Is Trump backing off his mass deportation plan?

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today’s read: 15 minutes.

This Friday.

For the last six months, our Editorial Fellow Hunter Casperson has been making important contributions, both highly visible and behind the scenes. One of the things Hunter has been working on is a longform capstone piece to close out her fellowship, and she certainly didn’t shy away from a difficult topic: embryonic genetic testing. For this week’s subscribers-only Friday edition, we’re pleased to present Hunter’s exploration on genetic testing: What is it, what are the policies regulating it, and what are the arguments for and against those polices (plus, a little bit of Hunter’s take).

Quick hits.

1. President Donald Trump left early from a meeting of G7 leaders to return to the White House amid the ongoing Israel–Iran conflict. Later, the president called for residents of Tehran to evacuate in a Truth Social post. (The latest) Separately, Iran has reportedly sent messages to the United States and Israel through intermediaries saying it is open to deescalating and resuming nuclear talks. (The report)
2. While at the G7 meeting on Monday, President Trump criticized former President Barack Obama and former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for their roles in removing Russia from the group following its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. Trump suggested Putin would not have invaded Ukraine in 2022 if Russia had remained in the conference. (The comments)
3. A federal judge extended an order blocking the Trump administration from immediately revoking Harvard University's ability to enroll international students. (The extension) Separately, a federal judge found that the administration’s cancellation of federal health grants over their purported connections to gender ideology and diversity, equity, and inclusion was unlawful. (The ruling)
4. The Trump Organization announced the launch of a cellular phone service called T1 Phone by Trump Mobile. The company also said it plans to produce a cell phone that will be made in the U.S. (The announcement)
5. All 50 states, Washington, D.C., and four U.S. territories agreed to a $7.4 billion settlement with Purdue Pharma for its role in the opioid crisis. The settlement will also end the Sackler family’s ownership of the company and bar them from producing, selling, or marketing opioids in the U.S. (The settlement)

Today’s topic.

Trump’s deportation agenda. On Thursday, the Trump administration began directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to pause immigration investigations and enforcement actions in the agricultural, hotel, and restaurant industries. Before ICE issued the new guidance to its field agents, President Donald Trump publicly acknowledged his immigration agenda had negatively impacted these industries and promised changes. However, on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told its staff that it had reversed this decision and to continue immigration raids at farms, hotels, and restaurants. 

In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump wrote, “Our 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… We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”

According to a New York Times report, Acting Assistant Director of Domestic Operations Tatum King instructed regional ICE leaders to “hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.” King also advised that investigations into “human trafficking, money laundering, [and] drug smuggling into these industries” should continue, but said ICE agents should not target unauthorized migrants who were not known to have a criminal record.  

The guidance represented a temporary shift in the administration’s mass deportation agenda, which has emphasized the arrest and deportation of anyone in the United States illegally. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently pushed ICE to increase their arrest goals to 3,000 per day, preceding large-scale immigration sweeps in Los Angeles earlier this month. Furthermore, recent ICE sweeps have targeted agricultural businesses, including a June 10 raid at a meat production plant in Omaha, Nebraska, in which 75–80 people were detained. 

On Wednesday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins reportedly urged President Trump to scale back immigration raids at farms, relaying warnings from farm groups that workers may stop coming to farms for fear of being deported, causing serious disruptions for the industry. The president’s supporters in the restaurant industry have also lobbied for similar exemptions, and several Republican lawmakers have publicly asked the administration to focus its efforts on unauthorized migrants with criminal records. 

President Trump has also called for ICE to ramp up its activity in other areas. On Sunday, he posted an “order” on Truth Social instructing ICE officers to “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. 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.”

Today, we’ll break down the latest on Trump’s deportation policies, with views from the left and right, followed by my take.

What the left is saying.

• The left argues that Trump’s deportation agenda was always going to hurt farmers, and he’s just now realizing it. 
• Some criticize the president’s directive to focus immigration raids on Democrat-run cities.
• Others say Trump is starting to understand his immigration goals are unrealistic.

In MSNBC, Max Burns called out Trump’s “betrayal of farmers.”

