11.20.09 Statement about ICE’s plan to audit 41 El Paso businesses

ICE WORKPLACE RAIDS NOT THE RIGHT APPROACH

El Paso Human Rights Group to Monitor ICE Work

EL PASO—Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials announced today that they would audit 161 Texas businesses, including 41 in El Paso to examine whether they have hired undocumented immigrants.

The Border Network would like to release the following statement, to be attributed to Executive Director Fernando Garcia.

“We are saddened and disappointed that two years after the disastrous 2007 immigration raids that tore apart families and penalized American businesses, the federal government is once again adopting a short-sighted, enforcement-only approach to immigration policy.

At a time when we need to concentrate on combating the real threat on the border –criminal drug traffickers and gangs-, why are we harassing hard-working families and business owners? We hope that the Obama administration will rethink this outdated strategy and keep his campaign promise to implement comprehensive immigration reform. We need to fix our broken immigration system to make sure workers can get to the jobs that need them in a legal, orderly and abuse-free way. That means increasing the number of work visas and allowing for a path to citizenship for deserving undocumented immigrants, instead of raiding workplaces.

Such ill-conceived actions are bad for businesses, bad for families and squander law enforcement resources that could be better spent on keeping us all safe from criminals.

Finally, the Border Network for Human Rights will reach out to the business sector to monitor the ICE workplace audits and will call on the community to report to us any abuse they experience.”

###

More information on the Border Network for Human Rights: This organization, founded in 1998, is one of the leading immigration reform and human rights advocacy organization in the United States. Based in El Paso, the BNHR counts about 4,000 members in El Paso and Southern New Mexico.

The BNHR is also the main organizer behind the state-wide campaign, Reform Immigration for Texas Alliance, or RITA.