For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary Contact 202-282-8010 Washington, D.C. April 20, 2006
Secretary Chertoff: Good morning, everybody. I'm here with Julie Myers, who is the Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and also with Glenn Suddaby, who is the United States Attorney for Albany, New York. I think it's the northern district of New York. Yesterday and today, agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, working with the U.S. Attorney's Office and other authorities, executed the largest single work site enforcement operation against a company in American history. In fact, we arrested more people in this single work site enforcement operation than in the entirety of last year. This was an investigation which began over a year ago, and yesterday, we arrested 1,187 people on administrative immigration charges, and seven criminal complaints were brought against managers or former managers for alleged criminal violations in connection with the hiring of illegal, undocumented aliens. The charges in the criminal complaints allege harboring aliens for illegal advantage, and, in two instances, document fraud. I want to emphasize the investigation is continuing; at some point, further charges may be brought. During the course of the enforcement activity yesterday, 12 search warrants were executed, and numerous consent searches were undertaken. The enforcement actions took place in 26 states at over 45 individual locations. Now, last week, we also had some significant enforcement actions. There were guilty pleas by three restaurant owners from the Baltimore area, in which they pled guilty to money laundering and harboring charges involving illegal alien employees, and agreed to forfeit over $1 million. That case, by the way, illustrated the fact that those who hire and harbor illegal aliens often do so by exploiting the illegal aliens. And in the case of the Baltimore restaurant owners, the undocumented workers were being paid well below minimum wage. And also last week, charges were brought in Ohio against two temporary employment agencies, now defunct, and nine individuals alleging money laundering, mail fraud, and, again, harboring of illegal, undocumented workers. What do all these actions have in common? Well, what they are is the combination of criminal enforcement and immigration enforcement tools in a strategy that is aimed at the infrastructure that permits illegal work to take place in the United States. The face of the matter is, we are looking at organizations that promote the harboring and the hiring of illegal, undocumented workers. We're looking at them in the same way we look at other criminal organizations. We are using a strategy against them that is tried and true, because it succeeded against other kinds of organized criminal groups, or drug groups, or any kind of group that contains or that executes illegal business as a way of conducting its regular activities. And that means what we're focused on is not just individual cases involving a single violator here or a single violator there, but actually looking at those people who adopt, as a business model, the systematic violation of United States law. We target those organizations, we use intelligence to define the scope of the organization, and then we use all of the tools we have -- whether it's criminal enforcement or the immigration laws, to make sure we come down as hard as possible and break the back of those organizations. Now, this is a particularly opportune moment for me to talk about a more general strategy we are unveiling today with respect to interior enforcement of our immigration laws, to crack down on the harboring and the hiring of undocumented workers in violation of American law. The fact of the matter is, as we all know, by following the news over the last year, Americans are rightly concerned about the need to enforce our immigration laws and our work laws in the United States. And that means we've got to focus on illegal migration, and also on those who flagrantly violate the law by encouraging that illegal migration -- whether they do it by smuggling the migrants across the border, or by employing the migrants in a systematic fashion, once they get into the United States. As a consequence of our concern about this, last fall, I announced our Secure Border Initiative, which was pulling together for the first time a comprehensive strategy designed to give us control of the border using things like joint planning, joint operations, and joint evaluation to make sure we're doing the right thing, in terms of getting real results. This strategy is designed to look at every element of the business of illegal migration and attack that business at every point of vulnerability. And so, we look, as part of the strategy, at three things. We look at, first of all, detecting and catching those who cross the border illegally; we then look at how to get the people we catch, detain them and then remove them as quickly as possible back to their home countries; and finally, we focus upon those people who we don't catch at the border but who occupy jobs in the interior in violation of the law, often using phony documentation, and thereby creating some of that economic demand that is pulling more and more people across the border to try to fill jobs. Today, we're talking about that element of the strategy that has to do with the interior enforcement. And I want to emphasize, the best thing we can do is stop people cold when they cross the border. But we recognize that we're not going to catch everybody, and we haven't caught everybody. And