Thread: Homeland Security shifts focus to employers

Homeland Security shifts focus to employers

A new policy will aim enforcement efforts at those who hire illegal workers. But immigration raids will continue, sources say.

By Josh Meyer and Anna Gorman

March 31, 2009

Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington — Stepping into the political minefield of immigration reform, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano soon will direct federal agents to focus more on arresting and prosecuting American employers than the illegal laborers who sneak into the country to work for them, department officials said Monday.

The shift in emphasis will be outlined in revamped field guidelines issued to agents of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, as early as this week, several officials familiar with the change said.

The policy is in line with comments that President Obama made during last year's campaign, when he said enforcement efforts had failed because they focused on illegal immigrants rather than on the companies that hired them.

"There is a supply side and a demand side," one Homeland Security official said. "Like other law enforcement philosophies, there is a belief that by focusing more on the demand side, you cut off the supply."

Another department official said the changes were the result of a broad review of all immigration and border security programs and policies that Napolitano began in her first days in office.

"She is focused on using our limited resources to the greatest effect, targeting criminal aliens and employers that flout our laws and deliberately cultivate an illegal workforce," the official said.

Homeland Security officials emphasized that the department would not stop conducting sweeps of businesses while more structural changes to U.S. immigration law and policy were being contemplated.

Agents, however, will be held to a higher standard of probable cause for conducting raids, the officials said, out of concern that at least one recent raid in Washington state and another planned sweep in Chicago were based on speculative information that illegal workers were employed.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the coming policy changes.

The new guidelines would mark a fundamental shift away from what was happening at the end of the Bush administration, said Doris Meissner, who served as commissioner of ICE's predecessor -- the Immigration and Naturalization Service -- under President Clinton.

The law governing employer enforcement requires proof that a business knowingly hired illegal workers. So without an effective way for employers to verify workers' status, Meissner said, "It is very easy for that 'knowingly' to be a big loophole."

Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute think tank in Washington, said the Bush administration also vowed to go after employers but rarely did so. In later years, it drew criticism by conducting large-scale raids at businesses across the country aimed almost entirely at workers.

The Clinton administration, in contrast, used a combination of laws to go after employers for smuggling, violating labor laws and engaging in criminal conspiracy, she said. "At the end of the day, when you make cases like that, you have more impact."

Advocates on both sides of the issue have been awaiting major changes in immigration policy since Obama's election -- particularly since he tapped Napolitano, a former border state governor and prosecutor, to head the Homeland Security Department.

Conservatives have warned that any easing of enforcement efforts will result in more arrivals of illegal workers, who will compete for jobs held by Americans.

And immigrant rights groups have complained that the lack of reform measures to date under Obama suggested the White House was backing down from campaign pledges to curb workplace enforcement efforts.

Those concerns ratcheted up dramatically when ICE agents swept into a manufacturing plant in Bellingham, Wash., in February and arrested dozens of people on suspicion that they were in the country illegally.

Napolitano suggested to Congress that she was unhappy with the raid and that she would "get to the bottom of this." But, she added: "In my view, we have to do workplace enforcement. It needs to be focused on employers who intentionally and knowingly exploit the illegal labor market."

Homeland Security officials confirmed that a planned raid in the Chicago area was delayed in recent weeks because senior administrators expected "a higher level of scrutiny to be applied," one official said. "Politics has nothing to do with it. It is all about the quality of the investigative work and the effectiveness of targeting the employers."

Michael W. Cutler, a retired senior special INS agent, said the Obama administration needed to go after workers and employers to send a message that it would not condone illegal immigration.

"Who is more responsible for prostitution, the hookers or the johns? It is a shared responsibility," said Cutler, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a group opposed to illegal immigration.

He said it would be "dumb" to "go after employers and not the illegal aliens. That means they are going to make very few arrests. And the message that sends is that if you can make it across the border, you're home free. No one is going to be looking for you."

Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said the Obama administration also needed to target employers who did not pay minimum wage and who exposed workers to unsafe conditions. But she said she hoped the new guidelines would mark a good first step by halting mass raids.

"What happened during the Bush administration is unconscionable," she said. "At the end of the day, it really targeted a group of vulnerable workers who just were trying to bring the food to the table."

www.latimes.com

Today's "Change" for the worse is less immigration enforcement.

I'm very against just punishing the employers.

So, DHS is going to go into businesses, arrest the employer who may not realize they are hiring illegal aliens, since they use fake IDs and committing ID fraud, especially considering that employers have been cut off from E-Verify and the new I-9s by the Democratic Congress and Obama.

This is good news for illegal aliens who want to come here and work illegally in the US. Now the illegals can keep their jobs or at worse move onto another one, when their boss gets thrown in jail and they receive a get out of jail free card from Obama and Napolitano! How nice.

This is ludicrous.

DHS is like a car with a blow out and a broken axel, so Obama's solution is just change the tire?

It's not the "party of no", it's the party of "no, I wouldn't do that, if I were you."

Dixie

What about all the illegal aliens here who aren't working? The ones here who have kids and are collecting benefits. This is a huge issue that doesn't get addressed in these talks about workplace enforcement.

Both employers and the illegal aliens must be punished. E-Verify would make it much easier to see who's hiring illegals, so would no match letters. Go after landscapers, hotels, restaurants, builders as well; don't limit it to just large manufacturers.

Make it mandatory to check legal status of the parents of "US citizen" children. If they are illegal aliens, stop the benefits. Make it impossible to live in the US if they are here illegally.

Anything less is a farce.

Making E-Verify mandatory would alleviate much of the need to conduct immigration raids after a period of time, as illegal invaders could be stopped at the front door before they had the opportunity to fraudulently obtain employment in this country. With E-Verify as the law, employers could no longer tender up the excuse, we didn't know the identification presented was fradulent and or stolen! E-Verify is quick, easy, with a 99% accuracy rate and it's FREE!

I'm sure this terrifies those companies who rely upon cheap, illegal invader labor in an effort to exploit labor laws and avoid hiring American citizens because it would not be as favorable to their bottom line. This could result in some executive foregoing the purchase of that brand new BMW for his 16 year old daughter because his year end bonus wasn't once what it used to be. SO WHAT!!!

Those who oppose E-Verify do not want it made the law because it WORKS! That's the bottom line!

Our so called elected officials want to have it both ways. No E-Verify and no immigration raids! Sure sounds as if they are attempting to make life easier for illegal invaders to steal jobs from American citizens!