ICE has certainly been busy since Trump took office. It’s being reported now that they just arrested 114 illegals from a single company in Ohio in the biggest workplace raid ever conducted since Trump took office.
NEWS ALERT: More than 100 people arrested in immigration raids on Ohio lawn and garden business. pic.twitter.com/tbHNpDzHVG
— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 6, 2018
Here’s more:
WASHINGTON POST – A swarm of immigration agents arrested more than 100 workers at an Ohio gardening and landscaping company Tuesday morning, one of the largest of several recent workplace raids carried out as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration enforcement.
About 200 federal officers blitzed two locations of Corso’s Flower and Garden Center — one in Sandusky, on the shoreline of Lake Erie, and another in nearby Castalia, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told the Associated Press.
Agents surrounded the perimeter of the Castalia location, blocking off nearby streets as helicopters flew overhead, AP and local television stations reported. They arrested 114 workers suspected of being in the country illegally and loaded many onto buses bound for ICE detention facilities. Dozens of the workers’ children were left stranded at day-care centers and with babysitters, local activists wrote on social media.
Officials expect to charge the undocumented workers with identity theft and tax evasion. They reviewed 313 employee records and found that 123 were suspicious, agency officials told the AP. ICE is also investigating the role the employer played in hiring the undocumented immigrants, but has not yet filed charges against the family business, said Khaalid Walls, an agency spokesman.
Agents left the Sandusky location carrying boxes full of “a lot of documentary evidence,” Steve Francis, special agent in charge of Homeland Security investigations, told the Sandusky Register. “We are attempting to identify what criminal network brought over 100 illegal aliens to Ohio to work.”
The massive raid came exactly two months after federal officials arrested 97 immigrants at a meat-processing plant in rural Tennessee, in what civil rights groups called the largest single workplace raid in a decade. It follows other workplace raids across the country, including a nationwide sweep of 98 7-Eleven stores, which led to 21 arrests. ICE officials described the January raid as the largest operation targeting an employer since Trump became president.
Thomas D. Homan, who will be retiring as the agency’s head this month, said last year he had ordered agents to increase the number of worksite inspections and operations by “four or five times” this year. The aggressive efforts, Homan said, are meant to deter people from entering the country illegally and “protect jobs for American workers.”
This doesn’t sound like your average workplace raid by ICE, as the article points out that they are trying to “identify what criminal network brought over 100 illegal aliens to Ohio to work”. I guess when you have that many illegals working for a single company, it’s not just a coincidence, if you will.