What did Donald Trump do today?
He announced his third flip-flop on deporting farm workers in two weeks.
Last Tuesday, ICE agents chased migrant farm workers through strawberry fields in California in large, coordinated raids that yielded a few detentions. The context for those highly publicized raids is complicated, but important. While ICE rarely targeted agricultural workers in the past, its senior officials were under threat from Trump's advisor Stephen Miller to increase the number of deportations to meet a daily quota.
Miller's ability to dictate policies to Trump had recently increased, thanks to the spectacular falling out between Trump and Elon Musk. Miller, an ethnonationalist and immigration hardliner in spite of coming from a refugee family himself, has been infuriated by Trump's failure to successfully deport nearly as many undocumented immigrants as the Biden administration did last year.
Then last Thursday, as public reaction began to swell against his chaotic and pointedly cruel immigration actions—as well as his decision to deploy Marines against American protestors—Trump completely reversed his position. Without mentioning that his own policy was the reason why, he declared that "farmers are being hurt badly" and promised not to conduct deportation raids against the agricultural sector. (He also exempted the hospitality sector, where he himself has employed undocumented migrants.)
Yesterday, Trump's DHS secretary, Tom Homan, announced that raids against agricultural and hospitality venues would continue—as they had, continuously, in spite of Trump's announcement. Homan's announcement coincided with reports of increasing alarm from farmers about crops going to waste.
Today, Trump took his fourth position in eleven days, once again claiming that he was "looking at doing something" that would allow farmers to hire undocumented workers without interference.
Or, in other words, an amnesty.
Why does this matter?
- As this site noted the last week, there's no reason to think Trump will remember what he's said tomorrow.
- There's also no reason to think Trump is actually in control of his own administration.