Industry News - PM
LIVE FROM IPE: Labor expert expects fewer ICE raids, more paperwork

By Bill McDowell on 1/29/2009

Poultry 101
ATLANTA—Labor attorney Jim Wimberly on Thursday told attendees at the International Poultry Expo to expect a shift in immigration enforcement, away from high-profile raids in favor of quieter, but equally costly, administrative audits.

Wimberly, senior principal of Wimberly, Lawson, Steckel, Schneider & Stine, said the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency wants to avoid the negative publicity and high cost of large-scale raids. "A good size raid costs more than $1 million,' he said. "One had more than 500 agents, some coming in from as far as Hawaii."

Further, ICE administrators have been stung by television images of agents separating families and steering frightened workers into makeshift courtroom trailers, he said.

ICE is increasingly moving toward pre-emptive audits of I9 paperwork, Wimberly said. He added that any company who gets an I9 audit letter from ICE better take it seriously.

"In most cases, if you get such a letter it means you are in a company, industry or area of the country under 'great suspicion' of violation," he said. "Before they even send the letter, they already know a lot abut your company."

Wimberly cited one example of a company that discovered an ICE vehicle parked outside their plant. "They were counting heads," Wimberly said. "They suspected the company was using employees off the books."

Another new tactic is sending letters that note administrative errors in I9 forms and threatening fines if errors are not corrected within a short time frame. "The problem is, in many cases, the forms refer to employees that are no longer there," he said.