This article originally appeared in The Dispatch on February 18, 2026.
Last June, the president posted on Truth Social that immigration enforcement was “taking very good, long-time workers away” from farms and hotels, with “those jobs being almost impossible to replace.” Then he added: “Changes are coming!”
Despite these promised changes, by October the Department of Labor had filed a document in the Federal Register acknowledging that the “near total cessation” of unauthorized labor threatened food production, and the Department of Agriculture had quietly discontinued the Agricultural Labor Survey, which had been in continuous operation since the late 1980s and was the only national instrument tracking the availability of farm laborers.
This January, the White House published a fact sheet titled “Mass Deportations Are Improving Americans’ Quality of Life” that attributed gains in housing affordability, wages, jobs, and safety to the administration’s removal operations.
These three approaches function in a loose hierarchy. Where possible, the administration argues that mass deportations are an economic boon. Where necessary, it acknowledges disruptions but promises common-sense solutions are around the corner. And where neither suffices, it has quietly dismantled instruments that would measure the costs of its enforcement crackdown.
