Making Illegal Employers Pay

Immigration enforcement has to hold businesses who illegally undercut American workers accountable.

Early on the morning of May 27, a truck carrying six Nicaraguan nationals was stopped by police on U.S. Route 1 on Sugarloaf Key, a few miles short of the southern limit of the continental United States. All six men were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be returned to their home country.

The case of these six aliens gained national attention the next month when their employer, Vincent Scardina of A Plus Roofing in Key West, was interviewed by the local NBC affiliate. Scardina fought back tears as he discussed the emotional toll these men’s deportation had taken. Scardina, who voted for Donald Trump in November, was framed as a classic case of “buyer’s remorse.”

Such cases have been rolled out by the mainstream media at regular intervals since the new administration took office: a small business owner—always white, 60-something, red-blooded, red-capped—who thought the enforcement of immigration law would only apply to the rapists and murderers, and not to the fine people he has employed at cut rates, undermining American workers for the last 30-odd years.

These sad sacks of the petite bourgeoisie are unlikely to garner the sympathy anticipated by eager news producers. From the left, they can expect only schadenfreude: in every tear from every MAGA roofer, a tiny fraction of the sadistic fantasies of Kamala’s bravest warriors fulfilled. Their sympathy is reserved for Hamasnik grad students and “Maryland fathers” credibly accused of human trafficking. From the right, there should be just one question: Why isn’t he behind bars with his workers?

Under Title 8 U.S.C. §1324a, it is unlawful for any person to knowingly employ an unauthorized alien in the United States. Violations carry penalties up to six months in prison and a $3,000 fine per illegal worker. 

This law is almost never brought into use. Even in the first Trump administration, which saw the first serious effort in more than a generation to restore law and order on immigration, action against employers was practically unheard of. Researchers at Syracuse University found that, between April 2018 and March 2019, only 11 individuals—and not a single company—had been prosecuted for employing illegal labor.

There has not been a single year since 1986, when the Immigration Reform and Control Act took effect, that more than 25 people have been prosecuted under the statute, even as millions of illegal immigrants labor in America today for thousands of businesses.

To be charged criminally for the employment of unauthorized aliens, a business practically has to beg for it. In 2020, Speed Fab Crete, a North Texas precast concrete company, agreed to pay $3 million to the federal government after a whopping 43 of its 106 employees were discovered to be illegal. The company’s three owners, its chief financial officer, and the owner of a temp agency were all criminally charged.

But the Department of Homeland Security had actually become aware of Speed Fab Crete’s illegal labor in 2016, a full four years before the fine and charges. The government handed them a get-out-of-jail free card for past bad behavior, providing the company a generous six-month grace period to terminate its unlawful employees, rectify its processes for hiring and documentation, and prove to DHS that its workforce had become 100% legal. While Speed Fab Crete did technically terminate its illegal employees, the owners conspired with the temp agency to simply shift 23 of the aliens from one payroll to the other while keeping them on the job. Once they were off the books, Speed Fab Crete sent a letter to DHS assuring the agency that all illegal workers had been terminated.

Only after all this (and the transition from the Obama to the Trump administration) did the government finally decide to enforce the law. All five men received the statutory maximum fine of $3,000 per illegal employee, but their prison sentences were as short as three months in the case of the CFO. If they had simply said “sorry” and sent their illegal employees packing in 2016, everyone involved would have walked away scot-free. (Just this spring, Speed Fab Crete was also forced to pay back more than $1.8 million after it was found to have fraudulently received a Paycheck Protection Program loan while these criminal charges were underway.)

Even in some of the most egregious cases, though, federal law on employing illegal aliens still goes unenforced. This is true even under the second Trump administration, which was put in power on a promise to close the border and rid the country of illegal aliens and which has made mass deportation the centerpiece of its public messaging. 

