Workers swept up, not employers

Illegal-hiring prosecutions found to plateau under Trump

Friends, co-workers and family members watch as U.S. immigration officials raid a Koch Foods Inc. chicken processing plant in Morton, Miss., one of several such raids in Mississippi on Aug. 7.
Friends, co-workers and family members watch as U.S. immigration officials raid a Koch Foods Inc. chicken processing plant in Morton, Miss., one of several such raids in Mississippi on Aug. 7.

HOUSTON -- The recent roundup of more than 600 workers in immigration raids in Mississippi followed a long-standing pattern: Workers are jailed or deported, while the managers and business owners who profit from their labor often go unprosecuted.

Under President Donald Trump, the number of business owners and managers who face criminal charges for employing unauthorized workers has stayed almost the same, even as almost every other enforcement measure has surged.

Last week's raids at seven chicken-processing plants were the largest work-site operation conducted under the Trump administration. The operation led to 680 arrests of people in the U.S. illegally, with expected criminal charges to follow for some. But no plant owners or top managers were immediately charged.

Lawyers and experts agree that investigating managers takes longer and is far more difficult than arresting workers. A key hurdle that predates the Trump administration is that federal law makes it a crime to "knowingly" hire workers who are in the U.S. illegally.

"The 'knowingly' term has proved to be a huge defense for employers," said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. "The employer says, 'I'm sorry, I didn't know they were unauthorized.'"

In a statement Tuesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Matthew Albence said that anyone found to have broken the law in the Mississippi case would be held accountable, including "the employers who profit off their crimes." Warrants unsealed after the Mississippi arrests allege that managers at two processing plants participated in fraud.

After Trump took office, then-acting director Thomas Homan declared that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency would try to increase all work-site enforcement actions by 400%.

The agency succeeded almost across the board in just one government fiscal year. According to statistics the agency released in December, it quadrupled the number of investigations it opened and audits of paperwork submitted by employees to get hired. And it made 2,304 arrests in work-site cases, seven times as many as the previous year.

The major exception was for managers. The immigration enforcement agency arrested just 72 managers in fiscal 2018, compared with 71 the year before. And 49 managers were convicted of crimes, down from 55 the previous year.

Congress first created criminal penalties for employers in 1986. According to researchers at Syracuse University, prosecutions under the law banning employers from knowingly employing unauthorized workers have rarely exceeded 15 a year since then. Between April 2018 and this March, just 11 people were prosecuted in seven cases.

Employers also can be charged with other crimes. The former owner of a meat-processing plant raided in Tennessee last year was sentenced in July to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion, wire fraud and employing unauthorized workers. Investigations are still ongoing after several major raids during the Trump administration.

Companies and business owners are also better equipped to fight charges than workers who were already earning low wages and now face detention and deportation.

Those workers are sometimes victims of labor-trafficking schemes. They can be critical witnesses to prove businesses knew about their lack of legal status, except they may fear coming forward. Some opponents of the administration blame its immigration crackdown for deterring people from contacting authorities.

And while both Republicans and Democrats have previously supported enforcement of workplace immigration laws as a way to protect U.S. citizen workers, many businesses are having trouble finding workers because of low unemployment nationally. They rely on undocumented labor to stay productive, making prosecutions politically unpopular, Chishti said.

Trump himself has been accused of employing unauthorized workers at his hotels, golf courses and other businesses.

"On paper, there is a lot of enforcement of law, but in reality, people are constantly abusing the law," Chishti said.

A common outcome in workplace cases is a settlement where the offending company pays a fine and agrees to adopt measures like checking every new hire in the federal E-Verify program, which examines personal information submitted to an employer in government records for any potential fraud.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in August 2018 raided a trailer company in Sumner, Texas. Nearly 160 people were arrested at the company, Load Trail LLC.

Load Trail had reached a settlement with the agency just four years earlier. A new criminal investigation is now underway, and lawyers for Load Trail say they are close to reaching another settlement. The company said it had relied on staffing companies to provide workers and confirm their legal status.

In April, another raid targeted CVE Technology Group, which repairs and refurbishes cellphones, leading to 284 arrests. That investigation also is ongoing.

Both companies say their business has fallen and they have had trouble hiring replacement workers. Rick Gump, a lawyer for CVE, said the company lost several major contracts after the raid, causing a roughly 75% decline in business.

"The likelihood is a lot of the business that was here in the U.S. has been sent overseas," he said.

Business on 08/15/2019

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