On March 30, 2026, a congressman stood outside a crab processing plant on the Choptank River in Cambridge, Maryland, and took a victory lap.

He had just persuaded the Trump White House to let roughly 65,000 extra foreign workers into the country for the season — about 30,000 more than the administration had said it would allow. The owner of the plant thanked him for it.

"I've been in long enough to know how to get things done, and we got it done," the congressman said.

The congressman was Andy Harris — chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, the most hard-line bloc in Congress, and the same man who spent the previous year saying local officials who get in the way of deportations should be prosecuted.

Both of those things are true at once. That's the story.

What he did in Washington

Start with the public Andy Harris, the one who goes on television.

In December 2024, after several Maryland jurisdictions said they wouldn't help federal immigration agents, Harris told FOX45 Baltimore that local leaders who stood in ICE's way should face criminal charges: "If they are going to stop them from doing it, they should be prosecuted." He added: "Shame on these local officials."

He also floated cutting off their money. "If states are not willing to keep up their end of the bargain, which is that federal immigration law – that's the law of the land – well then maybe you don't need the education dollars, the road dollars, all the other dollars that flow from the federal government."

A month later, in January 2025, he said the same thing again while launching a state-level Freedom Caucus in Annapolis: the incoming administration was "not going to look favorably upon jurisdictions that, with one hand, ask for federal dollars and, with the other hand, pass it out to illegal immigrants." One of the first things Congress would do, he said, is "go to those jurisdictions that don't cooperate with the federal government and attempt to achieve savings there."

In September 2025, when Wicomico County signed a 287(g) agreement letting local officers enforce federal immigration law, Harris applauded it: "I applaud Wicomico County for taking steps to help get illegal alien criminals off our streets, making our neighborhoods safer."

And on June 9, 2026, he was one of the 214 votes that put $70 billion into ICE — a bill that passed by two votes, which means every Republican yes was a deciding vote, his included.

That's the record. Nobody has to guess where the public Andy Harris stands.

What he did back home

Now the other one.

The H-2B visa program lets American businesses bring in foreign workers for seasonal, non-farm jobs — landscaping, construction, hotels, and on Maryland's Eastern Shore, picking meat out of blue crabs by hand. Congress caps it at 66,000 a year, split between halves of the fiscal year, and hands out the slots by lottery. Since 2016, appropriators have also given the Homeland Security secretary the power to release tens of thousands more if he chooses.

Trump's administration usually didn't choose to. Under the "Buy American, Hire American" policy, it repeatedly resisted issuing the maximum.

This year Harris went to the White House and changed that. On February 3, 2026, DHS and the Labor Department published a rule authorizing 64,716 supplemental H-2B visas — the full amount the law allows, and roughly 30,000 more than the administration had previously announced.

He is not shy about wanting more. He told the crab plant's owner he plans to push "certified employer" language into the next Homeland Security funding bill, so that companies that have used the program for years are guaranteed their workers every season regardless of the lottery. He has pitched Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on expanding temporary foreign labor generally. An analyst who follows visa policy at the Economic Policy Institute — a group critical of how H-2B workers are treated — called Harris "the ringleader" of the push.

Harris chairs the House subcommittee that writes the Agriculture Department's budget. He is the only Republican in Maryland's ten-member delegation, and the only member of it with the ear of this White House. When he asks, he gets.

His answer, and the problem with it

Harris has a response ready, and it deserves to be stated fairly.

"This is not an immigration issue — this is a temporary foreign worker issue," he told POLITICO. "Once we control the uncontrolled border crossing, let's talk about how we can bring a foreign workforce in to boost the economy where it needs to be boosted."

That is a real distinction. H-2B workers come legally, on paperwork, and go home at the end of the season. Nobody is accusing Harris of breaking a rule.

But look at what the distinction actually does for the people in his district.

