Trump Just Told MAGA America: Your Deportation Fantasy Stops at the Buffet Line

June 14, 2025

By Brian Hews, Publisher, Los Cerritos Community News, [email protected]

Well, well, well. Look who just slammed on the brakes.

After months of barking about mass deportations, loading up ICE buses, and flexing for the Fox News cameras, the Trump administration has quietly decided—oops—maybe it’s not such a great idea to raid farms, meatpacking plants, restaurants, and hotels after all. You know, the actual industries that depend on the very immigrants Trump promised to haul away.

The New York Times obtained an internal email this week : “Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.” Translation: Trump wants deportations, just not the kind that screw with your ribeye or delay the breakfast buffet.

And the justification? Oh, they’re still going after the “worst of the worst,” according to DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin—because apparently undocumented line cooks, dishwashers, and dairy workers no longer qualify as threats to national security. That means if you’re an undocumented immigrant without a criminal record, and you happen to work where rich people eat or sleep, congratulations—you’ve been unofficially pardoned.

Now, this is the same administration that’s been frothing at the mouth about sweeping up “every last illegal” to satisfy its red-hatted base. But once Big Ag, the restaurant lobby, and hotel chains got nervous, Trump suddenly remembered who keeps the bacon sizzling and the sheets tucked in tight. So the deportation machine is now being run through a political filter: “Don’t round up the folks who keep America’s salad bars stocked.”

It’s a hell of a pivot. One day Trump’s promising mass roundups of “millions,” the next he’s whispering to ICE, “Not the people who make the cheese sticks.”

Let’s be clear: This isn’t mercy. It’s capitalism. This is about shielding industries full of Trump donors from the consequences of the very policies they cheered. The same folks who screamed, “Build the wall!” are now sighing in relief because ICE won’t be dragging off their landscapers or kitchen staff.

So to all the MAGA voters who thought Trump was going to deliver your fantasy of an immigrant-free America—how’s that working out for you? Did you really think he’d risk supply chain chaos in the name of your Facebook memes?

Sorry to say it, but the president just told you the quiet part out loud: deportations are for optics. Raids are for press conferences. But when it comes to business? He folds faster than a Trump casino.

And to those who bought into the mass-deportation fairytale—congrats. You just got deported from reality.