Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 114 illegal aliens during raids today at Corso's Flower & Garden Center, an Ohio-based landscaping company. ICE agents raided two of the landscaping business' locations -- one in the city of Sandusky and the other in the city of Castilia -- where ICE Spokesperson Khaalid Walls said that agents seized "a large volume of business documents" as part of the investigation.
Loopholes in the current immigration system enabled U.S. employers to hire 403,000 foreign nationals with pending asylum claims in FY2017. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) granted these asylum-seekers Employment Authorization Documents (EAD), which authorized them to work in the United States. Most of these individuals would likely have sought work in lower-skilled occupations, competing with American workers and putting downward pressure on wages.
More than 10,000 Americans signed a petition on the White House website urging Pres. Trump to sign an executive order mandating the use of E-Verify for all employers nationwide. The petition must garner another 90,000 signatures by mid-June before it can be presented to Pres. Trump to sign.
DHS reported yesterday that it made almost four times the number of worksite arrests and conducted more than double the number of investigations within the first six months of FY2018 than it did for all of FY2017. Worksite enforcement reports show that the agency carried out 3,510 worksite investigations, 2,282 audits, 594 criminal arrests and 610 administrative arrests -- significantly more than annual totals for the year before.
The Dept. of Labor announced in a statement today that Cloudwick Technologies Inc., a California-based data solutions services company, will pay $173,044 to 12 guest workers in back wages. The announcement comes after an investigation conducted by the department revealed that the company failed to pay employees the wages required by the H-1B program and made illegal deductions from their paychecks.
The Department of Labor (DOL) said in a statement Monday that Metropolitan Concrete Corp., a concrete contractor in Sterling Heights, Michigan, must pay a total of $102,808 -- $73,647 in back wages and $29,161 in civil damages -- to H-2B employees it improperly classified in order to get cheap labor.
ICE agents arrested 21 people after raiding some 98 7-Eleven convenience stores in 17 states early Wednesday morning. The agents gave the franchise owners and managers three days to produce documentation of their employees’ immigration statuses.
An internal ICE document revealed that the agency is possibly planning a worksite enforcement operation at a national food chain in the upcoming weeks. The operation will target locations across the country that hire and exploit illegal alien workers.
SRV Pizza Inc. has agreed to pay H-1B worker, Subhash Tehlan, $130,629 in back wages after failing to pay the required wages and overtime during a four-year period. This agreement comes after the Dept. of Labor (DOL) completed an investigation of the business, specifically in regard to wages paid to Tehlan.
This week the Board of Alien Labor Certification Appeals (BALCA) upheld the Dept. of Labor’s (DOL) decision to deny DDM Hauler Inc.’s request for seasonal H-2B workers. The DOL claims that the employer did not show proof that they had tried to hire American workers first by placing ads in the local newspapers as required.
The Dept. of Justice announced that Barrios Street Realty Inc. has paid around $108,000 to 12 U.S. workers as part of their settlement agreement. The settlement is an effort to resolve claims that the Louisiana based company gave preference to foreign H-2B workers and discriminated against Americans workers.
Three supervisors for Waste Management in Houston, TX have been sentenced to prison for knowingly hiring 10 or more illegal aliens. The men had encouraged illegal aliens to take the identities of U.S. citizens so that they could hire them.
Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., was indicted on federal fraud charges for under-reporting the payroll and wages at his New York City restaurant, and for employing illegal aliens. He surrendered to federal authorities today.
Howard Industries accepted a $1.3 million settlement agreement in a lawsuit in which four African-American women alleged that the company held discriminatory hiring practices toward non-Hispanics. Agreeing to the settlement allows the company to avoid what was expected to be protracted litigation.
GPX, a Texas-based seismic surveying company, and a field operations supervisor were indicted for harboring and transporting 19 illegal aliens, and for failing to verify their immigration status. GPX faces a possible maximum fine of $10 million if convicted while the supervisor, Douglas Wiggill, could face a maximum sentence of 100 years in prison and a fine of $5 million.
