ICE: Few firms fined for hiring illegal workers

September 1, 2010 12:00 am

Immigration inspectors poring over the hiring paperwork of a California company last summer found that 262 employees - a whopping 93 percent of the total work force - had "suspect" documents on file.

At an Illinois service company, auditors found dubious documents for nearly eight in 10 of the business's 200-plus employees.

Inspectors examining records at a Texas manufacturing firm found suspicious paperwork for more than half of the 107 employees on the payroll.

But the companies didn't pay a penny in fines. None of the employers was led away in handcuffs. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials didn't even issue them a formal warning, the agency's internal records show.

Instead, they were instructed to purge their payrolls of illegal immigrants. Armed with assurances that the employees with suspect documents were fired - or, in the Texas case, "self-terminated" - the ICE auditors closed the cases.

The cases are just a few examples included in ICE's internal records on its audit initiative, an enforcement program launched last July by Obama administration officials.

In the past, ICE had faced criticism for raiding job sites and rounding up large numbers of illegal immigrants for deportation, but not necessarily building cases against employers.

With the audit initiative, ICE aims to scrutinize the hiring records of more businesses and impose what top officials describe as "tough" and "smart" employer sanctions.

But ICE audit records obtained recently through a Freedom of Information Act request show that the agency has, in many instances, failed to punish companies found to have significant numbers or high percentages of workers with questionable documents.

In response to the public records request, ICE provided limited details on about 430 audit cases listed as "closed" by the agency through February.

The records show inspectors identified more than 110 companies with suspect documents.

In total, the agency ordered 14 companies to pay fines totaling nearly $150,000, but it noted no employer arrests in connection with any of the cases.

ICE also has refused to disclose the names or locations of companies found through the auditing process to have hired illegal immigrants, saying the businesses have a right to "personal privacy." Illegal immigrants' advocates estimated the audits, often referred to as "silent raids," have cost thousands of workers their jobs. Angela Kelley, with the Center for American Progress, said the strategy appears to be more thoughtful than the work-site enforcement raids of the prior administration, but the impact is "equally as devastating."

"You have this drip, drip, drip of I-9 enforcement audits all over the country, and it has the same effect - people don't come to work the next day," she said.

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