so we've also got to focus on those who have made it into the country and now are finding a place to live and trying to find someplace to work. And we have to recognize that if we let them do that with impunity, we're actually making the job of border enforcement harder on ourselves. So this strategy is designed to continue to strike at this business of illegal migration, even for those people who think they are home free because they've made it into the interior of the United States. And there are three elements to this interior enforcement strategy. First, we've got to build strong compliance and enforcement programs for employers. Second, we've got to identify and remove alien criminals, immigration fugitives, and other immigration violators when they are found in the United States. And third, we've got to uproot the infrastructure and the business of illegal immigration, using criminal sanctions when we can make them apply. In accomplishing these goals, we're going to expand the use of ICE's basic enforcement tactics: work site enforcement actions, like the ones you've seen in the last couple weeks; targeting alien smuggling organizations using intelligence to get information so we can be very tactical in focus; and deporting violators. And we're going to move beyond the current level of activity to a higher level in each month and year to come. Let's talk about the first element of this, which is enforcement programs for employers. Now, we have to admit from the get-go that we've got to provide employers with the necessary tools to verify the legal status of their employees. On the other hand, when people choose not to use those tools, or they ignore obvious violation of the law in hiring people who are not properly in this country, then we've got to apply tough sanctions and increased enforcement against people who are willful law violators. The fact of the matter is, there are employers who knowingly or recklessly hire unauthorized workers, and they've actually built their business on being able to do that, often because they know that those are the workers who can't complain when they're exploited or injured on the job. And so those are the employers, the bad actors that we have to target, and we have to make sure that the assets and the proceeds of their illegal activities are forfeited and seized so they can't profit from this kind of business activity. For this reason, including the President's budget request for the year 2007, we anticipate by the end of next year adding roughly 200 additional special agents to focus on work site enforcement, as well as regulatory auditors and other support personnel. Now, we also have to work with Congress to continue to expand and refine the regulatory system that will meet employment verification needs, and to pass provisions of the law that will strengthen document verification requirements. And let me get very specific here. One of the key challenges that supports illegal migration is abuse of our Social Security system and the Social Security document. The fact of the matter is, and I've said this before, hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers are using obviously false Social Security numbers. I mean, we all know that when you get a Social Security number that is 000-00-0000, that is not a real Social Security number. And the fact of the matter is, when employers get those kinds of numbers, or when there are other numbers that are provided that clearly do not match the names in Social Security records, that has to be a tipoff that there's a potential illegal or undocumented worker who's being employed. As we speak, we've been urging Congress to pass legislation now before the Senate that would grant the Department of Homeland Security some carefully crafted access to Social Security no-match data so that we can detect those employers who are systematically employing workers, despite the fact that there's an obvious mismatch between the names and the Social Security numbers in question. And this -- today's work site, or yesterday's work site enforcement case is a very clear example of how this works. According to the allegations and the complaints that have been filed -- and of course, they're only allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty -- but according to those allegations, IFCO systems is an international logistics service provider based in Germany with 140 locations worldwide, including 57 locations in the United States. Basically they're in the business of providing a national network of wooden pallet management services. In this case, ICE received information that a large number of employees from IFCO systems were seen destroying their W-2s at a New York location. And according to the complaints, the witnessing party was informed by management that the employees wouldn't need their W-2s because they were illegal aliens, had invalid Social Security numbers, and therefore weren't going to be filing income tax returns. ICE agents went and carefully reviewed payroll records for workers, compared the Social Security numbers to the records maintained by the Social Security Administration, and determined that over 50 percent of IFCO system's work force was utilizing invalid or mismatched Social Security numbers. Now, that enforcement activity, that comparison, which led to an over 50 percent mismatch rate, was based on a tip. What we need to do, and the reason we're asking Congress to pass this piece of the legislation, is we need to be able to go proactively and spot that kind of widespread abuse and not really just have to wait for tips. Now, the second