“President Donald Trump has for years dismissed critics of his mass deportation program as simply not understanding his policy genius. But in a rare apparent concession, the president posted to Truth Social on Thursday seeming to acknowledge how his immigration raids in particular have impacted American farmers,” Burns wrote. “Trump and his Republican supporters swept into office last year thanks to big promises to help America’s forgotten small farmers. Instead, they’ve pillaged the land for cash and left struggling farmers with the bill. Farmers have warned their Republican lawmakers for months that mass deportations and tariff battles would cripple rural states’ agricultural economies.”

“After the president promised to focus his efforts on capturing ‘dangerous criminals,’ Trump’s broad ICE raids feel like a betrayal to many farmers. The workers and families picked up in farm raids aren’t bloodthirsty gang members Republicans talk so much about. In many cases they are longtime family friends and senior team members,” Burns said. “If the relationship between Republicans and their rural base was already strained over immigration, Trump’s brutal federal spending cuts sent things into a deep freeze. In April, the U.S. Department of Agriculture slashed over $1 billion from a federal food-purchasing program that served as a lifeline for farmers in Iowa, North Dakota and across the plains.”

In New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore criticized Trump’s order for “ICE to punish Democratic cities.”

“Donald Trump and Stephen Miller have an arithmetic problem with their mass-deportation initiative. They appear frantic to ramp up deportations… But at the same time, the administration has been getting major heat from certain industries — particularly agriculture and hospitality — that going after their workforces would be a really bad idea,” Kilgore wrote. “So what’s the focus now?... The president of the United States is very clearly telling his deportation shock troops to wage partisan war on cities that are the ‘Democrat Power Center,’ based on the hallucinatory idea — a MAGA staple — that ‘Radical Left Democrats’ are herding millions of undocumented workers to the polls to ‘cheat in Elections and grow the Welfare State.’”

“In effect, Republican state administrations are working with the Feds to come down on Democratic-run cities to scourge unruly immigrant populations. And in blue states like California, the mass deportations feel more like all-out partisan war,” Kilgore said. “For now, Trump-friendly industries in Trump-friendly parts of the country need not worry so much, but all those radical-left hellholes better prepare for the onset of fire and ICE. After all, Stephen Miller has quotas to meet.”

In Slate, Shirin Ali said “even Donald Trump is starting to see the absurdity of Stephen Miller’s deportation targets.”

“President Donald Trump is desperate. He wants to deport 1 million immigrants from this country by the end of his first year in office, a level no modern U.S. president has ever hit. His administration has made it clear they’re more than willing to push the limits of the law to try to make it happen, whether it’s through invoking obscure wartime laws, baselessly revoking people’s visas, or calling in the National Guard against civilian protestors,” Ali wrote. “These acts of desperation are highly unlikely to result in 1 million deportations in 2025, but there’s a bigger reality here: Trump’s deportation targets were always extreme, absurd, and impossible to hit. Even as his administration ramps up attacks on civil society, it seems like Trump himself is beginning to realize this.”

“Trump himself told supporters in farming and the hospitality business that more ‘common sense’ was needed in how the Department of Homeland Security approached removals of ‘very good workers’... By Saturday, ICE leadership formally directed its agents to stop all enforcement on agriculture, restaurants and operating hotels, effective immediately,” Ali said. “Given the escalating situation in Los Angeles and Trump’s own hostility to immigrants, it’s extremely unclear that this promise means anything. Either way, Trump’s mass deportation plans will continue to go up in smoke, whether he likes it or not.”

What the right is saying.

• The right is mixed on the policy change, though many view the initial exemptions as a promise broken.
• Some laud the exemptions as a common-sense pivot that will protect key industries.
• Others say they will allow Trump to focus on deporting criminal offenders first.

In The Federalist, Brianna Lyman said the exemptions would be “selling out ‘America First’ for cheap labor.”

“‘Mass Deportations Now.’ It wasn’t just a slogan on signs — it was a rallying cry that galvanized millions of voters. The promise was the restoration of American sovereignty through the removal of all illegal aliens — not just the violent ones. Americans understand that national unity requires assimilation, and assimilation is impossible when millions pour in illegally and remain indefinitely. The message that won the election was not ‘Mass Deportations, But Only For The Worst Offenders,’” Lyman wrote. “Sovereignty doesn’t yield to staffing shortages. American immigration policy should never be dictated by the labor needs of employers, especially not in industries built around a permanent, low-wage migrant workforce.”

