Fox News Host Wants Child Labor to Replace Deported Immigrants
Charlie Hurt insisted that the government’s refusal to use child labor on farms is “mindblowing.”
Fox News pundit Charlie Hurt is ready to send kids into fields to make up for the shortage of cheap labor stemming from President Donald Trump’s deportation spree.
Fox & Friends Weekend Co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy, who is married to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, described a field trip she took with Hunt and fellow co-host Charlie Kirk to a blueberry farm, sparking a debate about whether the government should do more to subsidize farming.
“Our government subsidizes ethanol. [It] subsidizes the corn for fructose corn syrup that then goes into processed foods,” Campos-Duffy said Sunday. “I would be totally fine with the government subsidizing labor so there’s more fresh fruits and vegetables, especially the organic kind.”
Hurt went a step further.
President Donald Trump has pledged to conduct the “largest mass deportation event in history.”
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
“The answer to this,” Hunt said. “You stop paying people not to work.”
Hurt added that picking blueberries is a “wonderful, rewarding job” and that he has fond memories of pulling tobacco in his youth.
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Bemoaning how farming and construction work had been “handed over to—largely—illegal aliens," he offered up schoolkids to take over the “cheap labor.”
“Allow children to do it as summer jobs. The idea that your government—your precious government—doesn’t allow children to work summer jobs in blueberry fields is just mindblowing to me," he said.
“It’s very difficult work, by the way,” Campos-Duffy cautioned before conceding, “It’s fine, I’m totally down with everything you’re saying.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on farms have stoked concerns about a labor shortage.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
The panel agreed that subsidizing farming and paying more for blueberries to “actually have Americans picking” them was the way to go.
In a move that left some of his most hard-line supporters feeling betrayed, President Donald Trump initially backed off his mass deportation promises last month and ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to leave agricultural and hospitality workers alone.
“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long-time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Just days later, however, the Department of Homeland Security reversed the order, and the president doubled down on his initial promise to oversee the “largest mass deportation event in history” by encouraging ICE to “do all in their power.”
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