The trend is clear: It can happen anywhere and it did last week in Morgantown.
With the exception of giving local law enforcement a heads up, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement snuck into the Morgantown area and conducted raids.
Some will immediately charge the undocumented workers ICE detains or deports came into the country illegally and it’s taking them out legally.
That may be, but their crime is a misdemeanor that by and large consists of dirt poor people taking jobs that no one wants to do.
Earlier this month, in the largest immigration raids in a decade ICE agents arrested nearly 700 people in workplaces across Mississippi.
Their employers are yet to be charged despite documents alleging six of the seven worksites were “willfully and unlawfully” employing undocumented immigrants and two appeared to be participating in fraud.
According to an analysis by a research center at Syracuse University, just 11 employers were prosecuted for hiring undocumented immigrants between April 2018 and March 2019. Three were sentenced to serve any prison time.
Meanwhile, more than 120,000 people were prosecuted for illegal entry or re-entry into the United States during that time period.
We agree with the need to control unlawful immigration and border crime and have no issues with deporting criminals who committed crimes in their countries of origin or here in the U.S.
But if we are to fix our broken immigration system the place to start is by charging employers, not workers
Though undocumented immigrants often face deportation in the aftermath of raids like those in Sabraton last week, the consequences faced by the employers who hire them are usually minimal.
Many employers who hire undocumented immigrants see negligible fines as a calculated cost. And one too many are willing to pay them without changing their ways.
Federal law makes it a crime to “knowingly” hire workers in the U.S. illegally. That “knowingly” term has proven to be a key defense for employers who can claim, “Oops, my bad. I didn’t know they were undocumented.”
If we’re going to enforce this misdemeanor to the letter of the law against people who entered our country illegally, we need to apply such targeted enforcement to other misdemeanors.
Heaping another indignity onto the plate of poor immigrants right before the school year begins and possibly removing their main breadwinner is especially wrong.
Almost anything can happen anywhere, including compassion for people who are the farthest thing from criminals. Indeed, even empathy for people simply trying to better their lives if not altogether save them and their families.
