President Donald Trump set off a scramble inside the White House after one of his Cabinet officials pushed him to back off on deporting migrants who work for farmers.
The Trump administration is working to streamline the visa process for temporary, migrant workers who work in the agricultural and hospitality industries, and while those unauthorized workers had enjoyed an unspoken amnesty from immigration crackdowns, the president made clear he wanted to carve out exceptions for them in a June 11 post on Truth Social, reported Axios.
"That was the bat signal to ICE: Leave the farmers alone," one Trump adviser said.
That post came after agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins lobbied him on behalf of the industry, but it surprised three crucial officials: homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
"Every secretary can't do that: Go rogue and call the president like this, without any sort of appreciation for competing conversations or ideology," said one senior official.
However, Miller tapped the brakes on Trump's plan to speed up the visa process for migrants working in those sectors.
"Stephen is so hardcore that the president almost jokes about it, saying that, 'You could have a person who has been here for 20 years and has a clean record and everyone loves them, and Stephen will say deport them,'" said a source who heard Trump's remarks.
The Department of Labor has set up the Office of Immigration Policy to help employers get swifter approval for temporary work visas for noncitizens, but administration officials are careful about how the topic is framed.
"This is not amnesty. It's not amnesty lite," a senior administration official told Axios. "No one who is illegally here is being given a pathway to citizenship or residency."
But MAGA hardliners are suspicious of the administration's efforts to help the agriculture and hospitality industries fill their workforce using noncitizens.
"Any time someone says, 'This isn't an amnesty because ...' then it's an amnesty," said immigration restrictionist Mark Krikorian. "If an illegal alien gets to stay, that's an amnesty."