U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has directed the heads of DHS sub-agencies Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to reprioritize their worksite enforcement strategy to focus primarily on prosecuting employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers, rather than on identifying, capturing, and deporting unauthorized workers through controversial workplace raids. The Mayorkas memo to DHS sub-agency heads comes at a time when there has been a surge in the number of undocumented migrants attempting to enter the U.S.
According to the memo, this enforcement shift is in response to what the Biden Administration sees as unscrupulous employers engaging in “illegal acts ranging from the payment of substandard wages to imposing unsafe working conditions and facilitating human trafficking and child exploitation.” This shift in focus will work to protect the labor market by reducing the demand for illegal employment and increasing the willingness of workers to report violations of U.S. labor and employment laws while also encouraging their participation in workplace investigations by various federal agencies without fear of adverse consequences.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.