On July 21, 2025, ICE agents arrested Daniel Fuentes Espinal, 54, while he was driving to work in Easton — a town in Harris's district. Fuentes Espinal had come to the United States legally in 2001 on a six-month visa and stayed. He had been pastor of Iglesia del Nazareno Jesús Te Ama in Easton since 2015. He has three children. He was moved to a detention center in Salisbury, then Baltimore, then to Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana, most of a country away from his congregation.

His neighbors raised more than $50,000 for his family and asked their congressman for help.

Here is what their congressman said:

"I believe he's here illegally, under illegal status, not even Temporary Protected Status."

"Under clear reading of federal law, I mean, the gentleman is subject to deportation."

"I don't think he's ever attempted to become a U.S. citizen or attempted to gain legal status. I don't think he's ever worked in my office to do it."

Harris said his office would "pursue whether or not exceptions can be made." Fuentes Espinal was eventually granted bond and released after about three weeks, and his family is still working on a green card.

So set the two months next to each other. In February, Harris walked down Pennsylvania Avenue and personally arranged for tens of thousands of foreign workers to enter the country, because businesses in his district needed the labor. In August, a man who had lived in his district for a decade and preached to its Spanish-speaking families every Sunday got a lecture about the clear reading of federal law.

The difference isn't that one is legal and one isn't. Harris helped write the rule that made the first group legal. He's actively trying to write a better one for next year. He has the power to move immigration law when the people asking are business owners. He has said it is not his job when the person asking is a pastor.

The economy he describes runs on this labor either way

Harris's own account of the Eastern Shore makes the point better than we could.

There were once more than 50 crab producers in the region. Local pickers moved into manufacturing jobs in the mid-1990s and never came back. The companies that couldn't bring in foreign workers closed. The ones that had bad luck in the visa lottery closed later. Fewer than a dozen are left.

That is a local economy that has depended on foreign labor for thirty years, and Harris knows it in detail — he has been fighting for these visas since he arrived in Congress in 2011, and pushed the same policy in the House while then-Sen. Barbara Mikulski pushed it in the Senate. In a 2022 statement, he warned that without the visas, American businesses would "be forced to scale back or shutter their operations entirely, further driving up prices for goods and services, killing good paying permanent American jobs, and harming local economies."

He's right. Cutting off the workers raises prices and kills jobs. He has understood that about the crab houses for fifteen years.

He has never once applied it to anybody else. He rails against any path to citizenship for people already here. He voted to fund the largest interior enforcement operation in American history. He wants sheriffs deputized and officials prosecuted. And when the raids reach a church in Easton, the answer is that the law is the law.

There's even a version of this in his own words on food. Harris told POLITICO he wants a "buy American" mandate on the roughly $100 billion a year in SNAP food assistance, so the money buys American-grown food. Then he added the quiet part: "But that means that you're going to have to have workers here."

Workers here. Just not the ones already here.

We've seen this shape before

Harris is not the only Republican running two immigration policies at once. Mario Diaz-Balart wrote letters defending Venezuelans in his district and then voted for the same $70 billion ICE bill. Cliff Bentz told a reporter he'd spent six months privately lobbying Stephen Miller to stop deporting people with no criminal record — three weeks after voting to pay for it.

What makes Harris different is that he isn't hedging or apologizing. He is using real power, effectively, and getting real results — for employers. The pastor got a citation to federal law.

Andy Harris has represented Maryland's 1st District for 15 years. He is the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus and one of the most influential Republicans in Congress on immigration. He has proved, in writing, that he can move this administration when he wants to.

Voters on the Eastern Shore are entitled to ask why he only wants to for some people.

Source

The Trump ally cracking down on immigration in Washington — and bringing in foreign workers back home — Jennifer Scholtes, POLITICO, April 12, 2026.

Photo: Rep. Andy Harris tours the J.M. Clayton Company's crab processing plant in Cambridge, Maryland, March 30, 2026. Francis Chung/POLITICO.