Posted on 10/19/2018 7:14:14 AM PDT by gattaca
With new enforcement priorities under the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are taking aim at employers that knowingly hire unauthorized immigrants. The most recent — and largest — bust happened at a trailer manufacturing plant in northeast Texas.
Business had been booming at Load Trail LLC, about two hours northeast of Dallas, as customers bought the black trailers to haul hay bales, topsoil, construction refuse and oilfield equipment. Then came the ICE raid in late August.
Inside Load Trail's huge production building, welders turn raw steel into trailers, amid cacophonous clanging and showers of sparks. It's brutish labor — cut the heavy black metal, lug it into place, arc-weld it, repeat — but the production floor is nearly half empty because of an acute shortage of welders.
Load Trail CEO Kevin Hiebert remembers the morning of Aug. 28, when a helicopter thumped overhead and 300 ICE agents swarmed into his yard. "It looked like something you would typically see in the movies," he said, "not something you ever planned on living out in real life."
ICE rounded up more than 150 employees — nearly a quarter of Hiebert's workforce — loaded them into buses and booked them for working in the country unlawfully. A criminal investigation of the company continues.
So far this year, ICE agents have stormed 7-Eleven stores, a meatpacking plant, dairy and vegetable farms and a feedlot.
Jake Thiessen's family founded Load Trail in Tigertown, Texas, which is home to a half-dozen major trailer manufacturers. Shortly after the Load Trail raid, ICE began auditing employee records of every trailer manufacturer in the community to find out which workers have fraudulent identity documents. John Burnett/NPR "Businesses that knowingly hire illegal aliens create an unfair advantage over their competing businesses. In addition, they take jobs away from U.S. citizens and legal residents," said Katrina Berger, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in the Dallas ICE office.
But you won't hear those complaints in Tigertown, Texas. This flyspeck community situated between cotton fields near the Oklahoma border is home to a half-dozen major trailer manufacturers — all competitors. And they all employ undocumented workers.
"I think the manufacturing industry in Texas, any kind of steel fabrication construction, depends on illegal immigrant labor," Hiebert says.
ICE Targets 7-Eleven Stores In Nationwide Immigration Raids THE TWO-WAY ICE Targets 7-Eleven Stores In Nationwide Immigration Raids The head of a competing trailer-maker down the road agrees, saying they all use workers who are in the country illegally. He asked not to be named in hopes of staying off ICE's radar.
It's too late for that, though: ICE is auditing the employee records of every trailer manufacturer in Tigertown to find out which workers have fake identity documents. Some unauthorized employees are so rattled they're not showing up for work.
What the industry needs are legal guest workers, says Load Trail CEO Hiebert, "Especially now that they're cranking up on the enforcement. Everybody hopes that there'll be some kind of real immigration reform before what happened at Load Trail happens to them."
Load Trail has been in trouble before
In 2014, the company was fined $445,000 for employing more than 170 unauthorized immigrants at its plant. Hiebert says they hire whoever walks in the door, and they pay decent wages — $20 to $25 an hour. Still, they've always had a hard time finding welders.
"The trailer industry is growing well," Hiebert says, "but manufacturers are unable to keep up with demand. It has to do with the inability to produce the product."
So the work is done by men like Ignacio Barrios, a sturdy, 36-year-old welder who came here illegally from Oaxaca, Mexico. He worked at Load Trail for 17 years before getting swept up in the ICE operation.
Texas has always been knowingly duplicitous when it comes to illegal immigration.
Cal Jillson, political scientist
He wears an American flag T-shirt, and sits in the church that's helping to support his family of five now that he's out of work. Barrios paid a $5,000 bond to get out of detention, and is waiting for his day in immigration court.
"You have to work hard," he says in Spanish. "Lots of times you get injured, burned, you break your fingers. It gets over 100 degrees in the there. I've seen that Americans don't want to do the kind of work that we do."
Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, says "Texas has always been knowingly duplicitous when it comes to illegal immigration."
On the one hand, Texas is a staunch law-and-order state where conservatives support Trump's immigration agenda; on the other hand, Jillson says, if ICE is too successful, "employers are wondering where they're going to find people to man their businesses if American high school graduates aren't going to do it."
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested more than 150 workers at a trailer-manufacturing business in North Texas. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Lamar County, where the trailer manufacturers are headquartered, is crimson Trump country. Yet, to hear the trailer bosses tell it, the administration's immigrant roundups threaten a lifeblood of the county. Locals who voted for Trump are nonetheless sympathetic to the hard-working, undocumented welders.
Every morning, a group of retirees meets at the Dairy Queen in the county seat of Paris to drink coffee and mull over the state of the nation.
ECONOMY Worker Shortage Could Dampen Economy "This country will not survive if we don't straighten the way [immigrants] can come over here and work. Because I guarantee you Americans are not gonna do it," says Alan Helberg, a former hospital administrator. His buddy, retired dentist Jerry Akers, chimes in, "Congress needs to get off their duff and pass some meaningful legislation to where people can come here and work legally and not have to be afraid of getting uprooted."
