Migrant crackdowns can overlook employers' role
By: Sophia Carson
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA today Network
MILWAUKEE - Pam Fendt understands well how immigrant workers fuel the economy. she is the president of the Milwaukee Area Labor Council, and she sued to work in the constructions industry. Plus, her family is from a small Iowa town with a meatpacking plant.
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At the same time, she's familiar with stories of employers taking advantage of undocumented workers - people paid in Visa gift cards, or housed in hotel rooms with several others.
..... Fendt has been following the news about the Trump administration's crackdown on immigrants and is concerned that workers are being arrested while little to nothing is happening to employers who hire them. "It just felt like the workers will pay this huge price, and the employers will get a slap on the wrist," Fendt said. Fear of being detained or deported could dissuade unauthorized workers form speaking up about poor working conditions. "We want everybody to be able to go home at th end of the day," Fendt said referring to the Labor Council. "Regardless of their immigration status, we want work to be safe here."
..... The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, part of the USA Today Network, is collecting and answering readers' questions about immigration. We now examine Fendt's requisition: Why is the Trump administration going after people working in the U.S. illegal and seemingly not the employers who hire them?
Is it illegal for employers to hire unauthorized workers?
..... Yes. A 1986 law imposed civil and criminal penalties for employers who knowingly hire undocumented migrants. But the law is rarely enforced.
..... That's in art because the key word is knowingly. People often submit fraudulent identity documents, and while the employer must examine the papers, there's no requirement that the employer verify the authenticity of those documents, according it the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank.
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"As a result, employers inclined to hire unauthorized workers find it easy to comply with the letter of the law, and unauthorized workers find employment by procuring fraudulent documents," a Migration Policy Institute report said.
..... U.S. Mitigation and Customs Enforcement may conduct audits of employees; I-9 forms - the federal employment authorization documents every U.S. worker must fill out. employees are given time to make corrections if errors are found.
..... But if problems persist, or investigators find a pattern of violations, fines from ICE can range from $88 to $28,619 per worker, depending on the type and severity of the violation, according to the Economic Policy Institute. "When employers are punished, the punishment and fines levied on employers are also minimal that they are unlikely to be effective at deterring illegal conduct, and the harshest penalties are rare because the legal standard for them is difficult to prove and they are reserved for repeat violators,"a report from the Economic Policy Institute said.
..... An additional point: It's a civil, not criminal offense to work without authorization in the United States. But civil offenses still make a person subject to deportation.
Concerns for business owners losing workers
..... President Donald Trump's first administration brought criminal charges against relatively few employers - just 11 in one 12-month period - and most administrations have prosecuted fewer than two dozen in a year, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
..... The second Trump administration has demonstrated its focus on a detaining and deporting undocumented individuals. the Department of Homeland Security;s public statement say they;re arresting the "worst of the worst" such as "suspected terrorists, gang members, murderers, and rapists" - although ICE data analyzed by the Cato Institute indicates that 65% of people have no criminal convictions, and 93% aren't convicted of violent crimes. There seems to be little focus on prosecuting employers. Trump reconnect appeared sympathetic to business owners who said immigration raids were harming their supply of workers.
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The administration did temporarily pause mitigation raids on farms, hotels and restaurants, although three days later it reversed course and ordered worksite operations to resume.
E-Verfy fails to flag workers using others' IDs
..... E-verfy is an Online system that allows employers to checks workers' records against a federal database to see if they're legally allowed to work.
..... It's mandatory for federal magnetics and federal contractors to sue E-verify, and a handful of states have made it mandatory for all employers.
..... E-verfiy's major drawback is htat it often doesn't flag as fraudulent unauthorized workers who use the real identities of other people.
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One audit done for the Department of Homeland Security several years ago found about 54% of undocumented workers are erroneously verified as working legally because they claimed oneness else's identity. after raiding a meatpacking plant in Nebraska in June [2025] and arresting 76 people, ICE reported that the plant owner had "complied 100% with E-Verify."
'What we tolerate from the bottom trickles up'
..... Economist say that immigrants are especially important to supplement the U.S. labor market as more Americans retiring than entering the workforce, birth rates are lower than during the baby boom, and unemployment is low.
..... Yet undocumented workers are especially vulnerable when law enforcement agencies focus more on mitigation status , said Laura Dresser, a labor economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. when workers live in fear of begin reported to ICE, Dresser said, employers can take advantage of their vulnerability to deny them wages, change their time cards, or discourage them from pushing back. Employers may also "capsulize" the job, making workers independent contractors when they're not, to distance themselves from the worker.
..... That culture of fear can cerate "incentives for some employers to find a way to drive wages and standards down," Dresser said.