DHS Announces Changes In Worksite Enforcement Policies 

Agency Takes First Step in Realigning Enforcement Priorities

April 30, 2009

Washington, D.C. - Today the Department of Homeland Security announced policy changes around worksite immigration enforcement. S enior Policy Analyst Michele Waslin of the Immigration Policy Center (IPC) issued the following statement:

"IPC is encouraged by the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) decision to refocus its worksite enforcement on those employers who are exploiting the broken immigration system. This is a good first step in realigning enforcement priorities. However, DHS's ability to truly focus on abusive employers is limited by the fact that our current immigration system doesn't provide immigrants or legitimate employers the protections and tools they need to comply with the law. Rather than trimming around the edges, real reform must involve an overhaul of the entire system to ensure that enforcement of our immigration laws is effective, fair, and humane.

The newly announced DHS guidelines will focus on criminal prosecutions of employers who knowingly hire unauthorized workers. In 2008, large-scale raids resulted in more than 6,000 arrests, only 135 of whom were employers. Frequently DHS launched raids based on tips that an employer was hiring unauthorized workers rather than being the result of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigations of employers, making it difficult to secure adequate evidence to result in prosecution. The new guidelines emphasize investigating and criminally prosecuting abusive employers thereby honing in on one of the root causes of undocumented immigration. Currently, immigrants, families, and law-abiding employers are caught up in a dysfunctional immigration system which creates incentives to circumvent the law.

DHS also announced that ICE headquarters will play a larger role in defining the objectives and strategies around worksite enforcement, supplanting the old model where local field offices wielded broad discretion and often focused on "low hanging fruit" rather than egregiously abusive employers