It was promising when President Donald Trump listened to the pleading of his agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, and flipped on raiding farms, hotels and restaurants to arrest immigrants who don’t have legal status. But then Trump flopped and resumed the raids. Our hope is that he flips again.

This seems like yet one more manifestation of the truism that Trump is of the opinion of whomever he spoke to last. Rollins reportedly personally lobbied Trump to make the change after hearing from farmers and agriculture groups who were staring down economic ruin, blindsiding the immigration hawks.

No doubt that White House aide Stephen Miller, incensed by the possibility that some hard-working immigrants might be left alone, cornered the president and badgered him into rescinding brief and limited restrictions in service to his goal of having immigration agents make 3,000 arrests per day.

This quota is not possible to meet without extremely heavy-handed tactics that have already proven very unpopular with the public and corrosive to the fabric of American society, like raids by masked agents on businesses like restaurants. The administration and its defenders will keep claiming that this is an effort to pursue violent criminals, but the lie has been put to that assertion already over months of wide-ranging and haphazard arrests, often of people not accused of criminal conduct.

There is no magical third way where immigration enforcement agents can arrest thousands of people per day in ways that are fully compliant with our standards of due process and also only target the kinds of criminals that the public generally supports removing. This is a fantasy that some Trump voters who might consider themselves more moderate or compassionate have been sold and have wanted to believe, but we are sorry to say it’s just not possible.

There quite simply aren’t that many criminals living illegally in the country; if you are for mass deportation, you’re for detaining and deporting longtime residents with no criminal records who are forming the backbone of multiple crucial industries as well as keeping Social Security solvent. It’s that simple.

We’ll say again what we’ve said since the beginning of this fiasco: the type enforcement that people like Miller desperately want is not only a moral abomination but an economic catastrophe and a direct risk to this country’s basic system of government. There is no way to have a national police force empowered to conduct arrests without explanation that doesn’t infringe on everyone’s rights and our basic legal protections.

This effort has nothing to do with following the law, as cleanly demonstrated by the administration stripping half a million people of legal status overnight and detaining those who were following explicit instructions to attend immigration court hearings, as was their legal prerogative and obligation.

We imagine it wasn’t hard to convince the wishy-washy Trump to reverse course, as he’s never been too interested in policy. Yet, one thing he does seem to at least broadly care about is how he’s publicly perceived, and the support and adoration of the wealthy business community to which he always felt he belonged.

His polling numbers are now completely underwater on immigration and likely to only sink further as crops rot in the fields and swaths of the business community realize his administration was serious about rounding up their workers.

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