President Donald Trump on Tuesday teased a new policy for migrant farm laborers as the administration continues to wrestle with helping U.S. farmers while remaining committed to deporting illegals, Politico reported.
In an interview with CNBC, Trump said he wants to "work with" farmers to find a solution on migrant labor, suggesting the White House was working on a program for illegals to leave the country and reenter through legal pathways, according to the report.
"In some cases, we're sending them back to their country with a pass back in legally … we're sending them back and then they're schooling, they're learning, they're coming in, they're coming in legally. We have a lot of that going on, but we're taking care of our farmers," Trump told CNBC, according to the report. "We can't let our farmers not have anybody."
Trump first signaled a shift on June 12, posting on Truth Social that farmers and hotel and leisure businesses reported losing "very good, longtime workers" to immigration enforcement, calling the jobs "almost impossible to replace" and vowing "changes are coming."
The president first proposed allowing undocumented farm and hotel workers to leave the U.S. and return legally, as well as improving the H-2A and H-2B guest-worker programs.
But then Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said last month that illegal migrants who work on U.S. farms will not be given amnesty as the Trump administration strives for "a 100% American workforce."
However, Trump told CNBC that "people that live in the inner city" won't do the work.
"They've tried. We've tried, Everybody's tried. They don't do it. These people do it naturally," Trump said, according to the report. "I said 'what happens' — to a farmer the other day — 'what happens if they get a bad back?' He said, 'they don't get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back, they die.' I said, 'that's interesting.' In many ways, they're very very special people."
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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