Obama Increasingly Targets Employers of Illegals

President Obama has mostly given up on the flashy, media-friendly raids on workplaces that were popular with his predecessor and often rounded up hundreds of illegal workers for deportation. Instead, he is choosing to focus more on punishing those who hire the illegal immigrants in the first place. As a result, even as the number of criminal cases against illegal immigrant workers declined, the number of employers facing problems with the law has been increasing, reports the New York Times.

The NYT story seems to be part of an effort by the White House to push back against those who criticize the president’s record on immigration at a time when he has launched an improbable bid for a two-pronged effort at immigration reform that includes border security as well as some sort of amnesty for those who qualify. And there have been no shortage of critics. On one side, Republicans criticize the administration for the declining number of arrests of illegal workers, insisting that should be a particular focus at a time of high unemployment. Yet the Obama administration insists it is carrying out more investigations than ever before, and issued record fines, showing how the issue is being tackled despite the lack of raids.

The piece cites as an example the recent coordinated raid on 14 Chuy’s restaurants, where 42 illegal immigrants were caught but only one was charged with an unrelated crime while 13 were processed for immigration violations. Significantly, “the only criminal defendants were the owners … and an accountant,” details the Times.