Social media was ablaze yesterday and today with videos of ICE agents grabbing farm workers as they did their jobs in the fields and arriving at hotels and other places of employment to arrest undocumented workers.

Trump must have been bombarded with calls from farmers and business owners, outraged that their long-time workers were seized. Who will pick the fruits and vegetables? Who will clean the hotel rooms? Who will staff the kitchen and bus tables?

These were his supporters. They wanted the illegals deported, but not their workers. How would they function without their staff and their laborers?

Trump heard them. Late Friday he issued an order to ICE to avoid farms, restaurants, hotels, and meat packing facilities.

Maybe it suddenly occurred to him that removing the workforce from so many basic industries would be bad for the economy. Maybe Stephen Miller was out of town and turned off his cell phone.

The New York Times reported on his sudden change of plans:

The Trump administration has abruptly shifted the focus of its mass deportation campaign, telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to largely pause raids and arrests in the agricultural industry, hotels and restaurants, according to an internal email and three U.S. officials with knowledge of the guidance.

The decision suggested that the scale of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign — an issue that is at the heart of his presidency — is hurting industries and constituencies that he does not want to lose.

The new guidance comes after protests in Los Angeles against the Trump administration’s immigration raids, including at farms and businesses. It also came as Mr. Trump made a rare concession this week that his crackdown was hurting American farmers and hospitality businesses.

The guidance was sent on Thursday in an email by a senior ICE official, Tatum King, to regional leaders of the ICE department that generally carries out criminal investigations, including work site operations, known as Homeland Security Investigations.

“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 “non-criminal collaterals,” a reference to people who are undocumented but who are not known to have committed any other crime.