part of our enforcement strategy is to identify and remove every criminal alien incarcerated in the United States. That means people who are illegal aliens sitting in prisons, serving criminal sentences, that we're going to deport when the sentence is done. What we don't want to do is wait until they get out of jail and then start the process of deporting. We want to have that process work while they're serving their jail time. And the fact of the matter is, we're dealing with a large problem. The prison population in the United States is estimated to have 630,000 foreign-born aliens booked into federal, state and local detention facilities for criminal violations. To ensure that we can get these criminals removed as soon as they finish their sentences, so we don't have to waste detention beds holding them until we finish the processing, we're going to expand ICE's criminal alien program and work with state officials using the 287-G statute that allows us to delegate immigration authority so that we can train correctional officers to start the process of deportation while people are serving their jail time for the underlying crime. We also have to talk about all those people who abscond or become fugitives when they actually are charged and required to appear to answer an immigration complaint in immigration court. We have almost 600,000 aliens who are fugitives from the immigration system, and the number is increasing at a rate of well over 40,000 a year. And because we can't detain everybody, just like the criminal justice system has to let people out on bail because you can't detain everybody who's charged with a crime, it's important that we make it clear that when people abscond as fugitives and they don't live with the bail requirement that's imposed, we're going to hunt them down, we're going to catch them, we're going to bring them back, and then we're going to complete the process of removing them. Since March of 2003, ICE has apprehended more than 31,000 fugitives and succeeded in removing 29,000 fugitives through the use of what we call fugitive operations teams, as well as traditional work by ICE special agents. Last year, we had 18 teams. As we speak now, we have 35 teams. At the end of this year, we're going to have over 50 teams. We will, by the end of this fiscal year, almost triple the number of teams out there doing that work so we can hunt those who are fugitives from the immigration system. Finally, we've got to continue this strategically focused effort to dismantle human smuggling and trafficking organizations, as well as those whose business depends upon systematic violation of the laws against hiring illegal migrants. Border enforcement security task forces have been established along the southern border to bring multiple investigative groups -- not only DHS, but also state and local and FBI -- have all their capabilities brought together, focusing on criminal organizations that we have identified as being systematically involved in smuggling human beings or drugs, document fraud, or other violations of law. The recently announced Document and Benefit Fraud Task Forces are focused on detecting and deterring threats to national security through vulnerabilities created by systematic document fraud. And as the enforcement efforts in the last couple of weeks demonstrate, we are going to be targeting and making cases against businesses that make it as part of their profit model exploiting illegal migrants who are in this country and systematically violating the laws against doing that. We all recognize the urgent need to secure our borders and enforce our laws. The public expects it, they have a right to expect it. A year ago, I said we were going to make this a top priority, we were going to build a strategy, we were going to plan it, we were going to resource it and we were going to execute it. The cases you see in the last couple of weeks are part of the delivery on that promise. We will continue to deliver at the border, at the interior, and throughout the entire process to make sure that we are vindicating our immigration laws and our criminal laws in this country. I want to thank the ICE agents who are involved and the U.S. Attorney's Office and all the other law enforcement personnel who contributed to today's effort and yesterday's effort, and to all the efforts we undertook last week. And now I'd like to ask Ms. Myers to make a few remarks. Assistant Secretary Myers: Thank you, Secretary Chertoff. I am pleased to be here today to join the Secretary in announcing the Secure Border Initiative's interior enforcement strategy and to talk a little about the great success we had yesterday and today in the IFCO case. I welcome the Secretary's priorities and his vision for enhancing effective enforcement in the interior of the United States. We take our mission seriously here at ICE, and this mission includes public safety. Our nation's communities cannot be a wild frontier where illegal aliens and unscrupulous employers subvert our nation's laws. As Assistant Secretary here at ICE, I'm committed to prioritizing the removal of illegal aliens, building strong work site enforcement operations, and dismantling the criminal networks that fuel and support illegal immigration. Let me expand just a little on how we will achieve the goals that the Secretary set out this morning. First, we are going to focus on the criminal aliens. We will identify and remove incarcerated aliens, immigration fugitives, and immigration violators. To achieve this goal, as the Secretary noted, we are nearly tripling our fugitive operations capabilities, where