ICE Director Orders a Five-Fold Increase in Immigration Enforcement Actions Against Employers

Acting director of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency Thomas Homan gave a speech at Heritage earlier in the week and his key point was that the focal point of immigration enforcement efforts is shifting from the border to employers.

“[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 said during a Q&A session. “As long as they can come here and get a job, they’re going to try and come.”

Homan said ICE has already stepped up workplace enforcement since the Trump administration took office, and revealed he has given instruction to increase it “four to five times.”

“We’re taking worksite enforcement very hard this year. We’ve already increased the number of inspections and worksite operations, you’re going to see that significantly increase this next fiscal year,” he said.

Not only are they going after employers, they are going to do so massively and they are going to change the way those enforcement actions are carried out:

Homan said he has instructed Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the investigative unit of ICE, to potentially quintuple worksite enforcement actions next year.

He said he recently asked HSI to audit how much of their time is spent on work site enforcement, and said he has ordered that to increase “by four to five times.”

“We’ve already increased the number of inspections in work site operations, you will see that significantly increase this next fiscal year,” Homan promised, saying the goal is to remove the “magnet” drawing people to enter the US illegally.

And he said his agency would approach the task in a way that’s “a little different” than in the past, by going just as aggressively after employees.

“Not only are we going to prosecute the employers that hire illegal workers, we’re going to detain and remove the illegal alien workers,” Homan said.

“When we find you at a work site, we’re no longer going to turn our heads,” Homan elaborated after the event. “We’ll go after the employer who knowingly hires an illegal alien … but we’re always going to arrest a person who is here illegally. That is our job.”

He also addressed the issue of arresting illegals in public buildings:

“ICE’s job is to execute that order,” he said. “If anybody in this room ignores a judge’s order, what would happen to you? But they want to vilify the men and women for doing their job and executing a judge’s order issued from the bench. Shame on these folks.”

The problem with US immigration is not in the laws or in the absence of a wall. The problem has always been in the reluctance of the US government to enforce the laws. They’d rather play whack-a-mole on the border than deal with the real problem which is the US Chamber of Commerce’s political power that has successfully protected employers who act as the magnet that draws illegals to the United States.

This is the whole panel discussion:

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