“While there may be a legitimate case for limited, legal, seasonal migration in agriculture, allowing a worker shortage to become the justification for lawbreaking and mass amnesty reduces citizenship or legal status to a commodity and the nation to marketplace,” Lyman said. “Trump’s retreat is not just a tactical error — it’s a betrayal of the moment. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to correct the crisis created by the Biden administration. Caving to the demands of farmers and hoteliers doesn’t just undermine that goal — it sends a signal to activists and rioters that America’s sovereignty is up for negotiation.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board praised “Trump’s good deportation exceptions.”

“President Trump has listened to alarms from farmers and others and offered a reprieve from immigration raids for the agriculture and hospitality industries,” the board wrote. “He has listened to Brooke Rollins, his Agriculture secretary, who warned about economic damage in the Farm Belt. Many recent migrant workers have valid work visas granted by the Biden Administration. Even illegal migrants have some form of resident documentation that looks persuasive. The workers are typically diligent and often do work that would otherwise not get done.

“Mr. Trump also knows first hand from the Trump Organization’s hotels and resorts the necessity of bringing in workers from abroad on work visas. Labor shortages are routine every summer in the U.S., which is why business groups lobby for more H-2B temporary visas, many of them filled by young people from Europe or Canada,” the board said. “Sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to raid farms, hotel cleaning staff and restaurant busboys and cooks is damaging to the economy and a misuse of scarce federal manpower. Better to focus on criminals instead.”

In Hot Air, David Strom asked is Trump “moderating on immigration?”

“Is this a TACO moment, or Trump going somewhere he always intended? TACO, as you know, is the Democratic Party acronym for ‘Trump Always Chickens Out,’ implying that all Trump's zigs and zags on things like tariffs are evidence that their Nazi authoritarian self-proclaimed king is actually a paper tiger who talks big and chickens out when push comes to shove,” Strom wrote. “It's a tactic that hasn't worked, mainly because, first of all, it makes no sense given the whole ‘authoritarian fascist’ argument the Democrats make, and because chickening out is not exactly Trump's brand. It has been pretty obvious that Trump is following a talk tough negotiating strategy — your first offer is always unreasonable, and then you cut a deal.”

“I've long suspected that a similar impulse has driven Trump's immigration policies. He is trying to scare people away from border crossings and push people to self-deport — both of which are happening — while moving toward a more discriminate deportation policy in the United States,” Strom said. “None of this should be surprising, although I suspect that many of his supporters who have been especially enthusiastic about deportations of all illegals will be (temporarily) angry. But making moves like this is totally consistent with Trump's rhetorical strategies. He has moved the Overton window, and now he can use that reset to move closer to where he actually always wanted to be.”

My take.

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• Trump wavering on immigration shows the tension between his immigration policies and commitments to his base.
• It also shows how Trump follows the most recent advice and is running his second administration similarly to his first.
• These tensions are only going to increase as he pursues his immigration goals.

In the last few months, I’ve criticized the Trump administration for having an incoherent and inconsistent policy approach to issues like tariffs and government spending. But one of the issues Trump has always been consistent on is immigration. It’s the signature policy approach that has been at the heart of his electoral success since 2016, and he’s been promising mass deportations, the reshoring of American jobs to replace foreign workers, and a crackdown on the southern border for the last decade.

Last week was the first time I’ve seen him muddy that policy message.

The story of how Trump came to temporarily change his posture is as unsurprising as it is fascinating. According to reporting from several news outlets, Trump posted that he’d be pursuing “common-sense” cuts to agriculture jobs after a phone call from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, and was then flooded with calls from donors asking him to extend the same grace to the restaurant and hospitality sectors. By the end of the day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had sent an email to regional leaders instructing them to “hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.”

This entire chapter is a nice encapsulation of how, when the messaging meets reality, the immigration issue is so difficult to solve. The 2024 election showed us how out of step Democrats were with voters on border security and immigration. Many on the left insisted that the border was not in crisis under Biden (it was), and many are unwilling to reorient their policy prescriptions to solve the issue. 