we estimate that we will be able to have 1,000 arrests per team. We're also going to bolster our criminal alien program. Under this program, as the Secretary noted, we remove criminal aliens booked in our nation's federal, state and local correctional facilities. Last year, we removed 80,000 criminal aliens, and with our enhanced efforts, we project a 10 percent increase in removals for each year, through fiscal year 2008. What else can Americans expect to see us doing, with respect to this first goal? Well, you can expect to see more initiatives, such as the two-week enforcement action that ended in mid-March, where ICE agents and other federal law enforcement officials arrested over 375 gang members and associates in 23 states in a joint effort. Violent criminal gang members have no place on America's streets, which is why we have requested, in the President's '07 budget, an additional 322 positions to support this critical initiative. Prioritizing the removal of criminal aliens is critical to ensuring our public safety. We can all understand and sympathize with the drive to come to the United States in search of the American Dream, but when illegal aliens choose to commit crimes, the American Dream turns into a nightmare for everyone. Next, as the Secretary discussed, we will seek to build a strong compliance and enforcement system for employers. Generally speaking, we think most employers want to do the right thing, so one of the key parts of our strategy will be to continue to find creative ways to partner with employers who want to avoid hiring illegal aliens. But when we find those employers who don't want to do the right thing, we're going to target our criminal efforts and bring all the criminal statutes that we can to bear against them. We've learned all too well, from watching the old INS, that just a small fine or a slap on the wrist is not a deterrent to businesses who want to violate our work site enforcement laws. That's the reason that we see more robust criminal cases built against negligent employers blatantly violating the law as a much stronger deterrent. The prospect of 10 years in prison carries much sharper teeth than just a small fine. The IFCO case that we're announcing today, as the Secretary noted, is the largest work site operation ever against a single employer. Over 60 percent of workers encountered at the IFCO sites by our agents yesterday were arrested. IFCO systems today is feeling the deterrent of the new approach, and I believe the case will really serve as a deterrent to other employers who think that they might be immune to our work site laws. And finally, but very importantly, we will really seek to focus our efforts on dismantling the infrastructure that supports illegal immigration through our work on the best task forces and the new Document Fraud and Benefit Task Forces. In this area, as well, we will concentrate on seizing assets, bringing our financial authorities to bear in going after those who support illegal aliens. In fact, ICE has been doing this since its inception. The amount of assets seized from organizations that smuggle aliens has gone from almost zero before 2003 to nearly $27 million just last year. The announcement of the interior enforcement strategy and the success of the IFCO case today demonstrates SBI's commitment to securing our nation's borders and prioritizing the removal of the criminal elements that fuel our immigration challenges and subvert our nation's law. I now want to turn to Glenn Suddaby, the United States Attorney for the northern district of New York. His office did tremendous work in this case, and he's been a critical partner in our efforts. Mr. Suddaby: Thank you, Assistant Myers, Secretary Chertoff. I thank both of you for the opportunity to join you here today. For the Justice Department, this criminal case is about the employer, and I emphasize that, that we looked at the current and former managers of IFCO, and seven arrests that were made yesterday were at that level for the conspiracy to transport, harbor and encourage unlawful aliens to reside in the U.S. for commercial advantage and private financial gain. Multiple searches were conducted across the country at over 45 different IFCO sites. And a significant amount of documentary evidence was seized, which we believe helps substantiate the charges that have been filed. I would note that the Assistant Secretary and Deputy Attorney General of the Justice Department, McNulty, a couple of weeks ago announced a document fraud initiative task force across the country, and emphasized that this case demonstrates the crucial need for that type of investigative coordination with the amount of document fraud that has been unturned or overturned in this particular case. This investigation started well over a year ago in Guilderland, a suburb of Albany, New York. The investigation was spearheaded by a cooperative law enforcement effort primarily of ICE and the New York State Police, with the assistance of the New York Upstate Regional Intelligence Center. And they, along with other law enforcement agencies, notably the Social Security Administration, IRS, Labor Department, and local PDs, Guilderland and Schenectady, coordinated what started out as a regional investigation into a national case. I would like to thank my colleague, U.S. Attorney Don DeGabrielle in Houston, Texas, for his efforts and his office's efforts in the investigation of IFCO headquarters in Houston, Texas, as well as my Assistant United States Attorney, Tina Sciocchetti, who coordinated and led this investigation, along with ICE and the New