Immigration Raids Have New Wrinkle

“Immigration raid” brings to mind ICE agents descending unannounced on an employer that relies heavily on immigrant labor. Arrests are made. Chaos spills out of the workplace into a community. As the Los Angeles Times reports, a “desktop” or “computer” raid isn’t as dramatic but causes just as much disruption.

An Internal Revenue Service online audit of Overland Farms, a major food-processing plant, found 260 invalid Social Security numbers. Thirty days later, all identified workers were fired. While work-site raids by ICE have been scaled back, IRS audits to put pressure on employers that hire illegal immigrants can have the same ravaging impact on immigrant families.

Overland gave workers 30 days to correct the Social Security numbers problem, but none of them did. Fearing potential criminal liability, Overland consulted three different law firms and determined that it was legally compelled to terminate the employees.

No law mandates the firing of employees in this kind of situation. If, however, there were a subsequent ICE raid which uncovered illegal workers, the employer would probably be deemed to have had constructive knowledge of the illegal status of its workers based on the previous IRS audit. This could mean fines and even jail time for the employer and its representatives.

So, employers have to make a judgment call when told they have workers with invalid Social Security numbers. Giving identified workers the opportunity to fix the problem would seem to be a reasonable approach, except that immigrants (particularly those who don’t speak English well) don’t understand what they need to do and are afraid to deal directly with any arm of the government.

President Obama’s pledge to overhaul our broken immigration system is in line behind fixing the economy, fixing health care, and fixing a lot of other things. In the meantime, employers and immigrant employees remain caught between an immigration rock and hard place.