In January of this year, in the final days of the Biden administration, Perdue Farms agreed to pay $4 million in restitution after it was caught using illegal migrant child labor at a facility in Virginia. JBS, the largest meat processor in the world, was nabbed for similar violations at the same time. In these cases, not only were two mega-corporations employing unauthorized aliens to avoid paying American workers a living wage, but they were knowingly and willfully endangering children in the process. Still, these are being treated only as child labor cases, and all action against the companies has come from the Department of Labor. Why, even under the second Trump administration, is Homeland Security leaving Perdue, JBS, and so many other known offenders untouched?

Granted, some of the reticence may be due simply to the difficulty of nailing employers under §1324a. In the case of A Plus Roofing, for example, an attorney for Scardina’s detained employees claims that five of the six had active work permits while their claims for political asylum were in process. In a world where “no human is illegal,” the quasi-legal status afforded to aliens by the Biden administration grants every employer plausible deniability.

Of course, these men are not being deported without reason. The sister of one of those arrested described him to NBC 6 as “an honest, respectful person who simply wanted to get ahead by coming to this country.” It should go without saying that “simply want[ing] to get ahead” is not a valid basis for an asylum claim. That is more than enough to send him home, but it does not erase the “work permit” he is claimed to have held—which means the man who facilitated his presence in this country will likely face no consequences. (Whether Scardina violated §1324a in the case of the sixth man, however, warrants investigation.)

More complicated still is the non-employee status in which a huge number of illegal aliens now operate. Take Uber, for instance, which provides a living for an army of illegal delivery drivers all across the country, who share courier accounts officially owned by a single legal user between countless unknown and unknowable individuals.

Uber is certainly aware of this abuse; its business model depends on it. But, strictly speaking, no unauthorized aliens are employed by Uber; none of the couriers are. Even under a strict reading of §1324a—which the administration should pursue wherever it applies—it is highly unlikely that any accountability for Uber or its management is possible. It may be that Congress needs to take action to cut off the demand for illegal labor where §1324a leaves holes.

Setting all other considerations aside for a moment, this would be an easy PR win for congressional Republicans and for the Trump administration. Besides Vincent Scardina, the mainstream media has spent the last six months seizing on any case of supposed cruelty in the enforcement of immigration law. The popular narrative, in the minds of many credulous Americans, is of an unfeeling government ripping well-meaning workers away from their communities. Immigration enforcement is being cast as a story of the powerful imposing on the weak.

By shifting the target from the workers on the factory floor to Perdue itself—or to JBS, or to A Plus Roofing, or to the industrial farms that exploit aliens by the thousands—the administration can flip that script entirely. Enforcement is about defending the rights and interests of American workers and their families. That message can only be strengthened if we are willing to pin responsibility on the traitors who would sell their jobs off to the lowest bidder and break the law to do it. If we are serious about building an economy centered on the interests of our workers, we will have to deal accordingly not just with illegal competition, but with the employers who leverage that competition against Americans. Without the demand created by these employers, illegal immigration would be virtually non-existent.

This is also a far more effective way to drive “self deportation” than anything the administration has yet tried. It is both more efficient and more directly targeted at the source than the current enforcement strategy. The actual number of aliens currently present in the United States is almost impossible to ascertain, but it is certainly many times the laughable official estimate of 11 million, which has not moved in roughly 20 years. If we are serious about solving the problem of illegal immigration—and if the current pace of ICE operations is any indication of the government’s maximal capabilities—we will have to do more than pick up the invaders six at a time. 

Physical enforcement on the border is good, and necessary, but it only goes so far. To actually reverse the crisis, as the American people elected Trump to do, we need to make it impossible for illegal aliens to take the place of legal American workers. For that, we need to make it unthinkable for companies to violate the law to undermine American workers. Virtually no employer, no corporation, no hiring manager in America fears any consequence for the use of illegal labor because no administration has ever given them reason to be afraid.

Six roofing jobs just opened up in Florida. They will have to go to Americans, at American wages. If the Trump administration gets serious about cutting off illegal immigration at the source, ten or twenty million more jobs could follow.