Republican urges Trump administration to ‘step back’ and rethink its immigration agenda | American politics

A close political ally of Donald Trump broke with the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda and urged it to “step back” to assess what it could do better.

“To get better, the first thing you have to do is admit that you’re doing something wrong,” Jim Justice, a Republican senator from West Virginia, told Politico. “And in this situation, with everything that’s going on and everything that’s going on, we probably need to take a step back and say, ‘Maybe we’re doing something wrong here or there,’ and then adapt to that.”

Justice, who also serves on the Senate Agriculture Committee, made his comments after three livestock associations condemned the activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for negatively affecting agricultural communities.

But his comments also come after an ACLU of West Virginia investigation found that about three-quarters of the more than 593 people arrested by ICE in the state during “Operation Country Roads” in January did not have criminal records.

“Before you know it, you have people getting carried away with their jobs and whatever, and all of a sudden you’re pushing away people who have lived on the corner of your street for 15 years, and I don’t know if we need to do that kind of thing,” Justice told Politico.

Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda is a signature policy of his administration. Many voters have indicated they want tougher immigration policies, but federal agents’ heavy-handed tactics have sparked anger across the country.

For ranchers in rural communities, ICE’s operations have had “a significant chilling effect on legal, documented and qualified workers” who participate in beef production and the livestock supply chain, the Kansas Livestock Association, Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association and Texas Cattle Feeders Association said in a statement released last week.

Dairy farmers have also recently raised concerns that ICE operations in rural areas could soon harm their industries.

“If we made a concerted effort to put enforcement activities in place in the agricultural sector, we could really harm our ability to produce food to feed ourselves,” Rick Naerebout, CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, told NPR.

West Virginia is home to more than 22,700 ranchers, most of which are family-owned operations.

Justice’s criticism makes him the latest Republican to distance himself from Trump as the midterm elections approach.

Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican congresswoman from Florida, recently released a campaign ad telling Trump that “immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far.”

The Guardian has asked the White House for a response.