Immigration arrests in the workplace will harm all Pennsylvania workers
ICE arrests in the workplace harm all workers, including U.S. citizens, by disrupting worker organizing for better wages and allowing employers to evade accountability for abuse.
In the summer of 2018, armed immigration officers walked through the front door of a restaurant in New Cumberland, Pa., and told the manager they wanted to speak with a worker in the kitchen.
The manager explained that the person no longer worked at the restaurant, but officers still insisted on entering the kitchen, where they forced workers to stand in a group and then interrogated them, while other officers stood outside the front and back doors.
The officers never found the person they claimed to be seeking, but the justification that they provided for the interrogation of the other workers was that they “exhibited nervous behavior.” The officers arrested two kitchen workers, one of them the father of two U.S. citizens, and sent them to a detention center.
During the previous Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement carried out worksite raids across the country, including in Pennsylvania, in addition to individual arrests at job sites across the state.
With the second Trump presidency less than a month away, it is important to understand why workplace raids harm all workers in Pennsylvania.
Along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, I recently reviewed over 2,000 records of ICE arrests in Pennsylvania between 2016 and 2020, and I came across dozens of arrests in the workplace: a cook in a restaurant kitchen in Philadelphia, a worker at a marble processing facility in Norristown, dairy workers living in a farm camp in Quarryville.
In each record we reviewed, multiple armed ICE officers, frequently wearing vests with “police” badges, would detain and interrogate workers at their job sites, or surveil a home until someone left and got into a car to ride to work and then pull the car over and interrogate everyone inside.
We recently released our findings in a report where we concluded that ICE officers targeted workers in low-wage occupations throughout that time period. In all the records we reviewed, the most common occupation recorded by the arresting officers is “laborer,” followed by “construction,” and “cook.”
Armed officers standing outside of a worksite or following workers to their jobs cultivates an environment of fear and normalizes surveillance, harassment, and intimidation in the workplace.
The legacy of structural racism in the U.S. labor system has led to dehumanizing working conditions where many immigrant workers are forced to accept poverty wages, particularly for labor in the food system and the home.
ICE arrests in the workplace harm all workers, including U.S. citizens, by disrupting worker organizing for higher wages and better benefits, and allowing employers to evade accountability for abuse. When ICE disappears a worker from a job, it can also allow employers to take advantage of turnover by lowering wages and hiring replacements who will be afraid to complain.
Armed officers standing outside a worksite or following workers to their jobs cultivates an environment of fear and normalizes surveillance, harassment, and intimidation in the workplace.
Employers can take advantage of that fear by stealing wages, forcing workers to perform dangerous labor, and subjecting workers to racial and sexual harassment, knowing workers may avoid interacting with other government agencies to file complaints.
The Biden administration ended worksite raids and enacted a program in 2021 that offered temporary protection from deportation for immigrant workers at job sites under investigation for labor violations.
Worker organizing laid the groundwork for workers to act collectively to challenge workplace abuse, and many did by joining union drives, providing testimony for wage theft lawsuits, and initiating investigations in a range of exploitative industries.
Donald Trump is now threatening to return to worksite raids and abandon workers who organized for better jobs, despite evidence that raids traumatize communities, undermine local economies, and do not result in mass deportations, making it clear that the purpose of the raid is to terrorize workers.
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Our state and local governments can take immediate action to mitigate some of these harms.
In Pennsylvania, the immigration arrest of a worker frequently starts with information provided by state and local government agencies. In the records we reviewed, we found that at least 38% of community arrests, including workplace arrests, involved collaboration with local law enforcement.
In Pennsylvania, the immigration arrest of a worker frequently starts with information provided by state and local government agencies.
In other records, ICE officers would comb through local databases for personal information on Pennsylvania residents. ICE currently has access to the Pennsylvania Justice Network, also known as JNET, where it can search people’s personal information and conduct facial recognition searches using the 35 million photos in the state’s driver’s license database.
Adopting policies that prohibit collaboration with ICE at the state and local level, including prohibiting access to databases and using local facilities to detain people for ICE, would directly benefit workers by ensuring interactions with local governments would not result in an ICE arrest.
Funding legal representation for people in deportation proceedings would provide urgent support to workers targeted by future raids.
These efforts could be important steps to standing in solidarity with immigrant workers and recognizing that immigration enforcement will only harm workers across the state.
Caitlin Barry is a professor of law and the director of the Farmworker Clinic at the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law.