Bacon's Rebellion

Feds Detain 30 in Illegal-Immigration Crackdown in Henrico

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by

James A. Bacon
in

As part of a nationwide crackdown, federal immigrant officials and state police have raided a Henrico County pallet manufacturer, IFCO Systems, and detained 30 workers as illegal immigrants. The feds also have arrested seven current or former managers of the Texas-based company and charged them, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, with “conspiracy to transport, harbor and encourage and induce illegal immigrants to live in the United States for commercial advantage and private gain.”

The conspiracy offense carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a fine up to $250,000 for each illegal immigrant. More than half of the company’s 5,800 U.S. employees in 2005 had invalid or mismatched Social Security numbers.

Let’s see… Potentially 2,900 illegal employees nationwide… At $250,000 each, fines could reach $725 million. That’ll be tough for these managers to pay off during the 29,000 years they could be spending in prison! That’ll teach ’em.

So, for all you readers who said we need to get serious about arresting employers, not just the illegals, you got your wish!

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9 responses to “Feds Detain 30 in Illegal-Immigration Crackdown in Henrico”

  1. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    And if you need pallets to conduct your business, the price just went up.

  2. James Atticus Bowden Avatar
    James Atticus Bowden

    I’m glad the Feds are doing their jobs – sorta.

    The point needs to made, again, that bailing this water out of the boat is utterly pointless if you don’t fix the leak.

    In other words, the first and absolutely necessary priority is to control the borders – all points of entry. Follow up on legal visitors who over stay. Make sure no one enters illegally. Not a single person.

    This is why I posted Sen. Allen’s memo, because he is one of the few Presidential candidates who gets it, or at least is saying it properly, that all policies are meaningless until you control the borders.

  3. Scott Avatar
    Scott

    Did we get our wish?

    Again, I am glad to see action against IFCO, but I have to wonder about the message. The immigrants are not criminals (though they are administratively at fault for not having documentation), but the employers are. Is that clear from Chertoff’s press conference?

    I do not want to see immigrants in those American concentration camps that Halliburton is building.

  4. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    We were told in the amnesty of 1986, which I supported, that there would be strict employer enforcement that would make it all but impossible for very many illegal immigrants to secure employment and therefore end the lure that had driven the trek north for all those years. Enforcement never came. The business interests coupled with the “civil rights” interests saw to that.

    Every year, the IRS sends out letters to companies which have sent in records where the Social Securiy numbers appear invalid. Many are simple data entry errors and are easily resolved. These letters should be a heads-up to (1) businesses who really are trying to do the right thing and (2) US government enforcement agencies who are SUPPOSED to be making businesses adhere to the law. Many businesses like IFCO just ignore the letters and apparently so does the US government.

    This from a CNN story:

    Federal authorities checked a sample of 5,800 IFCO employee records last year and found that 53 percent had faulty Social Security numbers, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said.

    “That is, they were using Social Security numbers of people that were dead, of children or just different individuals that did not work at IFCO,” ICE chief Julie Myers told CNN.

    “The Social Security Administration had written IFCO over 13 times and told them, ‘Listen, You have a problem. You have over a thousand employees that have faulty Social Security numbers. And we consider that to be a big problem,'” said Myers. “And IFCO did not do anything about it.”

    ############

    This story illustrates that a number of businesses are criminal conspirators in the illegal immigration biz. In short, these people are criminals. And the politicians who facilitate them are co-conspirators as far as I’m concerned.

    This little drama (the raid) is simply to convince us US citizens that DHS is on the job. I suspect that it will cease as soon as the law bestowing amnesty is signed.

    We are crazy if we let them bamboozle us again. Secure the borders, certainly. But also enforce the laws against hiring illegal immigrants. Only by doing both will we get control of the situation.

    Deena Flinchum

  5. James Atticus Bowden Avatar
    James Atticus Bowden

    criminal. n. a person guilty or convicted of a crime

    crime. n. an action or an instance of negligence that is injurious to the public welfare or prohibited.

    – a breaking of a law

    illegal aliens. a foreigner who has entered or resides in a country unlawfully or without the country’s authorization

    Every illegal alien broke the law – committed a crime – and is a criminal.

    Liberals wish the Rule of Law was the politics of what the meaning of ‘is’ is.

  6. Jim Wamsley Avatar
    Jim Wamsley

    The business interests never got any help from the “civil rights” interests.
    Businesses did it all by themselves. The “civil rights” folks want strict employer enforcement so that the market rate wages will be paid to Americans in every workplace.

  7. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    In the end, I wonder what will really happen to the corporate executives. I suspect that they will all get off virtually scot-free.

  8. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    JAB, not only are the illegal immigrants criminals, they are repeat offenders since being and working illegally in the US necessitates breaking numerous laws. I find it a little odd that so many folks are eager to put people who have a cavalier (or hokey, if you prefer) attitude toward our laws on the path to citizenship. However, if we could wave a magic wand and immediately remove every last one of these workers, we would shortly have the exact same problem – quite likely with many of the same workers – unless the businesses that hire them are given sufficient incentive not to. This is exactly what happened after the 1986 amnesty except that now we have 12-20 million instead of 3 million illegal immigrants to deal with. I really don’t see this as a liberal or conservative issue.

    JW, it is certainly true that business interests and the “civil rights” groups didn’t form a committee to see that enforcement didn’t occur. They acted independently. One complaint of the business interests was that if they gave ID too much scrutiny, they set themselves up for discrimination lawsuits. States and localities are finding themselves in the same boat when they enact laws that are aimed at restricting benefits, etc for illegal immigrants. Even if they win in the end, they can spend a fortune and years defending themselves.

    There is no country in the world that is as tolerant as the US in this area. In 2002, about a dozen or so US students LEGALLY in Mexico joined an environmental demonstration – something to do with an airport. They were not waving US flags nor were they demanding their “rights” nor were they the organizers. What was Mexico’s response? It deported them on the spot. In Mexico, it’s illegal for non-citizens to meddle in government affairs. As we face Mexico’s meddling in our immigration laws in the next few weeks, let’s keep in mind not what they say, but what they do.

    Deena Flinchum

  9. James Atticus Bowden Avatar
    James Atticus Bowden

    Deena: Liberals do not have the Will, the moral courage, to close and control the borders – the necessary but insufficient first step to maintain our National soveriegnty. Conservatives do. Too many elected Republicans are as weak as the Liberals.

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