Posted on 10/19/2018 7:14:14 AM PDT by gattaca
With new enforcement priorities under the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are taking aim at employers that knowingly hire unauthorized immigrants. The most recent — and largest — bust happened at a trailer manufacturing plant in northeast Texas.
Business had been booming at Load Trail LLC, about two hours northeast of Dallas, as customers bought the black trailers to haul hay bales, topsoil, construction refuse and oilfield equipment. Then came the ICE raid in late August.
Inside Load Trail's huge production building, welders turn raw steel into trailers, amid cacophonous clanging and showers of sparks. It's brutish labor — cut the heavy black metal, lug it into place, arc-weld it, repeat — but the production floor is nearly half empty because of an acute shortage of welders.
Load Trail CEO Kevin Hiebert remembers the morning of Aug. 28, when a helicopter thumped overhead and 300 ICE agents swarmed into his yard. "It looked like something you would typically see in the movies," he said, "not something you ever planned on living out in real life."
ICE rounded up more than 150 employees — nearly a quarter of Hiebert's workforce — loaded them into buses and booked them for working in the country unlawfully. A criminal investigation of the company continues.
So far this year, ICE agents have stormed 7-Eleven stores, a meatpacking plant, dairy and vegetable farms and a feedlot.
Jake Thiessen's family founded Load Trail in Tigertown, Texas, which is home to a half-dozen major trailer manufacturers. Shortly after the Load Trail raid, ICE began auditing employee records of every trailer manufacturer in the community to find out which workers have fraudulent identity documents. John Burnett/NPR "Businesses that knowingly hire illegal aliens create an unfair advantage over their competing businesses. In addition, they take jobs away from U.S. citizens and legal residents," said Katrina Berger, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in the Dallas ICE office.
But you won't hear those complaints in Tigertown, Texas. This flyspeck community situated between cotton fields near the Oklahoma border is home to a half-dozen major trailer manufacturers — all competitors. And they all employ undocumented workers.
"I think the manufacturing industry in Texas, any kind of steel fabrication construction, depends on illegal immigrant labor," Hiebert says.
ICE Targets 7-Eleven Stores In Nationwide Immigration Raids THE TWO-WAY ICE Targets 7-Eleven Stores In Nationwide Immigration Raids The head of a competing trailer-maker down the road agrees, saying they all use workers who are in the country illegally. He asked not to be named in hopes of staying off ICE's radar.
It's too late for that, though: ICE is auditing the employee records of every trailer manufacturer in Tigertown to find out which workers have fake identity documents. Some unauthorized employees are so rattled they're not showing up for work.
What the industry needs are legal guest workers, says Load Trail CEO Hiebert, "Especially now that they're cranking up on the enforcement. Everybody hopes that there'll be some kind of real immigration reform before what happened at Load Trail happens to them."
Load Trail has been in trouble before
In 2014, the company was fined $445,000 for employing more than 170 unauthorized immigrants at its plant. Hiebert says they hire whoever walks in the door, and they pay decent wages — $20 to $25 an hour. Still, they've always had a hard time finding welders.
"The trailer industry is growing well," Hiebert says, "but manufacturers are unable to keep up with demand. It has to do with the inability to produce the product."
So the work is done by men like Ignacio Barrios, a sturdy, 36-year-old welder who came here illegally from Oaxaca, Mexico. He worked at Load Trail for 17 years before getting swept up in the ICE operation.
Texas has always been knowingly duplicitous when it comes to illegal immigration.
Cal Jillson, political scientist
He wears an American flag T-shirt, and sits in the church that's helping to support his family of five now that he's out of work. Barrios paid a $5,000 bond to get out of detention, and is waiting for his day in immigration court.
"You have to work hard," he says in Spanish. "Lots of times you get injured, burned, you break your fingers. It gets over 100 degrees in the there. I've seen that Americans don't want to do the kind of work that we do."
Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, says "Texas has always been knowingly duplicitous when it comes to illegal immigration."
On the one hand, Texas is a staunch law-and-order state where conservatives support Trump's immigration agenda; on the other hand, Jillson says, if ICE is too successful, "employers are wondering where they're going to find people to man their businesses if American high school graduates aren't going to do it."
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested more than 150 workers at a trailer-manufacturing business in North Texas. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Lamar County, where the trailer manufacturers are headquartered, is crimson Trump country. Yet, to hear the trailer bosses tell it, the administration's immigrant roundups threaten a lifeblood of the county. Locals who voted for Trump are nonetheless sympathetic to the hard-working, undocumented welders.
Every morning, a group of retirees meets at the Dairy Queen in the county seat of Paris to drink coffee and mull over the state of the nation.
