Audits: ICE isn't cracking down on illegal immigrant employers

Houston Chronicle ^ | Aug. 31, 2010, 11:11PM | SUSAN CARROLL

[BradtotheBone]

Immigration inspectors poring over the hiring paperwork of a California company last summer found that 262 employees — a whopping 93 percent of the total workforce — had “suspect” documents on file.

At an Illinois service company, auditors found dubious documents for nearly 8 in 10 of its 200-plus employees.

Inspectors examining records at a Texas manufacturing firm found suspicious paperwork for more than half of the 107 employees on the payroll.

But the companies didn’t pay a penny in fines. None of the employers was led away in handcuffs. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials didn’t even issue them a formal warning, the agency’s internal records show.

Instead, they were instructed to purge their payrolls of illegal immigrants. Armed with assurances that the employees with suspect documents were fired — or, in the Texas case, “self-terminated” — the ICE auditors closed the cases.

The cases are just a few examples included in ICE’s internal records on its audit initiative, an enforcement program launched last July by Obama administration officials.

In the past, ICE had faced criticism for raiding job sites and rounding up large numbers of illegal immigrants for deportation, but not necessarily building cases against employers. With the audit initiative, ICE aims to scrutinize the hiring records of more businesses and impose what top officials describe as “tough” and “smart” employer sanctions.

But ICE audit records obtained recently through a Freedom of Information Act request show that the agency has, in many instances, failed to punish companies found to have significant numbers or high percentages of workers with questionable documents. In response to the public records request, ICE provided limited details on about 430 audit cases listed as “closed” by the agency through February.

[a fool in paradise]

He knows he’s going to need to grease the skids to get his casino in downtown Houston.