Published: 10.05.2006

Immigration gears up to start busting those who employ entrants
By Thomas Stauffer
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
By the numbers
11 million
Estimated number of illegal residents in the U.S.
7.2 million
Estimated number of illegal residents working in the U.S.
668
The number of business owners or managers arrested nationwide for employing undocumented workers, through August of the federal fiscal year ending Sept. 30.
143
Business owners or managers arrested in the seven prior years combined.
Source: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Immigration officials have the funding and personnel to bust Arizona businesses that willingly hire illegal workers and are on the verge of at least one criminal indictment of a major state employer, a spokesman said.
"We have what I would prefer to characterize as a fortunate change in circumstances where we finally have the personnel, budget and staff to enable us to enforce laws that should have always been enforced," said Russell "Pete" Ahr, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Phoenix.
"I can't give away the whole house here, but we've got very significant investigations open in Phoenix, Tucson and employers on the border. We're reaching a point where at least one of them is imminent."
Ahr said federal authorities have long faced "chronic shortages" in funding and personnel and were forced to prioritize enforcement to only the most egregious offenders. But a new commitment to worksite enforcement will soon be evident, he said.
"In the very foreseeable future, there are going to be significant work-site cases going down in Arizona," he said. "The days when you can run illegals in and out of your business with complete impunity are going to come to a close."
The director of research for a Washington, D.C.-based group that favors tighter immigration controls said any real increase in work-site enforcement needs to be put in perspective.
"Yeah, they're stepping up a part of the enforcement, but they're stepping it up from almost zero, so anything is improvement," said Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies.
The increase in work-site enforcement amounts to a strategy on the part of the Bush administration to appear tough on illegal immigration, while at the same time seeking acceptance for broadening guest-worker programs and granting amnesty to illegal workers, said Mark Krikorian, the center's executive direc-tor.
"The strategy is a spoonful of enforcement helps the amnesty go down," Krikorian said.
While Ahr refrained from naming specific companies or industries or a timeline for when indictments could be announced, he cited three examples of better enforcement strategies that have been developed since 2005:
● A fugitive-operations unit to pursue illegal entrants who have not complied with orders to leave the country;
● A compliance-enforcement unit that focuses on those who came to the U.S. through legal channels but who have since become illegal due to expired visas or violations of the stipulations of their visas;
● A reorganized employer-sanctions unit that is "aggressively focused" on investigations that can result in criminal indictments.
Experience has shown that fines against employers who hired illegal workers did not serve as a deterrent, which has prompted a shift from fines to criminal indictments, Ahr said.
Increased enforcement by ICE will target employers who willfully hire illegal workers, as opposed to business owners who hire illegal workers due to the use of fraudulent documents, he said.
"We're focusing intensive investigations against employers who represent the worst examples, and by that I mean an employer who consistently and systematically seeks and actively recruits persons they already know are undocumented aliens," he said. "We want to distinguish between those guys and honest employers who may be employing illegals and truthfully don't know they're doing it."
Fake social security cards seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection show the cards' complex details. By the numbers
11 million
Estimated number of illegal residents in the U.S.
7.2 million
Estimated number of illegal residents working in the U.S.
668
The number of business owners or managers arrested nationwide for employing undocumented workers, through August of the federal fiscal year ending Sept. 30.
143
Business owners or managers arrested in the seven prior years combined.
Source: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
● Contact reporter Thomas Stauffer at 573-4197 or tstauffer@azstarnet.com.

http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/printDS/149641