DHS Massively Expands Enforcement Against Illegals’ Employers

The Department of Homeland Security has dramatically raised worksite enforcement to deter employers from hiring cheap illegal workers.

Since October, the agency’s Homeland Security Investigations unit has checked employment records at 6,093 worksites, up from 1,716 in the prior fiscal year from October 2016 to the end of September 2017. The current pace of checks in 2018 is almost a five-fold increase from the prior year and included 100 stores in the 7-Eleven chain and 77 companies in California.

The agency has made 675 criminal arrests of managers or supervisors, plus 984 administrative arrests of illegals in the last nine months, versus 139 criminal arrests and 172 administrative arrests during the prior 12 months, according to a DHS statement. That is a five-fold increase in criminal arrests and a sixfold increase in administrative arrests.

In 2018, the DHS agency has also conducted several large-scale raids, including a meatpacker in Tennessee, and a meatpacker and landscaping firm in Ohio.

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r example, a Swiss-based firm was forced to lay off 800 illegals at a bakery in Chicago, costing the firm almost half of its profits when it was forced to pay higher wages to the newly hired Americans. Similarly, the JBS meatpacking company raised salaries by 25 percent to help persuade more people to work in a Texas slaughterhouse, according to a March 4 article in Washington Post.

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“This is not a victimless crime,” said Derek N. Benner, Acting Executive Associate Director for HSI. “Unauthorized workers often use stolen identities of legal U.S. workers, which can significantly impact the identity theft victim’s credit, medical records and other aspects of their everyday life.”

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Four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market — but the government provides green cards to roughly 1 million legal immigrants and temporary work-permits to roughly 3 million foreign workers.

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