Az faces hurdles enforcing employer sanction law
State needs to use federal database
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Enacting a strict employer-sanctions law is one thing, but enforcing it may be quite another.
Arizona now has the toughest law in the land for cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants. Those employers can lose their businesses if investigators can prove they knowingly make illegal hires more than once.
Proving the case against a business, however, is going to require unprecedented cooperation among federal, state and local officials.
At the heart of the law is a federal database called Basic Pilot, which is managed by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency. The program compares Social Security numbers and personal IDs and flags discrepancies.
Under Arizona's new law, which takes effect Jan. 1, employers must use Basic Pilot to verify worker eligibility. The attorney general and county prosecutors must use the same program to substantiate tips that somebody is working illegally.
But there is no system in place for local prosecutors to access the data.
Businesses that have been using the Basic Pilot program on a voluntary basis have only limited access to the database, to check records of their own employees. Prosecutors will need access to all available records if they hope to be able to verify employment status when they receive complaints.
At USCIS, verification chief Gerri Ratliff says the agency can quickly run queries to see if employers are checking applicants. But USCIS can share those findings only with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the investigative wing of the U.S. immigration agency.
"We will have to sit down with the lawyers and figure out how to make this work," Ratliff said.
Alonzo Peña, ICE special agent in charge, plans to add to and widen existing partnerships that allow police and sheriffs to arrest illegal immigrants. Still, legislators think the real strength of the law is in deterring employers from hiring illegal immigrants.
Although the hiring rule is a state law, ICE will be integral to enforcement. Only ICE can deport the illegal workers. For now, it also will be the conduit for state and local prosecutors who need to conduct computer checks on suspect employers.
Prosecutors will be responsible for penalizing employers. Police officers and sheriff's deputies will be needed for enforcement because, Peña said, "there are far more of them than there are ICE agents."
In a letter to Peña on Monday asking for cooperation on the new law, Gov. Janet Napolitano noted that local prosecutors will be forwarding more tips to ICE. She also asked that ICE refer illegal-hiring cases it uncovers to state prosecutors.
In Colorado, a new law requires police to notify ICE when they come across an illegal worker. ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok said the agency has seen a jump in the number of tips from police.
It is far from certain whether ICE will have the resources, or even the inclination, to follow up on the tips the Arizona law generates. A 2006 report by congressional auditors said, "Worksite enforcement has been a relatively low priority."
The U.S. Senate immigration-reform bill that died last week would have added hundreds of ICE agents and USCIS employees, plus 4,500 Department of Homeland Security employees, to bolster the worker-verification program.
Congressional investigators at the Government Accountability Office found a clash of cultures inside the immigration agencies.
"USCIS officials told us they have concerns about providing ICE broader access to Basic Pilot Program information because it could create a disincentive for employers to participate," the GAO found.
Investigators also revealed that ICE has been under orders since 2004 to place top priority on illegal immigrants who are subject to "national security investigations."
Those arrested in worksite enforcement investigations were given the lowest priority.
The report found that low-priority suspects "would likely be released" because detention centers didn't have enough space to house them.
"It's definitely going to take more partnership," Peña said. "We're going to do everything we can with the resources we have, staying within our priorities."
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