But this side of the story shows how detached the hardline messaging thumped by many Republicans and those on the MAGA right is from reality. You cannot deport millions of people without upending critical sectors of the economy, like the agriculture or restaurant industries. You cannot detain and deport millions of unauthorized migrants who are also hardworking, law-abiding residents without facing pushback from their communities. Simply put: If you want to deport millions of unauthorized migrants, you can do that — the numbers are there. But you cannot ignore the fact that the same people you want to deport are deeply embedded, valued members of their communities and workforces.

I’ll use this issue as a soapbox to loudly say again that my solutions to the immigration crisis include expanding legal work authorizations, cracking down on the border, hiring more judges to process asylum claims, and offering expanded pathways to citizenship. Our immigration system needs order; no matter how you feel about his methods, Trump has brought that to the border. Our immigration system also has to coexist with the reality that our economy depends on immigrant labor; at the moment, Trump appears to see how aggressive deportations conflict with that reality. The way Trump’s immigration policies provoke (often Democrat-leaning) communities that value their immigrant residents is on full display in Los Angeles right now, but I don’t think this administration will ever calibrate its actions based on that tension.

So, maybe the sum total of all these factors made it inevitable that Trump would temper his mass deportation language and issue a few carve-outs. Perhaps someone just showed him the numbers: 40% of the nation’s crop workers are here illegally; growers said 30–60% of workers in California stopped showing up after raids began. Republicans, even in deep red states like Texas, are saying that Trump should stop targeting farm workers. 

Whatever motivated Trump to soften his message, it didn’t last long. Trump’s reversal late on Monday night provided another data point to support two other theories about this administration: First, that Trump is often persuaded by the last argument he hears. Once you see this pattern, it explains so much of his seemingly patternless behaviors. In this case, I think it’s clear Rollins compelled him in one direction, and then someone else — probably Stephen Miller — moved him back in the other. 

Second, Trump’s second term has actually been a lot like his first. Trump’s team contains significant disagreement and viewpoint diversity (which is a good thing!), but the ideological voice that’s loudest in the president’s ear can change from day to day, producing significant whiplash and policy inconsistency (which isn’t a good thing!). We saw this happen in Trump’s first term with tariff announcements and vaccine guidance during Covid — and we’re seeing it again now with immigration.

For now, the president seems to be back in the “mass deportation” camp. It’s anyone’s guess how long he stays there. Trump has always had an affinity for America’s farmers; in his first term, he gave out billions of dollars of agricultural aid during the China trade war and also classified farm laborers as essential workers. This term, he’s considering an emergency relief package for farmers because of his tariffs while also considering a carve-out on immigrant labor because of his deportation policies. It’s a tricky relationship for Trump to manage, because his policy goals will clearly hurt the industry, and the industry is composed of some of his most loyal voters (and donors) whom he’s consistently shown that he wants to keep happy.

Remember — we are hitting this friction just five months into Trump’s presidency. According to the Department of Homeland Security, he has deported about 207,000 unauthorized migrants so far. In order to get to that number, he’s had to direct ICE to raid workplaces; arrest people at their immigration hearings; hit schools, churches, Home Depots; and even arrest high schoolers on their way to volleyball practice. He’s done all that in the face of mass protests, industry pushback and warnings of economic upheaval, just to get to a little over 200,000 deportations. And on the campaign trail he promised to deport 15 million — more than 70 times the number of people he’s deported so far.

Candidly, I just don’t see how he does it. I think he’ll struggle to get to even a couple million deportations without inviting the kind of political backlash and public response that breaks most presidencies. This looks like the first crack in what has otherwise been a steadfast focus on this policy goal — and it has come remarkably early, given the circumstances. 

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Your questions, answered.

Q: I heard the man who shot Melissa Hortman was a registered Democrat, and I heard he’s a hardcore Trumper. What’s the truth? I don’t understand what leads a person to do something like that.

— Mel from Hampton, GA

Tangle: First, the suspect arrested for killing Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman (D) and her husband, and for shooting state Senator John Hoffman (D) and his wife, has not yet stood trial and been convicted. So we can talk about what we know about the suspect and have learned about his background that might provide a motive, but we can’t talk definitively about either the shooter’s guilt or his motive.

