Mayorkas Issues Memo Banning DHS Workplace Enforcement Operations

The Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, issued new orders earlier this week banning Immigration and Customs Enforcement from arresting illegal aliens during workplace operations at job sites.

The decision will unequivocally strengthen the employment ‘pull-factor,’ or magnet, for illegal immigration as aliens will now have even fewer consequences for illegally competing against Americans and already present immigrants in a purposefully bloated labor market. All at a time when the U.S. is still suffering the worst border crisis in over two decades.

The reasoning for the order given by the DHS is dumbfounding, laughable if the stakes were not so high, apparently, arresting illegal workers at job sites – helps the unscrupulous employers who illegally hired them.

Included in Mayorkas’s new order was a direction to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to invent “new strategies” to target employers who hire illegal aliens – while rewarding the illegal aliens themselves with clemency and the ability to keep the job.

Mayorkas added that those ‘solutions’ are still a ways off but insisted that “mass worksite operations” must cease immediately. Mayorkas said nothing about the interim period between his halting of enforcement operations and the creation of new ones; Mayorkas added to his memo:

The deployment of mass worksite operations, sometimes resulting in the simultaneous arrest of hundreds of workers, was not focused on the most pernicious aspect of our country’s unauthorized employment challenge: exploitative employers.

It is important to note that the seasonally adjusted U6 unemployment rate currently rests at 8.5%. U6 unemployment is defined as “Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part-time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.”

For a further breakdown, the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics survey shows that in addition to the 7.7 million Americans without a job but looking for one (U3 or “total unemployment”), there are approximately 6 million Americans who “want a job but are not currently looking for work,” and approx. 4.7 million Americans currently working part-time who wish to work full-time. This totals approx. 18.4 million Americans currently underserved by the U.S. jobs market.

Moreover, 338,000 Americans dropped out of the labor force entirely just during September – and are thus not counted in unemployment metrics. This explains why the ‘total unemployment rate’ continues to drop; not because the number of those gaining employment is keeping up with the growth of the labor force, but because more Americans than ever are giving up on the prospect of finding a job. Approximately 100.4 million total Americans are out of the labor force; about half of those are aged 16-65 – 50.2 million individuals of prime working-age are not in the labor force and will likely face long-term detrimental effects because of it.

Mayorkas also urged ICE to exercise “prosecutorial discretion” to drop any unlawful employment cases against illegal aliens who report being victims or witnesses of workplace exploitation. Illegal aliens working in the U.S. are in most cases paid less than what legal workers would earn, and unscrupulous employers often take advantage of their immigration status to mistreat them and further depress wages. Mayorkas’ policies instituted at DHS will {text} lead to further job displacement of Americans and exploitation of unauthorized workers.

There is no doubt that mass workplace enforcement operations work at chipping away one of the largest magnets for illegal immigration, employment. E-Verify also works – unfortunately, the Biden Administration’s commitment to that free and extremely effective tool is even more abysmal than its ‘commitment’ to border security.

You may remember in 2019 when the most extensive single state workplace enforcement operation took place at several agricultural processing plants in Mississippi. Approximately 680 illegal alien workers were arrested, and criminal employment cases were built against the employers. Of the 680 illegal aliens, 403 were using stolen identities of U.S. citizens to bypass lax checks at the plants.

For the complete release, please click here.