Workplace Enforcement Is the Key to Mass Deportations

For decades, the number of working-age illegal aliens entering the United States was roughly equivalent to the demand created by employers who want low-cost and easily exploitable illegal workers. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) provided limited, short-term assistance to newly arriving illegal aliens and continued to provide some longer-term services for non-working illegal aliens. Religious organizations welcomed and supported illegal aliens because they saw them as a source of new members. However, that all changed when the Biden administration opened the nation’s borders to millions of illegal aliens, asylum seekers, and parolees.

Now the Trump administration is faced with the overwhelming task of removing millions of individuals illegally in the United States. This can only ultimately be accomplished by large-scale workplace enforcement actions that identify large numbers of illegal aliens and lead to their deportation, that eliminate jobs for illegal aliens by holding employers accountable, and that encourage illegal aliens to voluntarily leave the United States.

Biden Administration’s Open Borders Resulted in an Illegal Labor Supply/Demand Imbalance

Prior to the Biden administration, the supply/demand equation for illegal labor read something like: “Supply of Illegal Aliens ≅ Demand for Illegal Labor”.

The Biden administration changed this formula to read: “Supply of Illegal Aliens ≅ Demand for Illegal Labor + Political Factors”.

This new equation greatly expanded the pool of low-cost, easily exploitable labor that employers draw from while shifting many of their costs onto the taxpayers. In addition, sanctuary state and local governments, NGOs, and religious organizations received billions of dollars of taxpayer funds to provide millions of newly arrived illegal aliens, asylum seekers, and parolees with transportation, food, housing, medical services, legal assistance, cell phones, etc.

As millions of often low-skilled and poorly educated people flowed in and as Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was extended to still others, those trying to stop or to even slow the flow of foreign nationals entering the United States continued to focus on the supply side of the equation — control the borders — without success since the borders were essentially gone. At the same time, they completely ignored the demand side of the equation, which is driven by American employers who refuse to pay living wages and do not want to provide benefits — healthcare, unemployment insurance, retirement, etc. — and who especially want employees who they can easily exploit by holding the threat of deportation over their heads.

So we are now at a point where many American blue-collar workers are second-class citizens in their own country — unable to find good paying jobs and devastated by fentanyl and other drugs that flowed freely across the open borders.

These American workers have long been abused by employers who, in search of higher profits, were allowed by politicians to ship America’s good-paying manufacturing jobs overseas, and when Americans’ jobs could not be off-shored, politicians made it possible for employers to replace their blue-collar American workers with low-cost, easily exploited illegal aliens smuggled into the U.S. by the cartels with the de facto assistance of NGOs and religious organizations. The fact that these cartels also flooded the nation with fentanyl was written off as unfortunate collateral damage.

In addition, entry-level and summer jobs that American kids had traditionally taken to gain experience and to earn their own money were taken by low-cost, easily exploitable illegal aliens. This helped destroy the work ethic of young people by depriving them of the valuable experience that comes from working in entry-level jobs. And to top it off, while many Americans are homeless and living in the streets, many newly arrived foreign nationals were provided with free transportation, housing, food, medical care, cell phones, and legal assistance.

The American people have been constantly told by those on the demand side of the equation that low-cost, illegal labor is absolutely necessary and that all illegal aliens are good, hard-working people just trying to better themselves by taking jobs that Americans won’t do. Anyone challenging that narrative by pointing out that the current system allows American employers to socialize their costs by pushing the costs of healthcare, education for immigrant children, job-related identity theft, etc. onto Americans while privatizing the profits generated from illegal labor is either ignored or labeled as a hater, racist, and anti-immigrant.

Stage Being Set for Mass Deportations

In response to the situation that it faced when it came into office, the Trump administration quickly began to set the stage for mass deportations. Actions taken to date include the following, but notably none of them target employers even though they drive the demand for illegal aliens.

