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59 arrested on illegal working charges at Lansdowne
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 59 people in a raid April 8 at Lansdowne Resort near Leesburg.
Tuesday morning, ICE agents interviewed about 100 employees, which resulted in the arrest of 53 people accused of immigration-status violations. Two female workers were released at the site for humanitarian concerns. Another six people were apprehended outside of the facility.
The investigation started in early July 2007 after a routine inspection of all I-9 employment eligibility verification forms at the resort, just east of Leesburg off Route 7.
Through analysis of the I-9 forms, ICE agents identified information that led them to suspect that many of the employees were using fraudulent documents or had stolen someone else's identity to secure jobs at the resort. The investigation is ongoing.
Attempts to reach Lansdowne officials before press deadlines were unsuccessful.
Steve Simpson, Loudoun County sheriff, said his department did not participate in the raid.
The 59 men and women are citizens of El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Bolivia, Peru and Argentina, and all face removal proceedings.
“The arrests were part of ICE's nationwide aggressive pursuit of unauthorized workers and employers who violate the law,” said Mark X. McGraw, deputy special agent in charge of the ICE office of investigations in Washington, D.C. “Companies that use cheap, illegal alien labor as a business model should be on notice that ICE is dramatically enhancing its enforcement efforts against illegal employment schemes.”
All of the people arrested will be interviewed by ICE personnel, Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Immigration Health Services staff, and offered access to Social Services to record any medical, sole-caregiver or other humanitarian situations.
Based on these interviews, ICE will determine whether detainees remain in custody or are considered for humanitarian release. In all cases, undocumented immigrants will be fingerprinted and processed for removal from this country.
Excellent news! It's about time.
We need one story like this per week. The only part missing is that the CEO should have been lead away in handcuffs. A few stories like this and the illegal situation will be over.
Bravo ICE!
Posted by MarkKay
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You clearly don't have a job that requires you to hire people or explain your bottom line.
A subsequent article has come out explaining that the Landsdowne company involved had been working in conjunction with ICE to round up a group of illegal aliens who found yet one more hole in our awesome immigration system.
Anyone who is quick to blame the employers needs to learn a little about the law and the hiring requirements thereof. The law today states that an employer must, read this carefully, must hire an eligible applicant regardless of whether they provide a SSN or not. If they do not they can be sued for discrimination by the applicant and the government. The Social Security Administration has 20,000,000 SSN errors that they just haven't bothered to fix. So the odds are that you will get a letter about a year later saying the guy you hired some time ago has a bad SSN. Keep in mind that you have run his information through all the checks and all the databases required by current law. The mismatched SSN letter also states that YOU CANNOT FIRE THE PERSON WHO'S SSN DOES NOT MATCH! I would not make this up. So in a nutshell, you run the information through and it comes back clean, it turns out not to be clean but you can't fire the guy right away. Then along comes ICE and everyone is in a pickle. Is it fair that the government puts the burden of employment eligibility and identity verification on employers who don't have any of the government's resources? Is it fair that the resources that employers can utilize are so horribly inaccurate and inefficient that people that don't even speak English can figure out how to beat it?
I'm not living under a rock where no one is guilty of an immigration violation but I fervently believe that the media hype has got every one with brown skin labeled as a criminal and every employer guilty of exploiting these people. It couldn't be further from the truth. Yes, contractors in pickups do pick up day laborers and circumvent the law. They should and will be punished. The much much bigger issue is how can we comply with opposing points of law and work with a government whose departments can't provide accurate information? This is going to destroy many law abiding lives and families.
The other attitude that galls me is the "ship'em all back to Mexico" mantra. Go ahead. Who do you think cleans the offices at ICE or DOJ at night? Who runs the cafeterias at thousands of Federal buildings downtown? The government can't be foolish enough to believe that they aren't the largest employer of immigrants, legal or not, in the country. After all, it's their own immigration status check they use. That's never wrong.
Employers are doing their part, the government needs to support them with tools that actually work.
Posted by SomeGuy
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Every American has benefited from having immigrants living among us. Whether it's the price you pay for strawberries picked by a Salvadoran or the brick sidewalk you travel laid by a Bolivian their effect is everywhere if you chose to see it. Oh yeah, there is not a line of white people waiting to pick strawberries.
Posted by SomeGuy
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Before you condemn the business owners consider a few things:
1. The government can't reliably tell you if you have hired a legal or illegal alien with anything even close to 75% accuracy. There are 20,000,000 mismatched SSN's in this country today. 8,000,000 are of natural born American citizens.
2. Everyone who lives in this country has benefited in some way from the presence of immigrants. Maybe it was the meal you had that only cost $12 instead of $16 because the LEGAL immigrant in the kitchen was willing to work for less.
3. Employers, ACCORDING TO EMPLOYMENT LAW, MUST HIRE ANY SUITABLE APPLICANT REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THEY PROVIDE AN SSN OR NOT. The SSA sends letters out annually telling employers that they may have a mismatched SSN (no doubt one of the 20 million they can't iron out). The letter also says THEY CANNOT FIRE THIS PERSON FOR NOT HAVING A VALID SSN. IT'S IN THE LETTER! THE ICE SWOOPS IN AND PUTS THE EMPLOYER IN JAIL BECAUSE HE'S CAUGHT BETWEEN OPPOSING LAWS AND ARMS OF THE GOVERNMENT! This is real life.
Those that actively and deliberately seek to evade the laws of this country should be punished but if the government can't reliably verify a person's status how can joe citizen? Try owning a business in this environment and you'll quickly realize that hiring a guy for $10 an hour that works very hard just makes more sense than hiring a guy for $20 because he's white. I have news for you, whites and other minorities are not looking for $10 an hour jobs. In fact, if you ship home all the Hispanics, who's going to clean the DOJ or ICE building overnight? They need to get their acts together before coming out to the suburbs to roust hardworking families.
Posted by SomeGuy
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