Many illegal immigrants might be happy to hear that there won't be any more federal immigration raids at factories and farms.
That is, until they learn the Obama administration is replacing those raids by sending federal agents to search companies' records for illegal immigrant workers.
Unlike the former factory raids that led to deportation, the “silent raids” - what employers refer to the audits as - usually result in just being fired.
Throughout the last year, auditors from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement department examined forms known as I-9s, which all new hires in the country must fill out. ICE then advised companies of Social Security and immigration numbers that did not check out with federal databases.
Over the past year, ICE conducted audits of more than 2,900 companies, resulting in $3 million in civil fines so far this year on businesses that hired unauthorized immigrants, according to official figures.
Thousands of those workers have been fired, immigrant groups estimate.
According to employers, the audits reach more companies than do the work-site roundups conducted by the Bush administration.
The audits force businesses to fire every suspected illegal immigrant on the payroll, not just those on duty at the time of a raid. The audits also make it much harder to hire other unauthorized workers as replacements.
Mike Gempler, executive director of the Washington Growers League -- which includes many worried fruit growers -- said auditing is “a far more effective enforcement tool.”
“Instead of hundreds of agents going after one company, now one agent can go after hundreds of companies,” said Mark K. Reed, president of Border Management Strategies, a Tucson-based consulting firm that advises companies across the country on immigration law. “And there is no drama, no trauma, no families being torn apart, no handcuffs.”
At Gebbers farm, a grower in an orchard town in Washington, whose records were audited by immigration inspectors, more than 500 workers were found to be in the country illegally, with the majority from Mexico.
In December, Gebbers Farms fired the workers just before Christmas.
In a speech last week, President Obama explained the audits were part of a two-step immigration policy, promising tough enforcement against illegal immigration both in the workplace and at the border.
The President said the approach would pave the way for a legislative overhaul to give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants in the country.
While White House officials say the enforcement is under way, they admitted the overhaul is not likely to happen this year.
In addition to the new approach to cracking down on employers, the immigration agency has also moved away from bringing criminal charges against immigrant workers who lack legal status, but have otherwise clean records.
According to Republican lawmakers, the president is talking tough, but actually lightening up in practice.
"Even if illegal aliens are discovered, they are able to walk free and find employment elsewhere," said Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee.
“This lax approach is particularly troubling,” he said, “at a time when so many American citizens are struggling to find jobs.”
Employers say the Obama administration is leaving them short of workers for low-wage work through the silent raids, but that they offer no legal laborers to replace them in jobs like field work - jobs that Americans continue to “shun” despite the recession.
More than 60 percent of farm workers in the United States are illegal immigrants, federal labor officials estimate.
The goal of the audits is to create “a culture of compliance” among employers, according to John Morton, head of ICE. This would make verifying new hires as routine as paying taxes for employers.
While ICE leaves it up to employers to fire workers whose documents cannot be validated, an employer who fails to do so risks prosecution.
The ICE's focus is employers who commit both labor abuses and immigration violates, and the agency is “ramping up” penalties against them, Morton said.
The firings at Gebbers Farms shocked the village of orchard laborers - a town with a population of 2,100 by the Columbia River in eastern Washington.
Six months after the firings, neither the company nor the illegal immigrants are willing to discuss them.
The only statement that came from the company was from Jay Johnson, Gebbers Farms' lawyer, who said, “No comment.”
According to farm worker advocates, the family-owned company and one of the biggest apple growers in the company did not fit Morton's description of the ICE's targets.
“The general reputation for Gebbers Farms was that they were doing right by their employees,” said Matt Adams, legal director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.
Gebbers Farm is the center of the town, spanning 5,000 acres of orchards. Many workers live in homes rented from the company, and have children who make up the majority of the public schools.
Former workers of Gebbers Farms said many immigrants purchased new false documents and went to seek work in more distant orchards - however, word has spread among growers in the region to avoid hiring immigrants from ICE because the ICE knows they are unauthorized.
After the firing, the farm advertised hundreds of jobs for orchard workers, but there were few takers in the state.
“Show me one American -just one - climbing a picker's ladder,” said María Cervantes, 33, a former Gebbers Farms worker from Mexico who was recently approved as a legal immigrant
After a federally mandated local labor search, the company applied to the federal guest worker program to import about 1,200 legal temporary workers - most from Mexico, and about 300 from Jamaica. The guest workers are permitted to stay for up to six months.
“They are bringing people from outside,” said Cervantes. “What will happen to those of us who are already here?”
Immigrant advocates expressed both surprise and frustration with the president after seeing an increase in enforcement activity since he took office.
“It would be easier to fight if it was a big raid,” said Pramila Jayapal, executive director of OneAmerica, a Washington-based immigrant advocacy organization. “But this is happening everywhere and often.”
There was no wave of deportations and few families left on their own for Mexico. “They are saying, what’s going to happen to their kids?” said Mario Camacho, an
administrator in the Brewster school district. “To those kids, this is their country.”
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