Note: Due to the well documented contagion effect, Tangle’s policy is to not name shooters or suspects in high-profile shootings.

The suspect seems to be a politically unaffiliated religious conservative with a history of working with the state’s liberal politicians. He was appointed to a state economic board by a former Democratic governor in 2016 (and then reappointed by Governor Tim Walz (D)), but has not served in government and — though party registration and voting records are not public — he listed his affiliation as “other” or “no preference” on several public filings. However, his roommate has told reporters that he was an avid pro-life advocate and Trump supporter.

Police have still not disclosed a suspected motive, but circumstantial evidence paints a pretty convincing picture of a very religious conservative who disagreed strongly with pro-choice Democrats and policies, perhaps to the point of extreme violence. According to court documents, the shooter texted his family hours after the attacks and said that he “went to war.” Gov. Walz has called the shootings “politically motivated” and the FBI described the shooting as “targeted” due to the voluminous notebooks the suspect was found with, which included a list of targets that named prominent Democratic lawmakers and abortion providers.

Yesterday, we commented on the uneventfulness of the protests that took place across the country as a reason for optimism, and these shootings provide a stark contrast that shows a glimpse into the very worst of our current political climate. It truly is hard to wrap your head around what would motivate someone to plan and carry out such extreme actions, and we’re sure to learn more in the coming days and weeks. 

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

“Perception gaps” in how the left and right view the world are a well studied trend in U.S. politics, and the finance industry says it’s now showing up in Americans’ stock portfolios. Just a few months into President Trump’s second term, Democrats and Republicans differ widely in their outlook on the stock market, with roughly 10% of Democrats expecting stocks to rise in the next six months compared to approximately 60% of Republicans. Furthermore, some financial advisors report that left-leaning clients are increasingly asking to move their assets abroad out of concern over the administration’s policies, while exchange-traded funds that invest in “non-woke” assets are drawing interest from the president’s supporters. “If I know how people voted, I could tell you how they feel about the stock market,” David Sadkin, partner at Bel Air Investment Advisors, said. The Wall Street Journal has the story.

Numbers.

• 14%. The approximate percentage of hired crop farmworkers who were not legally authorized to work in the United States from 1989–91, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
• 55%. The approximate percentage of hired crop farmworkers who were not legally authorized to work in the United States from 1999–2001. 
• 42%. The approximate percentage of hired crop farmworkers who were not legally authorized to work in the United States from 2020–22. 
• 90%. The approximate number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States who were working age in 2022, according to the American Immigration Council. 
• 4.6%. Unauthorized migrants’ share of the U.S. employed labor force in 2022. 
• 1 in 8. The estimated proportion of workers the agriculture industry would lose if all 11 million unauthorized migrants in the U.S. were deported. 
• 1 in 14. The estimated proportion of workers the hospitality industry would lose in this scenario. 
• 24% and 61%. The percentage of U.S. adults who say people who have lived in the U.S. illegally for many years without committing any crimes should and should not be deported, respectively, according to a June 2025 Economist/YouGov poll. 

The extras.

• One year ago today we covered the Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion pills.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the update on the Minnesota shooter.
• Nothing to do with politics: Heard of Florida man? Meet “mule-riding Kentucky man” and his sidekick, “raccoon unleashed in bar.”
• Yesterday’s survey: 4,644 readers answered our survey questions on the Army parade and No Kings protests with 69% opposing the parade and 82% supporting the protests. “I think the Army parade just happened to fall on Trump's birthday. The biggest offense is that taxpayer funds were used. The ‘No Tax Kings’ protests were so awesome because they were nonviolent,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

After the destruction caused by Hurricane Helene, Taylor Schenker found herself in possession of about 200 photos from various families. Wanting to reunite the photos with their owners, she started an Instagram page and uploaded the lost pictures. Schenker has had success returning many of them, hand-delivering the ones she can and mailing the others. “Being able to have that moment where you hand something so special to somebody and then also just give them a hug… it's such a privilege to have an insight into this moment in their lives through these photographs and be able to give them back to them,” Schenker said. CBS News has the story.

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