ICE Field Operation Helps American Workers

When will compassion apply to beleaguered Americans?

On August 7, 2019 ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) issued a press release that announced, ICE executes federal search warrants at multiple Mississippi locations.  Fox News also reported on that massive field operation in its report, ICE raids on Mississippi food processing plants result in 680 arrests.

The mainstream media, in reporting on the ICE field operation, immediately sought to paint the most disturbing picture it could about the nature of the ICE operation and along the way, the children of illegal aliens who had been arrested were interviewed on camera, hysterically crying that they wanted their mother/father or both to come home to take care of them.

However, I doubt the media will show the lines of American workers lining up to take the jobs that have been liberated by the ICE agents.

While it is admittedly heart-wrenching to see a child in distress, it is remarkable that the media totally ignores that children are frequently separated from the parents whenever their parents are arrested for a wide spectrum of violations of law that include administrative motor vehicle violations.

Every year as the dreaded “Tax Day” approaches, the IRS frequently arrests tax cheats and fraudsters and publicizes their law enforcement actions to remind tax payers that they should not defraud the IRS.  This is a clear tactic of intimidation that creates a “climate of fear.”  Yet Nancy Pelosi who frequently lambasted immigration law enforcement efforts for creating such a climate of fear, I have never seen her or any other politician complaining about the tactics of the IRS.

When taxpayers are arrested for not paying their taxes, it is likely that their children will have to be cared for by other family members, friends of the family or, as a last resort, child welfare.

However, when was the last time you saw a reporter interview a child who parent was carted off by the IRS or other law enforcement agency?

As a former INS special agent, my goal today is to set the record straight.

I was an INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) special agent for 26 of my 30 year career with the INS.  Having rotated through all of the squads within the Investigations Branch of the New York District Office I participate in many similar “raids” to locate and arrest aliens working illegally in the United States.  Therefore my comments are not based on speculation but real-world experiences.

To begin with, since the passage of the massive immigration amnesty legislation in 1986 known as IRCA (Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986) employers who can be shown to have knowingly hired illegal aliens can be fined and even criminally prosecuted for such hiring practices.  This is important because until passage of IRCA employers were essentially shielded from any adverse consequences for hiring illegal aliens unless they were involved in smuggling such aliens into the United States and/or harboring them.

Employers could also be punished for failing to meet labor standards or committing tax fraud, but there were no penalties for knowingly hiring illegal aliens.  Most illegal aliens violate our immigration laws to work illegally and it was believed that punishing unscrupulous employers who intentionally hire exploitable illegal aliens would deter their crooked hiring practices, thereby turning off the “jobs magnet.”

Of course there has always been an abject lack of immigration law enforcement personnel for this to work effectively.

Prior to World War II the Labor Department bore the primary responsibility for enforcing and administering our immigration laws.  The concern was that illegal alien workers would displace American workers and, adversely impact wages and working conditions for American workers.

That mission is now one of many assumed by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

I began my career with the INS as an Immigration Inspector assigned to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.  While we were concerned about preventing fugitives, criminals and spies from entering the United States and worked closely with other federal as well as state and local law enforcement agencies, our most frequent concern was that aliens we admitted might disappear and take jobs that they were not authorized to take.

You would imagine that all Americans would be happy that our goal as immigration law enforcement agents was to protect the jobs and wages of American and lawful immigrant workers and that all politicians from both parties would support that vital mission.

But today, we live in a time that only George Orwell could have predicted where up is down and good is evil!

This past April I wrote an article about another massive field operation to locate and apprehend aliens working illegally while also seeking to punish the employer, Ice Field Operation Liberates Hundreds Of Jobs.  In that article I noted that such interior enforcement of our  immigration laws helps American workers.

The meatpacking industry used to provide decent-paying jobs for Americans.  The work was always filthy and dangerous but the wages were essentially commensurate with the nature of those jobs.  In the mid 1980s such workers generally earned roughly $20 per hour.

Today those jobs frequently pay approximately half that amount, but when taking inflation into account, in reality, the purchasing power that the wages provide is far less than half of what the wages had been before illegal aliens flooded into that industry.

Wikipedia posted an insightful article under the title, Labor rights in American meatpacking industry.  This excerpt was published under the heading of “Meatpacker Demographics”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 2000, 148,100 people worked in meatpacking and over 250,000 worked in poultry processing. Despite the growth of the meat production industry, slaughterhouse workers’ wages have been decreasing rapidly. Slaughterhouse workers’ wages were historically higher than the average manufacturing wage. This trend reversed in 1983 when slaughterhouse worker wages fell below the average manufacturing wage. By 2002, slaughterhouse workers’ wages were 24% below the average manufacturing wage. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2006, the median wage for slaughterhouse workers was $10.43 per hour which comes out to $21,690 per year.

Isn’t it remarkable that the Democrats insist that they want to establish a minimum wage of $15.00 per hour today while years ago workers in slaughterhouses were earning more than $20.00 per hour until illegal aliens displaced American workers.  Yet today the Democrats want to import an endless supply of exploitable illegal alien workers, figuratively and literally, at the expense of hardworking American and lawful immigrant workers.

Frequently illegal aliens who take jobs in the United States have violate more than our immigration laws.  Many such aliens also have committed identity theft, hardly a “victimless crime” and some of these aliens may also have criminal histories and may be fugitives in their home countries.

As an INS special agent I frequently arrested aliens from countries around the world who we found working illegally in various jobs who had extensive criminal backgrounds.  This placed their coworkers at risk.

However, one case in particular stands out.  I remember in the early 1980’s encountering a man in his mid-thirties from Honduras working at a glass factory in Brooklyn.  He claimed that he had become a naturalized United States citizen.  I took down his name, date of birth and other relevant information and his boss approached me and told me that this guy had worked for him for a few years and was extremely trust worthy- so much so that he had given him the keys to the factory so that he could open the factory if he was late and lock up at night if he had to leave early.

I checked in with my office but they could find no record of this individual.  The only solution was to bring him down to our office.  It turned out that he was a citizen of Honduras but that he had not only lied about his name and date of birth but he had left out some additional information.  He had pleaded guilty to homicide and had been sentenced to jail time.  Upon his release he had been deported from the United States, only to return illegally.  Because of his criminal conviction he was arrested and prosecuted for unlawful reentry after deportation and escaped from a federal penitentiary where he was serving his sentence.

You should have seen the look on his employer’s face when I briefed him on his “loyal employee’s” extensive criminal “resume!”

If you believe that employers who intentionally hire illegal aliens are being compassionate, then you would likely believe that the person who puts cheese on a mousetrap is simply trying to feed hungry mice!

Employers who intentionally hire illegal aliens are not demonstrating compassion but greed.

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What Democrats Say Happens At The Border Vs. What Actually Happens

EDITORS NOTE: This FrontPage Magazine column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

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