The president has urged officials from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to suspend largely raids and arrests in the agriculture, hospitality and restaurant industries, according to an internal email and three U.S. officials consulted by The New York Times.

“The guidance was sent Thursday in an email by a senior ICE official, Tatum King, to regional leaders of the ICE department that typically conducts criminal investigations, including workplace operations, known as Homeland Security Investigations,” the report said.

ICE divisions, which include special investigations (HSI) and the execution of removal orders (ERO), received the order.

“Effective today, please suspend all investigations/enforcement operations in agriculture-related workplaces (including aquaculture and meatpacking plants), restaurants and hotels,” the email said.

However, it notes that investigations related to “human trafficking, money laundering and drug trafficking in these industries are permitted.”

The operations in those cases It adds, does not authorize agents to make “collateral” arrests, as is currently the case and as border czar Tom Homan indicated.

“Agents were not to make arrests of 'noncriminal collateral,' referring to undocumented people who are not known to have committed a crime,” it states.

The Times report with three anonymous sources was confirmed by the assistant secretary for communications at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“We will follow the President’s direction and continue working to remove the worst illegal alien criminals from the streets of the United States,” Tricia McLaughlin said.

This modifies orders that White House senior adviser Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had given to ICE agents to detain up to 3,000 people a day and target workplaces.

On June 12, President Trump acknowledged that the raids were affecting important industries in the U.S., something that civil organizations that defend immigrants have exposed with various economic studies on the contributions of undocumented immigrants to the U.S. economy.

“Our great farmers and people in the hotel and leisure sector have been stating that our very aggressive immigration policy is taking very good, long-term workers away from them, and those jobs are almost impossible to replace,” the president wrote on his Truth Social account on Thursday.

Major damage to the economy

This newspaper published that President Trump’s plan for mass deportations – which intensified in Los Angeles, California – will represent a significant blow to the US economy, according to a projection by the American Immigration Council (AIC).

“Due to the loss of workers in various US industries, we found that mass deportation would reduce the US gross domestic product (GDP) by between 4.2% and 6.8%,” says the report from the end of 2024.

Current federal officials do not recognize it, but the report highlights that undocumented immigrants contribute significant amounts in taxes and social programs, to which they do not have access.

“In 2022 alone, undocumented immigrant households paid $46.8 billion in federal taxes and $29.3 billion in state and local taxes,” it was stated. “Undocumented immigrants also contributed $22.6 billion to Social Security and $5.7 billion to Medicare.”