Trump Ag Chief Tells Fox No Amnesty for Farm Workers Days After Trump Floated Leniency For Farm Workers

Trump Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told Fox anchor Maria Bartiromo that President Donald Trump’s plans include no amnesty for farm workers, just days after Trump seemed to float leniency for the industry.

For weeks, President Trump and his administration have whiplashed from rounding up agricultural and hotel workers to feinting at not doing that, back to doing that again. Since June, Trump has also been promising a concept of a plan in which farmers would “take responsibility” for rooting out murderers from their workforce.

Just last week at a rally in Iowa, Trump said “If a farmer is willing to vouch for these people in some way… I think we’re going to have to just say that’s going to be good, right? We don’t want to do it where we take all of the workers off the farms.”

On Thursday morning’s edition of Fox Business Network’s Mornings With Maria, Bartiromo even played a clip of Trump making that proposal on her own show, and asked Rollins an unrelated question about “New World Screwworm.”

But Rollins included the amnesty topic in her reply nonetheless:

MARIA BARTIROMO: You know, Secretary, I love how much this president loves our farmers. You just ordered the shutdown of live cattle, bison, and horse trade through the southern border after Mexico confirmed another case of New World Screwworm affecting livestock. Can you tell us more about that?

AGRICULTURE SECRETARY BROOKE ROLLINS: Well, yes, and you’re right. You can just hear it in his voice. And I was with him in the first term as domestic policy chief. And, you know, he had the same conversations then over the last eight or ten years. How do we protect our farmers?

But last night, about 10 o’clock, we shut down the ports. No more imports from Mexico with live animals due to the New World Screwworm, another threat to our homeland. We shut the border down earlier, about two months ago, and we were able to push the pest back, partnering with Mexico. But it started to trickle back up within about 500 miles of our border. So we had to shut it down again.

And again, these inactions that were never taken by the Biden administration, we are now having to deal with.

But listen, this president has been resolute on no amnesty, mass deportations, but there are programs currently within the government under Lori Chavez de Rimmer, our secretary, our great secretary of labor, the H2A visa program.

I know they are working on that to work to effectuate the president’s vision. But at the end of the day, moving toward an American workforce based on automation, a lot of able-bodied adults in this country who are not working, we will get there.

But this president, his heart is with the farmers. It always has been. And we will work nonstop until we find the right solution, but does not include amnesty and certainly moving toward the American workforce that he envisions.

Watch above via Fox Business Network’s Mornings With Maria.