The ICE Man Cometh, Prompting a New Look at E-Verify

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://www.rollcall.com/news/policy/ice-man-cometh-new-look-everify

When federal agents arrived at nearly 100 7-Eleven locations across the
country last month to check the paperwork of store clerks selling Big
Gulps and coffee, it was the clearest sign that President Donald Trump is
serious about taking on employers who illegally hire undocumented
immigrants.

Twenty-one arrests were made during the Jan. 10 raids at convenience
stores in 17 states and the District of Columbia in what was the Trump
administration’s strongest action yet targeting employers. Thomas Homan,
acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said at the
time that the raids sent “a strong message” to employers that “ICE will
enforce the law, and if you are found to be breaking the law, you will be
held accountable.”

That kind of tough talk has been delivered before, from Republican and
Democratic presidents whose administrations have carried out similar
raids. The government has collected more than $260 million in fines,
forfeitures and restitutions from law-breaking employers since 2009,
including $95 million from a single settlement last September — the
largest ever by ICE.

Homan said the practice of hiring undocumented workers has for decades
been a major “pull” factor contributing to illegal immigration. Trump is
determined to eliminate that magnet, he said, because it would protect job
opportunities for American workers.

The problem, according to lawmakers and immigration experts, is that few
employers end up behind bars.

Watch: DACA Protesters Sit on Senate Steps, Get Arrested

“Employers in my experience are indicted and have to pay a fine, but they
aren’t going to jail,” said Allen Orr, who runs an immigration law firm in
Washington.

There’s disagreement in Congress over how to legislate tougher workplace
enforcement that would weaken the jobs magnet, even as fewer undocumented
immigrants appear to be trying to enter the United States. Some want to
force employers to use a government system called E-Verify to make sure
they’re hiring only people who are eligible to work.

“Nearly 20 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed. Meanwhile, 7
million people are working in the United States illegally,” said Rep.
Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who has introduced mandatory E-Verify
legislation in multiple Congresses. “By expanding the E-Verify system to
all U.S. employers, this bill will ensure that jobs only go to legal
workers.”

During the 2016 election, immigration restrictionists who pined for a
president willing to take on errant corporations thought they hit pay dirt
with Trump, who spoke passionately about an immigration policy that would
give American workers an economic advantage.

Trump has already stepped up interior enforcement and border security, so
worksite enforcement is the logical next step in his immigration agenda.
As Congress takes a stab at revising immigration policy, as Trump has
asked lawmakers to do, mandatory use of E-Verify is likely to be a topic
of debate on Capitol Hill.

“Until you have that, it all depends on the will of the president and
everyone underneath the president and all the members of Congress to not
bend to the corporate lobbies,” said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA,
which advocates for lower immigration levels and tougher worksite
enforcement.

Familiar pattern
The 7-Eleven raids don’t constitute new policy, as past presidents
routinely ordered similar, high-profile blitzes to send a message.

Under President George W. Bush, ICE raided six Swift & Company meatpacking
plants in Utah, Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Texas and Minnesota in December
2006, detaining at least 1,300 undocumented immigrants.

Days after the raids, then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff
urged Congress to create a temporary worker program that answers the
United States’ “economic need without putting people in a position where
they are sorely tempted to break the law.”

In the agriculture sector, in particular, Chertoff said there were growing
complaints from farmers who could not find field hands to pick lettuce and
harvest other crops.

The Bush administration also made headlines after it began charging
undocumented immigrants working in the U.S. illegally with a variety of
criminal offenses.

https://cdn.media.rollcall.com/author/2018/02/05enforcement-government-
hits.jpg

On May 12, 2008, 389 people were arrested at Agriprocessors in Postville,
Iowa. More than 300 of those individuals were charged with identity theft,
falsely using a Social Security number or card, and illegally re-entering
the United States after being deported.

At the time it was deemed the “largest criminal worksite enforcement
operation ever in the United States,” according to U.S. Attorney Matt M.
Dummermuth.

Sarah Pierce, an associate policy analyst for U.S. programs at the
nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, said the Bush administration’s
unstated goal was clear.

“This raid was meant to be a high-profile raid. It was meant to send a
message,” she said. “The message is that the United States is not a
friendly place for immigrants, but it encourages these populations to go
underground further and further.”

President Barack Obama took a low-profile approach and focused more on
employer audits.

Companies are required to get most workers to complete Employment
Eligibility Verification forms, or I-9s, and keep them on file. After a
random inspection, ICE typically gives a company three days to produce its
I-9s. If some are fraudulent, the company could be made to pay a fine. If
a company is found to have knowingly hired undocumented workers, owners or
managers could face criminal prosecution.

The number of audits conducted by ICE surged during Obama’s first term,
from 1,444 in fiscal 2009 to 3,127 in fiscal 2013.

https://cdn.media.rollcall.com/author/2018/02/05enforcement-audits.jpg

Pierce said during Obama’s second term, his administration shifted its
focus to detaining undocumented immigrants with criminal records rather
than those merely working illegally in the United States. The number of I-
9 audits fell by more than half from fiscal 2012 to fiscal 2016, as did
the number of criminal arrests of management-level employers, according to
statistics provided by ICE.

