All during campaign season last year and well into Trump II, Donald promised a crackdown on illegal immigration.
To prove his resolve he spent fortunes using military planes to transport immigrants to Cuba, then charted jets to deliver “really bad people” to El Salvador.
So, of course, today NPR and The New York Times both have articles detailing how Donald Trump now wants to make exceptions to his ‘no mercy, no exceptions’ rule.
Why Trump Lets Some Sectors Keep Migrants [USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins] told the president that farm groups had been warning her that their employees would stop showing up to work out of fear…
[New York Times 6/16/25 p. 1A]
Basically, Trump Always Chickens Out, this time to keep lettuce in the grocery stores. And keep meat packers operating. And hotel workers on the job. And…you get the idea.
You see this was never about a crack down on illegal immigrants or hardworking undocumented workers. It was just fireworks at the circus.
Remember, in recent years millions of people lost their jobs due to not having the right papers. Theoretically that means that thousands upon thousands of employers knowingly employed people they should not have hired. While we have video of kids being separated from parents and shackled adults herded into camps, well, I could not find a single story about an employer arrested and charged for breaking employment law regarding hiring undocumented workers.
Let’s not be surprised.
Great corporations (often through middleman staffing firms) save billions of dollars in labor costs by utilizing illegal labor. They work hard, they work cheap. That’s great for profits, and, it means more campaign money for Donald Trump and other Republican officeholders. When a president offers blanket pardons to rioters why should CEO’s worry about breaking employment law? (Perhaps in three years Trump will bring back slavery, creating even bigger profits.)
Go back to last year: do you also recall Trump claiming the ranks of the undocumented were filled with killers, rapists and drug fiends? Yet, most of those detained and deported are not criminal. Recently, for example, an immigrant voluntarily coming into a federal building for scheduled meeting about his work status was arrested. [ https://www.mississippifreepress.org/ice-arrests-mississippi-father-at-his-citizenship-hearing-threatening-deportation/ ]
Now, let’s not blame ICE agents. If you made the same pay for arresting a working dad in a hearing room as you did for charging a gang of assault rifle wielding Latinos meth dealers, well, wouldn’t you want to make the lay-up rather than the half court shot? After all, go after really bad people and you could get hurt!
TACO Lettuce…just one of this week’s hypocrisies.
More to come.
Glenn Koenen