ABC Professional Tree Services, based in Houston, Texas, has agreed to pay $2 million in fines after a Department of Homeland Security investigation found that the company had been hiring illegal-alien workers. DHS found that 30% of the company's workforce was made up of illegal aliens. The company agreed to pay the fines in lieu of criminal charges.
Newark airport security supervisor, Bimbo Olumuyiwa Oyewole, a Nigerian national used the name of a murder victim to hide his illegal alien status for twenty years. Authorities say Oyewole worked undetected for years as a security guard and later a security supervisor. Had the Legal Workforce Act, H.R. 2885, been enacted, the no-match provisions would have detected Oyewole.
The owners of El Balazo, a well-known California taqueria or taco shop chain, are getting sentenced this week for hiring illegal aliens and hiding their wages from the IRS, Mercury News reported. El Balazo owner Marino Sandoval, 59, was sentenced to 41 months in prison and his wife, Nicole Sandoval, 51, was sentenced to five years or probation and one year of community confinement, according to federal prosecutors. The couple was also ordered to pay $2,216,010 in restitution to the IRS.
Immigration officials discovered that herbal industry powerhouse HerbCo International, Inc. was knowingly hiring illegal aliens and over half of the 150 crop workers at the company's Duvall, Washington organic farm were illegal aliens. According to King 5 News, the Duvall farm immigration bust is one of the biggest federal investigations of its kind in the United States.
The House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement held a hearing yesterday on Document Fraud in Employment Authorization and How an E-Verify Requirement Can Help. Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) made a statement during the hearing about the growth of the underground market for fraudulent identification documents as a result of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 which requires employers to check the immigration status of an employee.
Retired federal agent Estela Biesemeyer said that the federal government was ready to deal with illegal hirings at the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa in 2000 before the operation was delayed for fear that it might impact the 2000 presidential elections. The raid eventually took place in 2008 and resulted in the arrest of more than 400 illegal workers.
National restaurant chain, Chipotle Mexican Grill, has fired hundreds of illegal aliens from its workforce in Minnesota freeing up jobs for unemployed Americans. The chain announced that a substantial number of its 1200 employees in 50 restaurants across the state had been identified by a federal immigration audit of their employee records.
Carpetmaker Mohawk Industries has settled a lawsuit with employees who claimed the company depressed wages by hiring illegal aliens. The company will pay $18 million after the six year battle.
Arkansas-based poultry processor George's, Inc. recently broke up a scam within its human resources department at one of its plants in Columbia Furnace, Va. Plant employees were using documents submitted by legal applicants to help illegal aliens get jobs at the plant.
Columbia Farms of Greenville, SC, has been charged with knowingly hiring and employing illegal aliens. In June 2008, six plant supervisors were arrested hiring illegal aliens and instructing illegal employees to use falsified documents and the plant manager was indicted in April for hiring illegal workers.
Even though E-Verify has been postponed until September of this year, one California company heeded the government’s warning and put all their employees through the verification process.
The business lobbies that have been so successful in keeping our immigration laws from being enforced operate out of the same motives when they lobby against environmental laws: profit. And if they can get away with it and secure amnesty for illegal aliens, then we have to be very concerned that the process can be repeated versus any law, including the environmental laws.
Federal prosecutors today filed a 142-count criminal indictment against former managers at Agriprocessors Inc., the struggling Postville slaughterhouse, and increased the number of immigration charges against former plant executive Sholom Rubashkin.http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090515/NEWS/90515015/-1/NEWS04
By Grant Schulte -- Des Moines Register
“I am disturbed that local religious leaders in Postville seem to think it is immoral to arrest people who violated federal laws,” said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, a group that believes in limiting immigration.
