworkers through a field in Oxnard, Cal... | ice | TikTok
As if that wasn't enough, another gang raided the aforementioned Green Valley meat packing plant in Omaha, rousting the "undocumented" hard at work butchering Americans' chickens, cattle etc. e.g.
ICE raids meatpacking plant in Omaha
This leads inexorably to:
Question 2:
When all the undocumented workers harvesting our cabbages, lettuce, strawberries, etc. as well as butchering our assorted meats are deported, WHO is going to take over their jobs?
Americans? Don't make me laugh. While Americans are quite content to gobble the fruits of immigrant-undocumented labor, there is no way in hell they will take those ball-busting jobs if Trump is stupid enough to deport these workers. Given that we may be sure with each such rapid raid meats will be left rotting on meat packing plants floors just as crops will be left rotting in the fields. And know what? The dumbass mutts who voted Dotard back into power to ease their egg prices will now be crying and whining about $7 /lb strawberries, $5 a head lettuce, and $10.50 /lb. ground beef (diluted with corn meal). But we were warned all about this prospect last year.
That was July 13-14, 2024 when WSJ finance columnist Greg Ip wrote his column ('Economists See More Inflation Under Trump', p. A2, July 13-14), noting:
"Trump has also promised the largest deportation of unauthorized immigrants in history which will reduce the supply of labor"
Of course it will reduce the supply of labor, especially in the agricultural sphere, thereby rendering fewer workers to harvest crops- whether lettuce, cabbage, green onions, tomatoes oranges, apples or other - raising their prices considerably. Ip's survey of "more than 68 professional forecasters from business, Wall Street and academia" confirmed this, warning any major loss of migrant labor in key areas will cause prices to soar.
This elicits Question 3:
Did Americans really vote for their crop harvesters and meat packers to be rousted out of their fields and plants, leaving the work undone? Deliberately engendering a massive labor crisis in critical agricultural domains to shoot prices into the stratosphere?
As Janice put it: "Only the stupid ones."
Trouble is, there were a majority of them who voted the Trump cabal back into power.
See Also:
by Amanda Marcotte | June 12, 2025 - 5:26am | permalink
Donald Trump loves authoritarian theater, but let's not forget that Stephen Miller is also to blame for the violence and chaos in Los Angeles. Last week, the right-wing Washington Examiner reported that Trump's deputy chief of staff called a meeting with the top officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to "eviscerate" them for falling far short of the ridiculous goal he set of 3,000 deportations a day. In their desperation to keep Miller happy, ICE has already been targeting legal immigrants for deportation, mostly because they're easy to find, due to having registered with the government. ICE agents stake out immigration hearings for people with refugee status and round up people here with work or student visas for minor offenses like speeding tickets, all to get the numbers up. But these actions were not enough for Miller.
"Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?” he reportedly screamed at ICE officials. One ICE leader protested that the agency's lead, Tom Homan, said they're supposed to be going after criminals, not people who are just working everyday jobs. Miller reportedly hit the ceiling, furious that arrests aren't widespread and indiscriminate. Trump has repeatedly implied he was only targeting criminals, but as Charles Davis reported at Salon, that conflicts with his promise of "mass deportations." Undocumented immigrants commit crimes at far lower rates than native-born Americans. The expansive efforts to find and arrest immigrants in California, which kicked off the protests, appear to be a direct reaction to Miller's orders to grab as many people as possible, regardless of innocence.
And: (He finally sees the problem)
Trump says too many migrant farmers, hotel workers are being deported
Excerpt:
Donald Trump said he plans to make changes to his administration's aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration to protect migrant farmers, hotel workers and others in the leisure industry who have been among those deported.
Trump promised the changes in a June 12 Truth Social post that acknowledged Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have expanded arrests beyond just migrants convicted of violent crimes, who Trump officials have said are the primary targets of raids and deportations.
And:
by Jeffrey C. Isaac | June 14, 2025 - 4:45am | permalink
The Trump administration has proceeded, and is proceeding, at a furious pace to employ executive power attack and undermine central pillars of American democracy, rendering a system already threadbare and fragile even more weakened.
This past week’s deployment of National Guard troops, and then U.S. Marines, on the streets of Los Angeles, in defiance of California Governor Gavin Newsome and LA Mayor Karen Bass, is but the latest example.
Tomorrow—Saturday, June 14—the administration is planning an enormous military parade on the streets of Washington, D.C., to celebrate “Flag Day,” the U.S. Army, and especially to celebrate Trump and his birthday.
And:
by Les Leopold | June 12, 2025 - 4:32am | permalink
As Trump stokes conflict at immigration demonstrations, will the public side with Trump or the demonstrators?
Attacks on immigrant workers are accelerating as ICE zeros in on sites where immigrants gather to find work, and outside courts where immigrants go because their legal status requires it. The demonstrations erupted in Los Angeles as ICE arrested day-laborers who lined up at Home Depot waiting to be selected by contractors. ICE is also aggressively sweeping LA garment shops dependent on immigrant workers. Trump and ICE claim they are only seeking to deport violent criminals. But this flimsy excuse collapses against the reality of hundreds of undocumented workers, most with no prior contact with law enforcement, caught up in these raids, torn away from their families and friends.
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