Life in the Shadows Provides Employers With Little Risk, Large Reward
The campaign against undocumented laborers escalated to its most severe crackdown in over a decade when federal agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided five poultry processing facilities in Mississippi last week, sweeping up 680 people on suspicion of unlawful status.
The outcry was immediate, and though about 300 were ultimately released from detention for humanitarian reasons pending further hearings, the operation served as a reminder of how integral the undocumented workforce is to the U.S. labor market and the importance of these workers to the communities in which they live, often in the shadows.
Scenes of children crying, begging for the return of their parents while immigration officials insisted they were just doing their job, presented a jarring portrait to some Americans.
In the wake of last week's raids and a public re-examination of the fairness of immigration enforcement, a number of immigration lawyers, stakeholders and a former top official spoke to Newsweek about the realities of undocumented labor in America: one foot in the legitimacy of paid work, the other foot trapped in the fear of law enforcement action.
Moreover, the companies that profit from undocumented labor are drawing renewed scrutiny for their role in the dysfunctional immigration system.
Targets on their back: the undocumented bear the brunt of immigration enforcement
Data from Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) database shows that when the federal government pursues violations related to undocumented labor, it's workers, and
