ICE Chief: 'We're Going to Quadruple Workplace Crackdowns'

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will extend its war on undocumented immigrants to their employers, the agency’s acting chief said on Tuesday.

Speaking to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, acting director Tom Homan said ICE was taking “worksite enforcement very hard this year” and added he had instructed the agency’s investigative arm — Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)— to increase workplace probes “by four or five times.”

From CNN:

“We’ve already increased the number of inspections in work site operations, you will see that significantly increase this next fiscal year,” Homan promised, saying the goal is to remove the “magnet” drawing people to enter the US illegally.

Homan’s speech, as CNN noted, heralded a new crackdown on employers who hire undocumented immigrants. Previously, Homan said, ICE had “turned their heads.” But in the future, the agency plans to vigorously prosecute employers that hire undocumented immigrants. “We’ll go after the employer who knowingly hires an illegal alien, but we’re always going to arrest a person who is here illegally,” Homan told the audience.

A 2015 Congressional Research Service report indicated that HSI arrested 541 people on “administrative charges” in 2014 workplace raids; an additional 362 were arrested on criminal charges that year. Of those arrests, 312 individuals were convicted.

Perhaps more disturbingly, Homan lauded ICE’s widely criticized and predatory practice of targeting undocumented immigrants outside of courthouses. “Will we continue to arrest people at courthouses? Absolutely [we] will,” Homan declared.

Homan’s pledge to increase workplace raids came during a 30 minute tirade on the supposed danger sanctuary cities pose to their citizens. “Sanctuary cities are releasing public safety threats back into the public,” he claimed. “That doesn’t make sense to me.”