Comments from conservative activist and commentator Charlie Kirk during his Monday podcast sent shivers through MAGA world. He told viewers that several high-level Trump administration officials were pressuring President Donald Trump to back a mass amnesty plan for illegal immigrants.
According to Kirk, the officials who were pushing for amnesty maintained: “We’re gonna lose the midterms because of the deportations. The people on the right, they’ll understand, and we need to come to the middle, and we need to legalize the 25 million people here in this country.”
He did not reveal his sources; nor did he name the officials who were pressuring Trump.
The visibly shaken podcast host told listeners, “It is happening right now in Washington, D.C. I can say this from first hand experience that people are pushing President Trump for amnesty. They are pushing him for mass legalization of illegals.”
“I can tell you now through other reporting that I’ve been able to do, and phone calls, there is a major push right now to do an amnesty deal — a major push.”
Trump’s comments during a Thursday night speech in Iowa about a potential compromise deal for agricultural, hotel, and leisure industry workers had alarmed Kirk. It was not the first time the president had addressed this issue, but these were his clearest remarks to date.
And he wasn’t alone. He said his phone lit up afterward.
He played a clip from Trump’s remarks: “People who have worked on a farm for 14, 15 years and they get thrown out pretty viciously. We can’t do it. We’ve got to work with the farmers. People who have hotels and leisure properties too, we’re gonna work with them. …”
Trump “didn’t use the word amnesty,” Kirk noted, but (according to Kirk) he meant some form of “soft amnesty” for these workers.
Kirk addressed his next words to the Trump administration: “If you want to break our coalition, go and push amnesty. That right there would be a complete collapse of everything we have worked for. Everything.”
If what Kirk was saying was true, it would have been a shocking betrayal. The president had campaigned on mass deportations, and now appeared to be backpedaling.
Fortunately, during a Tuesday morning press conference, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins set the record straight. She announced, “There will be NO amnesty. The mass deportations continue, but in a strategic way. And we move the work force toward automation and 100% American participation, which again, with 34 million people, able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do that fairly quickly.”
According to News Nation, migrants make up 86% of the nation’s agricultural workforce. The outlet also reported that roughly 75,000 illegals were working on farms in the state of Iowa. That may explain why Trump was signaling tolerance during his speech in the Hawkeye State.
At any rate, the sheer number of migrant farmworkers suggests that moving to an all-American work force will not happen overnight; nor will it be easy.
But, after all of the mixed messaging from the president himself over the past month or two, the American people received a clear message from the Trump administration on Tuesday. There will be no amnesty. And that’s a tremendous relief.
Rollins also said the government will be “tak[ing] swift legislative and executive action to ban the purchase of American farmland by Chinese nationals and other foreign adversaries.”
Hopefully, the administration will also address the issue of foreigners — particularly Chinese companies — purchasing farmland near U.S. military bases. After all, we have seen recently what the Israelis were able to accomplish inside Iran even without owning property there.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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