Beck said he believed the detainees were being treated humanely despite claims from local religious leaders to the contrary.http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/1191522.html
By Mike McGraw -- The Kansas City Star
The intellectual bankruptcy and juvenile morality of trendy open-borders clergy is on embarrassing public display during events marking the first anniversary of ICE raids of the Postville, Iowa kosher meatpacking plant. Many of these are the same clergy who remained silent for years as the meatpacking plant physically endangered its workers and violated child laborers. Like witnesses to clerical pedophilia, these clergy allowed the meatpacker workers to be chewed up by an immoral corporation and now blame immigration laws for the collapse of the business.
The Department of Homeland Security announced on Wednesday that it is shifting the department's immigration enforcement efforts to the employers that hire undocumented workers. The announcement is a move away from the Bush Administration's policy of workplace raids.
The manager of the Greenville, S.C. poultry plant is facing charges for knowingly hiring undocumented workers. The plant was raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials back in October and more than 300 suspected illegal aliens were arrested at the Columbia Farms poultry processing plant.
Jimmy Nguyen was sentenced to more than five years in prison and forced to pay more than $550,000 after running a business that helped illegal aliens find factory work in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Nguyen pleaded guilty in October to charges of money laundering and conspiracy.
Guan and Hoa Le Chen were both sentenced on Wednesday for harboring illegal aliens in their home near Ann Arbor, Mich. The couple owns a Chinese restaurant and were charged with providing work, transportation and a place to live for illegal aliens.
A manager of a leather goods manufacturer in New Bedford, Ma. has been sentenced to two years probation after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in 2007 revealed that she had helped the factory hire and conceal illegal workers.
The office manager of a Sierra Vista drywall firm was sentenced to jail for her role in the hiring of undocumented workers in Arizona's first Immigration and Customs Enforcement workplace raid.
Francesco Insolia, the former owner of a New Bedford Mass. manufacturing company, yesterday pled guilty to helping harbor and conceal illegal aliens by allowing the company to submit false Social Security numbers for employees under Federal government contracts. As part of the plea agreement, Insolia will serve a jail term of up to 18 months and pay a fine of $30,000. A worksite enforcement operation at the company last year resulted in the detention of over 361 illegal aliens.
One week has passed since ICE raided a Columbia Farms poultry plant in Greenville, S.C. and arrested 331 illegal aliens, but the agency’s investigations into illicit activity continue unabated. The focus of the ten-month investigation is now on finding out who allowed illegal aliens to be hired at the plant.
ICE arrested a former worker in the Pilgrim’s Pride human resources department last week on charges of identification document fraud and aggravated identity theft, according to an ICE news release. The indictment against Hope Anguiano alleges that she and a co-defendant, Lucio Ramirez, conspired to provide identification documents to illegal aliens who did not have proper identification when applying for a job at the Pilgrim’s Pride Mount Pleasant, Texas facility.
The president and three managers of the Shipley Do-Nut Flour and Supply Company were charged last week with various immigration violations, including knowingly hiring illegal aliens and felonious conspiracy to harbor illegal aliens. The charges against the Houston-based company arose from a criminal investigation ICE initiated early this year that resulted in the administrative arrests of 27 illegal aliens in April.
The Pacific Resource Partnership, a group comprised of construction industry leaders in Hawaii, has started a campaign to encourage their industry to hire legal workers, a local NBC affiliate in Honolulu reports.
A Reno McDonald's franchisee has been fined $1 million for giving illegal aliens false Social Security numbers so they could be hired.
Mack Associates filed guilty pleas to one count of conspiracy to encourage and induce an alien's unlawful residence in the United States and one count of aiding and abetting an alien to remain in the United States. Both are felony offenses.
"The nation's largest immigration law firm is under federal scrutiny over whether it helped major U.S. corporations disqualify American job applicants and give thousands of high-paying positions to immigrants.
The unprecedented Labor Department inquiry centers on Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy -- a New York firm at the forefront of a political effort to ease hiring of skilled foreign workers...."
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080624/immigration_lawyers.html?.v=1