• Stopped the flow of illegal aliens by closing the borders and reinstating “Remain in Mexico”.
• Negotiated an international agreement with El Salvador to house violent U.S. criminals; for Panama, Costa Rica, and El Salvador to accept deportees who are not citizens of those countries; and obtained agreement from Columbia and Venezuela to accept the repatriation of their citizens.
• Designated human and drug smuggling cartels and other transnational crime groups as foreign terrorist organizations.
• Required illegal aliens to register and to treat the failure to register as a civil and criminal enforcement priority.
• Instructed DHS to take all appropriate action to ensure the assessment and collection of all fines and penalties from aliens unlawfully present in the United States that the secretary of Homeland Security is authorized by law to assess and collect.
• Reprogrammed (and renamed) the CBP One app (now CBP Home) to help illegal aliens voluntarily leave the U.S.
• Implemented an ad campaign warning illegal aliens to leave now or risk being hunted down and deported with no chance of ever returning.
• Continued to identify additional detention space.
• Expanded a fast-track deportation process that allows immigration agents to deport people without a court hearing.
• Rescinded the Biden administration’s guidelines for enforcement actions in or near so-called “sensitive” areas such as schools, churches, etc.
• Limited the parole of individuals into the U.S. to a case-by-case basis and rescinded previous parole status of certain groups including termination of work permits, which changes their status from legal to illegal.
• Ensured that Temporary Protected Status is limited in scope and time. Once TPS ends, the individuals will be required to leave the U.S. or to be illegally in the U.S.
• Required that employment authorization is not provided to any unauthorized alien in the U.S.
• Stated that the administration would deny federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions.
• Ensured that state and local governments will be provided with the information necessary to fulfill law enforcement, citizenship, or immigration status verification requirements as authorized by law.
• Requested the assistance of IRS agents to help root out illegal aliens and for the IRS to provide addresses of individuals suspected to be illegally in the U.S., including those using stolen Social Security numbers.
• Deputized State Department special agents to help with arresting and deporting illegal aliens.
• Reinstated the 287(g) program and 1357(g) authority to have state and local law enforcement agencies assist with immigration enforcement and deportations.
• Restored the VOICE Office to its original role of assisting the victims of crimes committed by removable aliens after it had been dismantled by the Biden administration.
• Cut the staff of the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, and the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman because they “often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations”.
• Obtained additional funding for enforcement actions, detention, and deportations.

Workplace Enforcement Is the Key to Mass Deportations

Now that the borders have been effectively controlled, the current focus is on rounding up and deporting the most dangerous criminals and terrorists. However, this is only a small, albeit very important, step along the path to mass deportations. If the administration is to fully achieve its goal of deporting millions of people illegally in the United States, it must greatly expand its efforts by taking away the job magnet that draws and keeps illegal aliens in the United States.

However, employers and their allies will push back against anything that restricts their access to illegal labor, as was clearly seen when a Utah state legislative committee considered strengthening Utah’s E-Verify requirement. Chambers of commerce, representatives of the construction industry, and agriculture organizations all spoke in opposition to the bill while openly acknowledging that their members are hiring illegal aliens.

A Utah legislator noted that the governor’s housing czar was on record as saying that E-Verify and deportations would have a negative impact on housing construction because “around 10% of construction workers in Utah could be migrants in the country illegally”. Other legislators addressed the reliance of small businesses and agriculture on illegal labor and expressed their opposition to doing anything that would deprive them of their illegal workers.

The discussion led the vice-chair of the committee to say, “This is a very interesting conservation. I don’t know how many bills we have where we talk about openly being lawless.” ( See videos here, here, and here.)

Therefore, given employers’ unwillingness to voluntarily give up their illegal labor, strong workplace enforcement actions that allow ICE to locate, detain, and eventually deport large numbers of illegal aliens at the same time will be necessary.

Both Illegal Aliens and Their Employers Must Be Held Accountable

To be most effective, workplace enforcement actions must hold both the illegal aliens and their employers equally accountable — the illegal aliens for violating immigration laws and committing job-related felonies and the employers for violating immigration and labor laws as well as enticing and even assisting illegal aliens to commit job-related felonies.

There can be no “amnesty” for employers who have exploited illegal labor unless they agree to use E-Verify, to sign up for the IMAGE program, and to make restitution to American citizens whose Social Security numbers have been illegally used by their employees.

E-Verify and IMAGE protect American jobs and prevent massive job-related identity theft committed by individuals who use Americans’ Social Security numbers for employment purposes. This job-related identity theft causes serious harm to millions of American men, women, and children who end up with arrest records, bad credit, unpaid income tax liabilities, and corrupted medical records attached to their Social Security numbers.

If an employer agrees to the “amnesty” provisions, it should be allowed to petition for the appropriate visa for its valued illegal alien employees who voluntarily depart the United States. Employers would also have to agree to stop socializing their costs while privatizing their profits, which means that they would have to pay their foreign national employees a living wage with full benefits and that their foreign-national employees and family members would not be allowed to accept any public benefits including food stamps, charity medical care, etc.

Employers would also have to guarantee that the foreign nationals whom they obtain visas for will depart the U.S. when the visas expire or when the visa holders’ employment is terminated, whichever comes first. Finally, employers should be required to directly reimburse taxpayer-funded public schools for any additional costs incurred by the non-English speaking children of their foreign-national employees.

Conclusion

In conclusion, only comprehensive workplace enforcement actions and holding the employers of illegal aliens accountable will permit the Trump administration to honor its promise of mass deportations. Workplace enforcement will result in the identification and arrest of large numbers of illegal aliens at one time, will hold employers accountable for their actions, and will dry up the demand for illegal labor. But perhaps more importantly, workplace enforcement will encourage large numbers of illegal aliens to voluntarily leave the United States once it becomes clear that jobs are not available and that, for those holding jobs, going to work is just too risky.