Carwash Workers and Capitol Hill: Immigration in Limbo

In an interview with Fox 10 in Phoenix, former Danny's Car Wash employee Hortencia Jaimes says management fired and rehired undocumented employees under a 'new' identity. (Fox 10) After months of partisan squabbling over immigration reform on Capitol Hill, the legislative discussion may again be sidelined as lawmakers take on debates on war and the deficit. But for many immigrant workers, the clock is ticking.

For one group of workers in Phoenix, each new day in the U.S. feels like it might be the last. Federal agents raided their employer, Danny’s Family Car Wash, in Phoenix last month, rounding up more than 200 workers. Some remain in detention, and all were left jobless and deeply shaken, fearing that at any minute they might be swept up into the Obama administration’s record surge of deportations, now approaching two million “removals" during his tenure.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents targeted 16 locations of the Danny’s Car Wash franchise following a two-year investigation into suspected fraud and identity theft—a scary-sounding term that refers to the use of fake Social Security numbers and other documents in hiring undocumented workers.

According to an ICE spokesperson Amber Cargile, the target of the raid was the management, not the workers. Drawing a contrast with the more aggressive mass worker arrests of the Bush administration, the she told the Arizona Republic that the round-up was a routine action focused “on the arrest of the employers and managers [and] supervisors."

The managers gave the employment number. It was a number that belonged to people who used to work at Danny's. They would tell you, you can keep working we got you a new number.

So the illegals knew the company was in fact giving them fake or stolen documents but's it's Danny's car wash who broke the laws and illegals are saying, really these laws are not suppose to apply to us. They went along with company and themselves committed crimes.

Back in Phoenix, Jaimes can't spend much time thinking about Washington’s next move when she lives with the daily terror of being ripped apart from her family. After she was released from detention, she told Fox News that throughout the ordeal, "I was scared and thinking about what am I going to do about my kids..Oh yes I can break the laws and use my family to why these crimes do not apply to me. The illegals mindset is,it's always someone else's fault and none were apparently smart enough to leave a job if the working conditions were as bad as stated. What burns me up is, illegals do not think document fraud is really a crime, it is ok to use document fraud regardless of who it belongs too.It's always about them and gimmie,gimme,gimme,gimme me.As noted here... ICE released most of them but continued to hold 30 workers on immigration charges, claiming that they had "criminal records or other reason to be detained," into story...The former carwash workers are demanding not only the release of their colleagues still in custody, but also petitioning the employer for back wages, with the public support of local activists. Yeah who cares if the illegals detained committed serious crimes who will stay detained ,but NO we want them set free now and forgot about the American laws.. Why dont the illegals go back to Mexico if they want a country of lawlessness. They sure do not respect our laws one bit.

And cashing a check with a fake nname and social security number, the illegals also think this is another law that does not apply to them.Cashing a check with untrue information should be enough to keep them locked up for a few or more years

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