[Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff.]
Donald Trump and immigrant labor
In February 2015, Senator Marco Rubio issued a press release, “Fact Check: Donald Trump Used Illegal Immigrants to Build Trump Tower,” relating a story about ‘illegal immigrants’ working 12-hour shifts at $5/hour without overtime to demolish the building that made way for Trump Tower.
Similar stories appeared in the press during Trump’s first go-round in the White House: “Trump Winery requests permission to import more foreign migrant workers” (2017), “3 Trump properties posted 144 openings for seasonal jobs. Only one went to a US worker.” (2018), and “Trump Says Mar-A-Lago Can’t Find US Workers To Hire. New Documents Show Dozens Applied.” (2019), for instance. In July 2019, the New York Times asked Trump about such reports:
After months of silence, President Trump responded on Friday to reports that the Trump Organization has employed dozens of undocumented immigrants by saying that he doesn’t know whether the organization does or not.
“I don’t know because I don’t run it,” Mr. Trump said when asked if he was confident that undocumented immigrants were no longer working at his golf courses. “But I would say this: Probably every club in the United States has that because it seems to be, from what I understand, a way that people did business.”
Such reports continued in 2024 (“Donald Trump’s Truth Social business applied for the foreign worker visa that the former president called ‘very bad’ and tried to restrict” and “Trump Media Outsourced Jobs to Mexico Even as Trump Pushes “America First”)and 2025 (“As Trump pursues mass deportation, his businesses again seek foreign workers” and “Trump Org Keeps Bringing In Foreign Workers To Staff Its Clubs And Winery”).
I raise this issue not to harp on hypocrisy, but to illustrate that, no matter how factually-challenged our president is, he understands that immigrants (with or without papers) play a critical role in the nation’s economy. In some instances, the “way that people did business” has been simply a way to cut costs, because undocumented immigrants are often willing to work for less and have fewer options when they are cheated. But that’s not the whole story.
A number of industries, from hospitality to farming to the building trades would experience dire labor shortages without immigrant labor. (More than ten thousand homes burned in the devastating fires in Los Angeles County just months ago — in a state that has failed to provide affordable housing even without this loss.) Federal visa policies and legal avenues for recruiting foreign workers are inadequate.
While Trump has acknowledged (as recently as yesterday) — because he has spoken with rich friends with financial interests in federal policy — the structural challenges in the agricultural and hospitality sectors, he doesn’t seem intent on reforming immigration laws to make them workable. Instead, on the one hand, Trump will carve out exceptions for cronies, allies, and loyalists, while, on the other hand, he’ll go after immigrants working low paying jobs (day laborers, attendants at car washes, sidewalk vendors, garment workers, line cooks, and so on). These are in most instances jobs that few citizens are clamoring for. Yet they’re essential.
Militarized federal policy in Los Angeles
A 37-year-old U.S. citizen who was tackled to the ground and arrested after filming federal agents at Home Depot on Thursday said he was held for more than an hour near Dodger Stadium, where agents boasted about how many immigrants they arrested.
“How many bodies did you guys grab today?” he said one agent asked.
“Oh, we grabbed 31,“ the other replied.
“That was a good day today,” the first agent responded.
The two high-fived, as he sat on the asphalt under the sun, Job Garcia said.
That’s a report from the Los Angeles Times on Trump’s militarized federal policy on immigration.
Why is this happening? Why the raids by the feds? To instill fear: fear to drive to work or stop at a grocery store or attend a child’s graduation.
To disrupt civic life. To separate families. To empty the streets and shopping malls and public gathering places. To strangle businesses. To outrage citizens offended by the police state tactics. To provoke violence in order to justify and amp up the military occupation. To intimidate critics and would-be critics. To punish blue cities, blue regions, blue states — and their elected representatives. To rehearse ambushes, detentions, arrests, and deportations that will roll out in other blue cities and states.
But most of all: This is a campaign to expand the power of the presidency beyond anything previously experienced in the history of our country. To shrug off legal constraints, shunt aside Congress, and cripple institutions of civil society (media, law firms, universities, and even Democratic governors and mayors). This campaign makes a mockery of the Constitution, of checks and balances, federalism, state sovereignty, and the rule of law.
Trump is conducting a frontal assault on our democratic institutions, on what — I dare say — makes America great.
Project 2025 made a plan for this assault. The Trump 2 administration is carrying it out. They have theories to justify what they’re doing.
The whole will of democracy is imbued into the elected president. — Stephen Miller
A plain reading of the Constitution and of the Federalist Papers suggests otherwise, but Trump is on board with the idea:
It’s good to have a strongman at the head of a country. — Donald Trump
These are the guys in charge. Small-d democratic governance in the United States has never been so precarious.