“By the end of the Obama administration the priorities were border
enforcement and going after undocumented immigrants who committed crimes,
not so much working illegally,” Pierce said.

Trump’s move
Trump signed a “Buy American, Hire American” executive order in April
requiring the Homeland Security, Justice, Labor and State departments to
propose new regulations that would “protect the interests of United States
workers in the administration of our immigration system, including through
the prevention of fraud or abuse.”

But the order didn’t take any real aim at employers who hire undocumented
workers, focusing instead on abusers of the H-1B “high-tech” visa program.
Without mandatory E-Verify legislation, it was unclear what Trump could do
without Congress.

Then, ICE announced in September that an investigation that began during
the Obama years concluded in a $95 million criminal settlement with
Asplundh Tree Expert Co., a Pennsylvania-based tree trimming company that
ICE accused of skirting laws to dominate the market with an undocumented
workforce.

Homan announced a month later that he was ordering the agency’s Homeland
Security Investigations division to increase its workplace enforcement “by
four to five times.” A gruff, blunt career cop who leapfrogged his former
boss when Trump nominated him to lead ICE, Homan is exactly the type of
enforcer who could instill fear in lawbreaking employers.

Homan vowed ICE would begin arresting more undocumented workers during
worksite inspections, a practice that has dwindled since Obama’s first
term. In fiscal 2017, ICE apprehended 172 workers on civil immigration
charges, down from 1,644 in fiscal 2009.

Management-level criminal arrests have also been in steady decline: ICE
made 135 criminal arrests in fiscal 2017, including 62 management
officials, according to agency statistics.

“Not only are we going to prosecute the employers that hire illegal
workers, we’re going to detain and remove the illegal alien workers,”
Homan said of the future under Trump.

Beck of NumbersUSA said increasing the number of raids without an increase
in prosecutions and fines is pointless. “Breaking the law is, for
businesses, a cost-analysis decision and they decide that it’s profitable
to break the law,” he said.

He worries that Trump’s friends could dissuade the president from ordering
his administration to take the gloves off. That’s why he wants Congress to
pass mandatory E-Verify legislation.

“It’s enforcement on autopilot,” Beck said.

Business groups, however, tend to oppose E-Verify because of the impact an
instantly dwindling workforce could have on a particular industry, such as
agriculture. Without workers to replace undocumented immigrants, some
industries could be shocked into oblivion.

“It would be a super huge problem,” said Paul Schlegel, deputy executive
director for public policy at the American Farm Bureau Federation.

https://cdn.media.rollcall.com/author/2018/02/05enforcement-worksite-
arrests.jpg

Pushing Congress
Republicans have spent years pushing to mandate the use of E-Verify, which
Congress created in 1996. In fiscal 2017, the program audited about 35
million I-9s, weeding out nearly 330,000 fraudulent ones. More than
500,000 businesses are enrolled in the program.

The House Judiciary Committee approved Smith’s latest mandatory E-Verify
bill in October, and it was wrapped into Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte’s
proposal to solve the current crisis facing “Dreamers” enrolled in the
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Goodlatte, a former immigration lawyer, has proposed offsetting the
effects on agriculture by creating a new guest worker visa program that
would allow experienced undocumented workers to present themselves to the
government and receive legal status — as long as they return to their home
countries between harvests or other work periods.

Schlegel said his organization likes the idea behind the Virginia
Republican’s supplemental visa proposal, but still has some concerns,
including whether enough work permits would be made available to supplant
the number of workers lost because of fraudulent I-9s.

Democrats in years past have resisted requiring use of E-Verify because
they say it would create labor shortages in the agriculture industry and
expose too many undocumented immigrants for deportation, a concern made
more prescient given the Trump administration’s wide enforcement scope.

But given the proper motivation, it is possible Democrats could be swayed.

Mandatory E-Verify language was included in the comprehensive immigration
bill the Senate passed in 2013. The 52 Democrats who supported it were,
perhaps, driven by the fact the bill would have granted a pathway to
citizenship for an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in
the United States.

Now, with the fates of nearly 700,000 Dreamers placed squarely in the
hands of Congress, Democrats are again weighing a decision to change
course.

Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez, an Illinois Democrat who was arrested at multiple
Dreamer protests last year, said that now is the time for tough decisions.

“I’m ready to do E-Verify,” he said.


--
Donald J. Trump, 304 electoral votes to 227, defeated compulsive liar in
denial Hillary Rodham Clinton on December 19th, 2016. The clown car
parade of the democrat party ran out of gas and got run over by a Trump
truck.

Congratulations President Trump. Thank you for cleaning up the disaster
of the Obama presidency.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp.

ObamaCare is a total 100% failure and no lie that can be put forth by its
supporters can dispute that.

Obama jobs, the result of ObamaCare. 12-15 working hours a week at minimum
wage, no benefits and the primary revenue stream for ObamaCare. It can't
be funded with money people don't have, yet liberals lie about how great
it is.

Obama increased total debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in the eight
years he was in office, and sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood queer
liberal democrat donors.