In a Sunday evening Truth Social post, President Donald Trump ordered ICE officers to “do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,” first focusing on “our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role.”
The move is a bit of a departure from a post that Trump made on Thursday, in which he shocked supporters by announcing that “changes are coming” to the administration’s “very aggressive immigration policy.” Trump noted that farmers and people in the hospitality industry let him know that they’re losing “very good, long-time workers” because of the policy.
A few hours later, the New York Times reported that the administration had decided to “largely pause raids and arrests in the agricultural industry, hotels and restaurants,” citing an internal DHS email from Tatum King, a senior ICE official:
“Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,” he wrote in the message.
The email explained that investigations involving “human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are OK.” But it said — crucially — that agents were not to make arrests of “noncriminal collaterals,” a reference to people who are undocumented but who are not known to have committed any crime.
To say that those developments went over like a lead balloon with Trump’s base would be an understatement.
The Times’ piece also characterized the June 6 raids in Los Angeles as a worksite raid, although the company raided, Ambiance Apparel, has a shady past.
“The guidance did not appear to rule out raids at work sites in other industries, like the one at a garment factory in Los Angeles that sparked the protests.”
Ambiance Apparel and its owner Sang Bum “Ed” Noh were the subjects of a multi-year federal investigation into customs fraud and money laundering, and in 2020 Noh took a plea deal in which he pled guilty to felony charges of conspiracy and subscribing to a false tax return and agreed to pay almost $118 million in restitution.
Ambiance Apparel “agreed to plead guilty to eight counts, including conspiracy, money laundering, and customs offenses,” according to the DOJ’s press release. The press release also states:
“Once the guilty pleas are entered on behalf of Ambiance, the company expects to be placed on probation for five years, during which time it will implement an effective anti-money laundering compliance and ethics program with an outside compliance monitor.”
The date of that press release was August 26, 2020, meaning that Ambiance would still be on probation right now if they indeed received a five-year probation.
Even under Trump’s scaled-back ICE raid posture, Ambiance Apparel still would have been on ICE’s radar. However, it looks like Trump will now be focusing on inner cities and sanctuary cities.
