Thread: OK: Employers may pay price for not embracing changes

The Department of Homeland Security significantly stepped up immigration enforcement efforts in 2007.


But illegal immigration opponents say it must do a better job of targeting the lure of illegal immigration: The availability of work.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement made nearly four times as many workplace arrests as it did in 2006. Of those 4,900 arrests, 864 people were charged with a crime, more than 500 of which involved document fraud and identity theft in an attempt to appear to be legal residents.

The number of employers or managers arrested for hiring illegal immigrants was fewer than 100, however.

"When you have more than 500,000 illegals entering this country every year, you are not going to cut off the incentive until you start drying up employment. Employment is the No. 1 reason illegal immigrants come here,â€

What is ICE ACCESS?
•287(g) Program: This program cross-designates local officers to enforce immigration law.

•Asset Forfeiture: It allows ICE agents to seize and forfeit illicit proceeds and other criminally derived assets.

•Border Enforcement Security Task Forces: It allows Homeland Security law enforcement agencies, working cooperatively with other law enforcement entities, to comprehensively identify organizations posing significant threats to border security. BEST Task Forces are currently in Arizona, California and Texas.

•Criminal Alien Program: It focuses on identifying criminal aliens who are incarcerated within federal, state and local facilities, ensuring they are deported upon serving sentences.

•Customs Cross-Designation: It allows federal, state, local and foreign law enforcement officers who participate primarily on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement task force operations to be cross designated as "customs officersâ€

[b]Low employer arrest numbers also show the need to make programs like E-Verify mandatory, said Center for Immigration Studies senior policy analyst Jessica Vaughan.

"What it shows too is how difficult it is to prove employers are knowingly hiring illegal immigrants,â€