On Wednesday, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency engaged in a large federal law enforcement operation. The involved raids were targeted towards business owners that committed fraud, money laundering and hiring and mistreatment of illegal immigrants. The actions resulted in 17 of them being indicted, and caused for one of the largest raids in the ICE’s history.
Its development was unusual, as it didn’t target undocumented citizens but rather their employers and business owners. An agent in charge of the operation stated:
The whole investigation was initiated, basically, because we knew that these businesses were cheating these workers and cheating taxpayers and cheating their competition.”
By “cheating”, they mean that the businesses were reportedly using false names and social security numbers to employ undocumented immigrants. They also pressured their workers to cash their paychecks at the business itself for a high fee, withholding taxes that wouldn’t go to the government but to their employers’ checks.
However, the investigation also caused for 130 undocumented immigrants to be taken under ICE custody, so that they can be questioned and processed in the near future. This will probably cause for family separations between the children in the towns involved and their parents or relatives. A public school superintendent from the town of O’Neill in Nebraska, where one of the raids took place, told reporters that between fifty and a hundred children in her school were separated from family members.
Even though the ICE has immediately stopped their measures to separate children at the U.S. border, many of their procedures still need revision and could be improved. Changes in their plans could be targeted to further consider the impact that their actions have in the communities where they interfere.
