ICE raids raise question: What about the employers?

[Elderberry]

Waco Trib By NOMAAN MERCHANT 8/14/2019

The images of children crying after their parents were arrested in a massive immigration raid in Mississippi revived a longstanding complaint: Unauthorized workers are jailed or deported, while the managers and business owners who profit from their labor often go unprosecuted.

Under President Donald Trump, the number of business owners and managers who face criminal charges for employing unauthorized workers has stayed almost the same, even as almost every other enforcement measure has surged.

Last week's raids at seven chicken-processing plants were the largest worksite operation conducted under the Trump administration. The operation led to 680 arrests of people in the U.S. illegally, with expected criminal charges to follow for some. But no plant owners or top managers were immediately charged, following the pattern of other recent sweeps.

Lawyers and experts agree that investigating managers takes longer and is far more difficult than arresting workers. A key hurdle that predates the Trump administration is that federal law makes it a crime to "knowingly" hire workers who are in the U.S. illegally.

"The 'knowingly' term has proved to be a huge defense for employers," said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. "The employer says, 'I'm sorry, I didn't know they were unauthorized.'"

In a statement Tuesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Matthew Albence said that anyone found to have broken the law in the Mississippi case would be held accountable, including "the employers who profit off their crimes." Warrants unsealed after the Mississippi arrests allege that managers at two processing plants participated in fraud.

After Trump took office, then-Acting Director Thomas Homan declared that ICE would try to increase all worksite enforcement actions by 400%.

ICE succeeded almost across the board in just one government fiscal year. According to statistics the agency released in December, it quadrupled the number of investigations it opened and audits of paperwork submitted by employees to get hired. And it made 2,304 arrests in worksite cases, seven times as many as the previous year.

More: https://www.wacotrib.com/news/ap_nation/ice-raids-raise-question-what-about-the-employers/article_99cd13cd-3e7a-5fcf-aa58-20519c49671c.html

[Maj. Bill Martin]

Illegals generally have fake identification, etc., which means they can get jobs -- at least initially.  And employers who are too suspicious and refuse to hire someone who has facially valid identification can be sued for national origin or racial discrimination. 

They need to improve eVerify and make it mandatory.  Right now, the manual process for verifying employment eligibility can take six months or more.        And sometimes, even a "no match" letter isn't enough to fire someone who may be illegal.

[truth_seeker]

Illegals generally have fake identification, etc., which means they can get jobs -- at least initially.  And employers who are too suspicious and refuse to hire someone who has facially valid identification can be sued for national origin or racial discrimination. 

They need to improve eVerify and make it mandatory.  Right now, the manual process for verifying employment eligibility can take six months or more.

They have only been talking about this problem, since right after Reagan's Amnesty in 1986.

I have talked with empoyers--both contractors (neighbor, brother)

As long as they have copies of documents in their records, for I9, they are okay with ICE.

They need workers, not problems. Employers have held all along they are not immigration authorities.

Congress has kicked the can, as with most topics.

[PeteS in CA]

ICE executes federal search warrants at multiple Mississippi locations (ICE press release)

JACKSON, Miss. – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) executed multiple federal criminal search warrants at seven agricultural processing plants across Mississippi Wednesday morning as part of an ongoing HSI worksite enforcement criminal investigation.

In addition to executing federal search warrants and seizing business records pertaining to the ongoing federal criminal investigation, deportation officers with ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) in partnership with HSI detained approximately 680 removable aliens who were unlawfully working at the plants.

... In all cases, all the illegal aliens encountered as part of this operation are either being placed into removal proceedings before the federal immigration courts, and for those who already received due process and have been ordered removed, processed for removal from the U.S.

BTW, IIRC, Mississippi is one of several states that require all employers to use E-Verify. So this could get interesting.