Comprehensive immigration reform is, so far, dead in the water in the gridlocked Congress. And back at Tigertown, some trailer manufacturers say that if they can't find enough welders, they would consider moving their entire operations to Mexico.
And “brutish” labor, “lugging” steEl around? Sounds like npr doesn’t know any kind of work other than sitting on your butt in front of a computer. Or maybe osha needs to visit this place to protect the poor exploited mexicans.
They said the same thing about Construction work too.
Funny thing, in the 80-90s there were all kinds of Americans working in those industries.
Then the flood of cheap illegal labor came. Reality was that Companies intentionally cut wages to weed out Americans and hired border jumpers at 1/3 the cost.
Those that do it lie and whine about not finding qualified Citizens to do the work. In reality they can’t find Americans to do the work for what they pay the Criminal Invaders.
His “wife” and kids were, i’ll bet.
Companies would welcome back slavery if they could get away with it.
That is great to hear. I would like to see opportunities like this become more widely available for those trying to transition. Thanks for your post.
Maybe additionally DOT should make the company recall and inspect any trailer they cannot prove was welded by a certified welder.
Trailer makers are pretty local. We have a couple near me. I doubt this company competes with anyone more than 50 miles away,
I hear you....Orchards have similar issues...and there are SOME guest worker programs, but not enough.
Hire Navajo Indians, they are known as expert welders.
Yeah, “brutish labor” that a lot of people do for a hobby. That’s why you see cheap little welders at every tool retailer:. People do it for fun.
I can’t help but notice he still has half his workforce. Puts the lie to the notion he can only get illegals to do the work.
$20 an hour?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-140-000-a-year-welding-job-1420659586
HOUSTON—Justin Friend’s parents have doctoral degrees and have worked as university lecturers and researchers. So Mr. Friend might have been expected to head for a university after graduating from high school in Bryan, Texas, five years ago.
Instead, he attended Texas State Technical College in Waco, and received a two-year degree in welding. In 2013, his first full year as a welder, his income was about $130,000, more than triple the average annual wages for welders in the U.S. In 2014, Mr. Friend’s income rose to about $140,000.
That has allowed the 24-year-old to buy a $53,000 Ford F-250 pickup truck, invest in mutual funds and dabble in his hobbies, such as making jet engines, including one he attached to a golf cart.
“Not everybody needs a four-year college degree,” said Kathryn Vaughan, his mother, a retired biology lecturer who spent part of her career at Texas A&M University.
We have a winner!
I’ve believed for a long time that the split between inflation and lack of a corresponding rise in labor wages had to come to an eventual correction. The only thing that has suppressed it has been the constant influx of illegals to suppress the natural economic result by increasing available supply. Which meant someone else was raking it in.
As a shareholder I would not want the risk, but in addition dividends haven’t risen at the same rate as inflation either - IMO. Which means it went to management, the boards, and was filtered off to the aside as donations, etc
This corrupt company will either have to pay more for legal
Americans, no matter the race or go belly up.
Welding is not brutish labor. I was a welder and made great money doing it back in the late 70’s.
If the chick from “Flashdance” can do it.
Remember Rosie the Riveter!
It took about one year of paperwork and waiting in the USA to get a work visa for Japan. I had to prove to the Japanese government that my talents and skills were so specialized that Japanese nationals would not be harmed by my work. Most countries have a similar policy. Also, illegals, if caught working, were treated very harshly. The companies too.
So sick of hearing But muh lettuce? Who’s going to pick muh lettuce?
Yes, they lie like a rug.
I remember when teenagers got jobs cutting lawns and flipping burgers too.
In our area they don’t and that isn’t because they are lazy.
Companies will not hire people who are under 18, probably due to liability issues.
My son applied all over town before he turned 18.
He was even told he was not qualified to make pizza.
My boy can cook circles around those people and has been doing it since he was ten!
He finally got a job at a locally owned business through a friend and moved on to another better job via previous networking contacts.
Bilingual preferred is another lie that really means must be hispanic. Daughter’s friend works at Jack in the Box. She hates it because she doesn’t speak spanish but probably got hired because she was hispanic.
The crew are all hispanic and refuse to speak english so sometimes she has a hard time keeping up and doing exactly what they want. In reality, they are probably giving her a hard time for not being one of them and being fully American.
It’s cheaper to hire illegal workers.
Welding isn’t hard to learn. Back in high school, the ag teachers wouldn’t allow me to help weld a trailer because it wasn’t seemly for a girl to do such but it was fine that I taught the boys to weld. Go figure.
I am a retired pipefitter and there is a big difference between welding on a trailer and welding pipe. That being said, there is a huge shortage of qualified welders.Good welders today wouldn’t think of hiring on for less than $32.00 an hour plus overtime and bennies. If you think you can’t afford a good welder, see what a bad one will cost you.The last place I worked before retiring had about a 90% mexican work force,mostly legal, maybe a few that weren’t but let me tell ya, the quality of work was some of the best I ever seen. This was all 100% xray work. We had some welders go 6 months and never bust a weld, that tells ya something right there. The pay was decent but we were allways short handed for welders but this was shop work where you actually welded your entire shift, not field work where you might make one or two welds a day.
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