Georgia Battery-Factory Raid shows a new Trump destination

The federal e-verify system is intended to help employers determine whether their employees are legal, but its use is not always necessary.

More than 300 South Korean citizens who return home after Eisangrise

South Korea has concluded a contract with the United States after an ice attack in a Hyundai battery system in Georgia. Over 300 South Koreans fly home.

Behind the shocking sight of hundreds of South Korean workers who are chained and recorded in a battery factory in Georgia, the other goal of the Trump management is: Companies that hire illegal workers.

While President Donald Trump has initiated a comprehensive immigration attack for the promise to deliver the greatest mass deportation in history, the administrative officials also take a harder line against employers, of whom they say that they cheat American employees by hiring undocumented immigrants.

Since 1986, employers have been obliged to check the authorization of employees to work and can be fined or imprisoned if they knowingly violate the law. However, the enforcement usually focused on the workers, not on those who adjust them.

Since corporate owners and managers have rarely been prosecuted or punished, Trump officers say that some employers are too willing to use desperate employees through lower payment and dangerous working conditions – and then restrict the savings. Some employers argue that there are not enough willing American workers to do the hardest jobs and the wages they offer.

Since January, the Trump administration has attacked workers on raids on raids from California Car Washes and Marihuana Farms, a race track in Louisiana, a construction site from Florida and a meat packaging facility in Nebraska. And while these enforcement measures have not yet led to criminal matters or fines against the employers, the raids have significantly disrupted business operations in some cases.

However, the administration has also punished two Colorado cleaning companies with millions of dollars to hire dozens of employees without papers and received criminal charges in two other systems to employ illegal workers in Arizona and Ohio.

Officials refused to comment on what they said, an active criminal investigation in Georgia, which was partly triggered by the complaints of the local unions that foreign workers filled jobs.

Raid in a factory that produces batteries for Hyundai

The new push complicates the efforts of the president to rebuild American production

Case for months of investigating the criminal workplace on September 4, the HLA Battery Company project, about 30 miles northwest of Savannah, and found almost 500 employees. The majority of the detained employees were South Koreans, whose permission was missing in the United States.

“We welcome all companies that want to invest in the United States, and if you have to contribute employees to build or other projects, this is okay – but you have to do this in a legal way,” said the responsible special agent Steven Schrank from Homeland Security Investigations in Georgia and Alabama in the press conference after the raid. “This operation sends a clear news that those who take advantage of the system and undermine our workforce are held accountable.”

So far, only the imprisoned workers have been confronted with punishment: they have been brought to deportions to deputies of the immigration authorities. The South Korean officials say that they work with the US State Department to voluntarily attribute the approximately 300 detained South Korean citizens. The South Korean media reported that the workers could fly home via Charter flight on September 10.

The treatment of the South Korean workers is in a strong contrast to the experiences of tens of thousands of Mexicans, Venezuelans and Guatemalten, which are exposed to months in prison terms before they are violently deported.

The RAID also stands up because the enforcement measures for jobs have been rare in recent years. HSI records show that studies on employers can take years to put up in court, although the Trump government recently injected new urgency in these cases, issued fines in fines and brought in criminal matters against employers across the country.

In the past ten years there have been fewer than 200 federal persecution of employers for the employment of illegal workers. The bidding management has largely hired the raids for employers, he said.

Manufacturing experts say that the US workforce lacks part of the technical expertise that South Korean and other international workers have. And your specialized knowledge is required to increase production in this country. The battery system serves the adjacent Hyundai metaplant Car Factory. The projects received millions of state and local tax incentives after they had promised to create thousands of new jobs.

Federal civil servants say that they watch the jobs closely

Federation investigators say that the raid was the result of a month -long examination of the employment practices on site. However, court documents show no evidence that they knew there were a large number of South Koreans. Instead, the only four people who are listed as specific goals in the search command have Hispanic names.

The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comments on the special features of the search command or the four “target persons” listed.

In a social media declaration of September 7, Trump admitted that his immigration gap complicated his goals to bring production back. Since January, the White House has advertised hundreds of billions of dollars of obligations from foreign companies such as Hyundai who have the work together with LG.

“I hereby ask all foreign companies that invest in the United States to respect the immigration laws of our nation,” said Trump. “Your investments are welcome and we encourage you to legally bring your very clever people with great technical talent to build first -class products, and we will enable you quickly and legally.

The border -Zar Tom Homan hit a fighter tone and warned the employers that federal officials closely observe the jobs. Federal civil servants have already searched California car wash and marijuana farms, a race track in Louisiana, a construction site from Florida and a meat packaging system in Nebraska.

“We will do more jobs for jobs,” Homan told CNN. “Nobody stops an illegal alien from the kindness of their heart. They set them because they work harder, pay less and can infer the competition that US citizens are doing.”

Employers have rarely been prosecuted because of the hiring of without papers

The American Immigration Council estimates that, according to an analysis of the US people counting data, at least 6% of the nationwide of nationwide are without papers. They make up 7% of the manufacturing workforce in Georgia.

Employers are rarely prosecuted for the hiring of illegal workers: Although the federal law provides 3,000 fines and up to six months in prison, it is only enforced if federal officials decide that an employer has committed a “pattern or practice” of the routine employment of employees who are not allowed to work legally in the United States.

In other words, although it is a crime for a worker to provide false papers, the employer has little incentive to closely check this paperwork. Instead, they can advocate ignorance and almost always avoid punishment.

The federal e-verify system is intended to help employers determine whether an applicant has a job, but it is in the states to determine whether they require use. According to an analysis of the population population of the world population, less than half of the states mandate the use of e-verify for public and some private employers.

And e-verify is not foolproof. Foreign employees can also easily create high quality fake documents.

A police authority in Maine recently got involved with the White House about the hiring of an official who was cleared by the Bundes-E-Verify system to work, which was later illegally in the country.

In response to this case, the deputy secretary of the home protection, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a explanation that the e-verify system is an important instrument, but “not to carry out its failure to carry out basic background reviews in order to check the legal status”.

Great companies do not often have major consequences

The laws are in the books to pursue or punish employers who hire workers without papers, but the federal prosecutor rarely went to large companies, said Owsley.

In April, the Trump administration condemned two cleaning companies based in Denver in the amount of $ 6.2 million or $ 1 million in order to hire dozens of non-authorized workers. In the same month, the prosecutors ordered the fitting of the multimillion dollar confiscation of 14 properties, seven bank accounts and 15 vehicles from a Chinese personnel company that accuse them, wash money and provide foreign workers to a factory in Ohio.

They were big busts, but not from companies that are known names.

“It was used against employers with a small letter 'e',” said Owsley about the enforcement of the past workplace. “It is not the Hyundais in the world, it is not the Tysons in the world. It is often a restaurant that serves a kind of Asian cuisine or a kind of Mexican cuisine. It is an instrument in the federal prosecutor that the prosecutors do not use.”

During a press conference on September 5, Schrank said the federal representative that the investigators are still trying to find out who hired the illegal workers on the Georgia construction site. He said the criminal investigation continued.

“As we had determined in advance by our investigation and experienced yesterday, there was a network of subcontractors and subcontractors for the subcontractors there,” said Schrank. “So the employees worked for a large number of different companies that were on the website. It was not only the parent company, but also the subcontractors. We continue to work on the examination who worked for the companies.”