Since Trump took office, a slew of anti-immigration executive orders and memoranda have poured out of the White House – some being authored by the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department. This salvo of orders has resulted in a sharp increase in deportations. According to the Migration Policy Institute, 21,362 noncitizens were deported between January and March – that’s a 32.6 percent jump from the previous year. And during that same period, noncitizens without a criminal record were arrested twice as often as in 2016.
It Gets Worse
It seems like the problem will only get worse, as US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced its intention to increase workplace seizures by a factor of four or five. That’s what Thomas Homan, Acting Director of ICE, told the Heritage Foundation last week. He briefly outlined the brutal logic behind these “raids” (a word Homan detests): “[A]s long as they think they can come here and get U.S. citizenship and not get removed, they’re going to keep coming.” He continued, “As long as they can come here and get a job, they’re going to try and come.”
Danielle Bennett, a spokesperson for ICE, told the Washington Examiner that the agency would pursue employers who hire illegal immigrants, but “workers encountered during these investigations who are unauthorized to remain in the United States are also subject to administrative arrest and removal from the country.”
Old Policy
ICE appears to be following a 2009 policy guideline put in place during the Obama years. According to that policy, the agency should seek out employers who mistreat employees, hire undocumented workers as a rule, launder money and engage in other criminal behavior. In 2011, the Obama administration oversaw the arrests of 713 management and non-management supervisors. Between October 2016 and June 2017, ICE only detained 97 employers. With the recent announcement, it appears the agency will redouble its efforts.
I-9 Forms
Homan’s announcement means that ICE and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agents will be conducting more site visits and will be much stricter about compliance issues. Specifically, agents will ask employers and owners about their I-9 forms to determine if the business purposefully hired undocumented workers. These inspections will also be accompanied by sweeps, meaning employees deemed unauthorized will most likely be taken into custody.
A company based in the suburbs of Philadelphia has already been forced to pay $95 million for its use of undocumented workers. The company, Asplundh Tree Experts, is one of the largest private corporations in the country.
Tactics
Thanks to some of the broad language employed in the White House executive orders, ICE agents are becoming increasingly bold in their tactics. According to immigration activists gathered in Chicago, agents are posing as police officers – in some cases wearing clothing marked “Police” – when approaching people suspected of being in the country illegally. One woman said her husband was collected at a grocery store. She didn’t know where he was for two whole days.
A spokesperson for the ICE office in Chicago said agents are permitted to identify themselves as the police because it is a catch-all term for law enforcement officers.
Numbers
According to the Washington Post, by September 9th, 211,068 immigrants had already been deported by ICE agents. And by September 2nd, the agency had arrested 28,000 undocumented people who hadn’t committed a crime – that’s three times more than last year.
And most people seem to be against this anti-immigrant regime. Eighty-six percent of Americans disagree with the president’s decision to throw out Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). And 62 percent disagree with the president’s overall management of immigration, according to an ABC News poll.
Immigration advocates hope the democratic mechanisms will eventually start to reflect these numbers.