York State Police, and will handle the prosecution of this case. I think it's an example of what the Justice Department has to do in coordination with ICE and the other various agencies to hold these employers accountable for this illegal activity. And I thank you for your time. Secretary Chertoff: All right, we'll take some questions. Yes. Question: Mr. Secretary, you said that you hoped to hire another 200 agents to work on interior enforcement by the end of next year. How many will that bring you? How many people work on this now? And do you think you have enough resources to get the job done? Secretary Chertoff: Well, I'll ask Ms. Myers to give you the total number we have now in a moment. Obviously, this depends on Congress adopting the President's budget, but if they do adopt the President's budget request, that will bring us up to a little short of an additional 200 agents, just to focus on this. I don't know if Julie has the current number. Assistant Secretary Myers: We traditionally measure our agents by case-hour. So in terms of case-hour, we have the equivalent of 325 agents. The additional resources that we are seeking in '07 will allow us to form dedicated work site enforcement teams in a number of the SAC offices, and that's something that we don't have as much now, and we think the President's budget proposal would certainly help us strengthen that, because it is a nationwide problem. Question: Yes, Secretary Chertoff, do you believe there are other companies as large as FCO operating in this manner with -- Secretary Chertoff: I think history shows that there are large companies that operate with a business model that relies, to a significant extent, on undocumented illegal labor, and often labor that is silenced into putting up with subminimum wage and substandard working conditions, precisely because they're illegal. And I can tell you that we are continuing to investigate other companies as we speak here today. Question: Are you going to be looking at specific industries, like (inaudible) industries, for example? Secretary Chertoff: Well, one thing we have done is we've focused efforts on critical infrastructure. If you go back historically, we're looked, for example, at transportation workers, workers at nuclear power plants, workers at industries that are critical to national defense. But this is going to be intelligence driven, meaning where we identify industries that we have information rely heavily on illegal migration, sure, we absolutely will target industries like that. Question: (Inaudible) a larger picture of the immigration reform debate. And I mean, (inaudible) achieve ultimate success, you can either identify or (inaudible) all these legal workers (inaudible) temporary worker program in place. Are you expecting any kind of -- Secretary Chertoff: Well, I think actually this complements the temporary worker notion. The idea here is to recognize there's obviously a demand for labor that's not being met from within the United States, in terms of documented workers. So we want to create a very clear choice for employers, a legal path that will be regulated, that will be totally visible, and that will allow the hiring of workers in accordance with the law on a temporary basis, and also, by the way, protect those workers from being exploited, or a choice not to follow the law, which will be met with a very tough sanction that is not a slap on the wrist. And I think if we are able to enact this comprehensive program where we give a clear path to legality, but a very strong sanction for those who choose not to take that path, I think that is ultimately the key to solving the immigration problem that we've been talking about, not only for the last year, but for the last 20 years. Question: What kind of access are you talking about on Social Security records, and what kind of response are you getting from Capitol Hill to that? Secretary Chertoff: Well, I mean, this is up in Capitol Hill. What we're looking for is a limited ability to identify where there are clear systemic situations of no matches between the Social Security number and the name, or where the number itself is obviously fictitious, so we can use that as a basis to identify where we need to do investigation further. Now, obviously, a no-match in and of itself is not sufficient proof of wrongdoing, but it's certainly -- if it's existing in large numbers, is a pretty good tip that that's something we have to look at it. And so this is the kind of tool that, again, we'd be very careful not to abuse the information, use it only for its specific legitimate purpose, but that's the kind of ability to look if there's no matches that would let us be very focused and strategic in terms of where we dedicate our enforcement resources. Question: -- Chairman Grassley saying about this? Secretary Chertoff: Well, I think that -- I think there is discussion up on the Hill about this. I think there's interest in it. I can't tell you, as we speak right now, exactly where it is in the various iterations of the bill that are currently floating around. I can tell you the administration, though, has clearly indicated we support this measure. Question: Mr. Secretary, do you believe we're going to see in the second phase huge operations like this to persuade employers of illegal immigrants? And also, can you give us the number of the nationalities of the people (inaudible)? Secretary Chertoff: I can't -- I don't know if I can tell you the nationalities. I don't know if Julie can. Assistant Secretary Myers: Right now, though, we don't have kind of a final number. It appears that some of