Glenn Thompson took $550,000 from agribusiness PACs and then wrote a bill to legalize their illegal workers.
Now Trump says he had no idea the bill even existed.
And Ron DeSantis just called out his own party for betraying the voters who put them in power.
The Bill Congress Hoped You Wouldn't Notice
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania introduced the Securing Agriculture's Workforce Act of 2026 on June 30 – and made sure to dress it up in the right language.
Thompson called it practical and common sense.
He said "the border is now secure" and the time had come to address agriculture's labor shortcomings.
He lined up more than 400 agricultural organizations to endorse it.
What he didn't lead with: the bill lets illegal aliens already inside the United States – people who broke federal immigration law to get here and broke it again to get hired – apply for legal H-2A agricultural visas.
https://twitter.com/RonDeSantis/status/2079282403604853109?s=20
To qualify, an illegal immigrant must prove they worked in farming at least 180 days over the previous two years as of May 31, 2026.
That's it.
Meet the minimum, and immigration violations get waived.
The employers who hired them illegally?
The bill waives their liability too.
Thompson calls that "a fair and legal pathway."
DeSantis has a different word for it.
The Word Nobody on That List Wanted to Hear
"Amnesty is NOT what people voted for in 2024," DeSantis posted on X the moment the backlash hit.
He's right – and the timing makes this worse.
Trump won in 2024 on the strongest anti-amnesty platform in Republican history.
He promised the largest deportation operation in American history.
He's currently executing it.
https://twitter.com/Bannons_WarRoom/status/2079311367925100586?s=20
And while ICE is running operations across the country, nearly 50 House Republicans quietly lined up behind a bill that legalizes the very workers those operations are targeting.
When the Daily Caller's White House correspondent Reagan Reese asked Trump directly about the bill at a press conference Tuesday, his answer was stunning.
"I don't know about it, but I'll take a look at it," Trump said.
The chairman of the House Agriculture Committee introduced a legalization program for illegal immigrants – and the president of the United States found out about it from a reporter.
America Tried This Before and It Made Everything Worse
This is not the first time Washington, DC sold agricultural amnesty as a fix.
In 1986, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act – the original deal that was supposed to solve illegal immigration once and for all.
It included a special amnesty program for farmworkers, and 2.7 million illegal immigrants received legal status under it.
The enforcement promises that came with it never materialized.
Farms that got their workers legalized simply hired the next wave of illegal labor instead – cheaper than raising wages, easier than investing in automation, and faster than navigating the H-2A program legally.
The trap reset itself, and Congress is running it again.
Representative Michael McCaul of Texas – the former chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, the man who spent years as Congress's leading voice on immigration enforcement – took nearly $70,000 from the Texas Farm Bureau AGFUND and cosigned the bill.
https://twitter.com/ReOpenChris/status/2053947692024226235?s=20
The same man who once ran Homeland Security oversight is now co-sponsoring a bill to waive deportation grounds for illegal farm workers.
Why Every Future Illegal Immigrant Just Got a Road Map
The bill protects illegal immigrants from deportation.
The bill waives immigration violations.
The bill shields employers from criminal liability for having hired them.
And it sets a precedent that anyone who can prove six months of farm work gets to stay – permanently changing the calculus for every future illegal immigrant who knows agriculture is their path to legal status.
This is the same play Chuck Schumer ran in 1986 – he used farmworker legalization to get the entire IRCA amnesty bill across the finish line, then watched farms hire the next wave of illegal workers the moment enforcement dissolved.
DeSantis saw it clearly.
Trump was apparently the last to know.
Nearly 50 Republicans are hoping the voters who sent them to Congress won't notice until it's too late.
Sources:
- Reagan Reese, "Trump Promises To Investigate GOP Bill Offering Amnesty To Illegal Farmworkers," The Daily Caller, July 21, 2026.
- The Daily Caller Editorial Staff, "Republicans Promised To Put America First, Instead They've Betrayed Everyone For Money From Massive Agriculture Donors," The Daily Caller, July 21, 2026.
- The Federalist Staff, "47 Republicans Are Pushing Amnesty For Illegal Alien Agriculture Workers," The Federalist, July 20, 2026.
- Rep. Glenn Thompson, "Thompson Introduces Bipartisan Agricultural Labor Reform Bill," House Agriculture Committee Press Release, June 30, 2026.
- Immigration History Project, "Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) (1986)," immigrationhistory.org, February 3, 2020.