the individuals were from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil, Honduras. There may be others -- many individuals are still in processing, and this is ongoing. I think what you will see is increased emphasis on what I call "high impact" cases, not to do a little case against a couple people here, a couple people there, but to look at businesses that either exist based on having significant numbers of illegal employees, or those that enable others to do so, like temporary employment agencies that refer those workers to other people. Question: You mentioned (inaudible) for the IFCO (inaudible). Can you elaborate on that? Mr. Suddaby: Well, obviously, being able to hire workers at a lower wage, to house them in a way that they are taking money from them out of their payroll dollars, and the advantage in the market of being able to hire that cheap labor, all the things that we are concerned about, and the criminal nature of this type of case which goes hand-in-hand with the administrative enforcement of the people who are arguably being exploited. Question: You're referring to this as a new strategy for interior enforcement, but in looking at the things that you've talked about -- fugitive apprehension teams, budget requests -- I mean, is this not just really a repackaging of things that you were already doing and (inaudible)? Secretary Chertoff: Well, no, what it is is it reflects back to a year ago I said we're going to do stuff, and then working with where we were in the budget cycle, we are now following through with requests for increased resources, and we're now starting to see the fruits of seeds that were harvested when we started talking about this strategy a year or two ago. I mean, I don't want to just get up here and announce, here's a new strategy, and that's what the news is. I want to come back, then, at the end, and say, hey, we announced a strategy, and here we are starting to deliver results. Results in this case are arrests, charges under the immigration laws, charges under the criminal laws, forfeitures of millions of dollars. That's the kind of results I think the American people will use to measure the success of these promises. Now, this is not going to be done in a year. Like when we did organized crime, we built a strategy -- and I'm personal witness to this -- we built a strategy, we started to execute it, and then, in a year, two years, we saw bigger and bigger cases, and that really has an impact. So that's what we're doing here today. Question: Do you expect this recent pace of arrests to continue? And do you expect to see fairly high-profile, high-impact cases being announced every couple of weeks? Or -- Secretary Chertoff: I think you'll -- when you're ready, when the time is right, we'll announce the cases. I mean, every -- you got to build a case that can prevail in court, and so while we obviously feel the urgency of the American people is communicating in terms of taking every conceivable step to increase enforcement, we've got to make sure we do it in the right way. Question: Mr. Secretary, why haven't we seen this kind of operation in agriculture, for example, where it's so well known that many of the companies use illegal workers? And the other, could you respond to people who think that this enforcement, this drastic enforcement action, is (inaudible) to thousands of people that came to demonstrate what they saw that was unfair -- Secretary Chertoff: Well, the first thing I would say is you may well see something like this in the agricultural area. No one should assume any area is off limits. We prioritize -- certainly if we get the Social Security legislation we're asking for, so we can start to proactively look for systemic situations of abuse, we're going to have a much easier time in focusing our strategy. The answer to the question on whether this is a reaction to the demonstrations in the last week or two is that we have to look at the fact that the investigation here began over a year ago, well before anybody predicted demonstrations. And this is part of a strategy which I talked about a year ago. So it shouldn't be a big surprise to anybody. We put this out on the table, maybe people weren't listening, but even when people aren't listening, we have people like the prosecutors and the investigators out working making the cases. Question: Hi, just to follow up with what's going on in the Senate (inaudible) initiatives might complement the (inaudible) guest worker program, but what if something happens that has an earned legalization program which allows the majority of those who are here illegally to come out and earn their legalization? How does that confront with this initiative? Secretary Chertoff: It's very simple, because the initiative is very clear. Those who comply with the law in the way they employ others have nothing to worry about. They're in a perfectly safe place. Those who violate the law, whether the law is what it is today or whether it will be in -- or wherever it will be in a year, those who violate that law are going to feel a tough sanction. And frankly, I think it's important for Congress to understand that if they pass a law, however that law ultimately is configured, that we will enforce that law. And that means honoring those who work within the law, but really cracking down on those who are outside the law. I think that's the kind of approach that Congress expects us to take in these kinds of matters. ### Related Information ICE Agents Arrest Seven Managers of Nationwide Pallet Company and 1,187 of the Firm’s Illegal Alien Employees in 26 States, April 20, 2006