ECONOMY Worker Shortage Could Dampen Economy "This country will not survive if we don't straighten the way [immigrants] can come over here and work. Because I guarantee you Americans are not gonna do it," says Alan Helberg, a former hospital administrator. His buddy, retired dentist Jerry Akers, chimes in, "Congress needs to get off their duff and pass some meaningful legislation to where people can come here and work legally and not have to be afraid of getting uprooted."
Comprehensive immigration reform is, so far, dead in the water in the gridlocked Congress. And back at Tigertown, some trailer manufacturers say that if they can't find enough welders, they would consider moving their entire operations to Mexico.
Hiebert says they hire whoever walks in the door, and they pay decent wages — $20 to $25 an hour. Still, they’ve always had a hard time finding welders
Must be a pretty happy bunch of Mexicans working down there in Texas. s
Comprehensive immigration reform is, so far, dead in the water in the gridlocked Congress.
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What they mean is amnesty.
There are still plenty of Bush League Republicans willing to vote for amnesty in Congress.
After the next election.
Flake, Corker, Hatch, Heller, Alexander, Graham, McCain, Murkowsky, Hoeven, Rubio voted for the last one.
Tillis, Burr, Lankford, Gardner, Cornyn, Cochran, Collins, Sasse, Kennedy, Shelby, Ernst, Blunt, McConnell, Wicker, Portman, Isakson, Johnson, Toomey, Rounds, Thune, Gaines, Barasso and Enzi are available to vote for the next on if their vote is needed.
We need more than 4 or 5 Senators on the side of the citizens and the rule of law.
I know what I’m about to say is unpopular here on FR now a days, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
Having worked in the asbestos abatement industry over the years as a project manager I can tell you that finding American workers who will do hot, dirty, dangerous jobs even for good pay is not easy. Most of the jobs I worked paid $25-30/hr. prevailing wage + bennies and you couldn’t find Americans, black or white, to do them. I trained workers and in most classes the Black and white guys dropped out the first time they had to suit and get dirty. It was also sad how many, especially the young white guys, couldn’t pass the drug test. Most company used legal crews that came up from Central America, worked the busy summer season, and went home in the winter. Hardest working people I’ve ever met. We desperately need a guest worker program in this country, because like it or not there are some jobs Americans just won’t do. I wouldn’t think welder would be one, but there are some.
Texas has always been knowingly duplicitous when it comes to illegal immigration.
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Especially their politicians.
George W. Bush, George P. Bush, Rick Perry, etc.
There are plenty of American welders looking for good work. These companies just want to pay Mexican wages under the table rather than American wages aboveboard.
It must be comforting to trailer owners to know that people who don’t respect law (ilegals and those that hire thej) built the trailer?
Illegal aliens cannot get green cards because they are illegal aliens.
Green cards must be applied for in their home country and they have to wait their turn there.
Unfortunately we're probably stuck with him for a few terms... **coughcoughbaptistscoughcough**
This is one reason why real wages for lower middle class workers in America are rising for the first time in decades. A shortage of $8/hr illegal welders=opportunity for $25/hr American workers.
Its quite obvious why the neverTrump cheap labor express (Koch brothers, Chamber of Commerce, etc.) have sold their “conservative” souls to stop MAGA.
I’m very interested in knowing where Lindsey Graham stands on this.
Dear clueless try $25 - $30 an hour then.
Once you are illegal, there is no path back to being legal besides returning to your home country and filing the proper application so you can wait your turn in line. This is not a children’s game of “hide and seek” where you can run faster than the seeker back to be safe on home base. The requirement for a properly completed I-9 form has been in place since the 80s and employers who haven’t figured out how to manage their business legally by now deserve the full weight of consequences.
Oh, my! I'll bet NPR's faggoty little reporter felt quite a thrill going up his leg as he wrote those manly words... manly words, not words he often has occasion to write.
Not letting illegals weld big rig trailers together sounds like a plus for public safety.
One of the Tigertown owners was just whining on NPR——NEEDS the illegals.
They then started to interview one of the illegal workers who has been here for many years-——he spoke in Spanish-———and off went my radio.
.
One of the Tigertown owners was just whining on NPR——NEEDS the illegals.
They then started to interview one of the illegal workers who has been here for many years-——he spoke in Spanish-———and off went my radio.
.
there are some jobs Americans just won’t do.
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I have watched enough “Dirty Jobs” to know that is a lie.
I have also worked enough dirty jobs myself to know that is not true as well.
Wow. Who’s going to pick the cotton if we free the slaves I wonder.
My brother used to employ a number of such young men, both black and white in South Carolina, all good paying contruction jobs. He went under because he followed the law. His competitors all hired illegals and paid cash under the table.
Probably because all the years of depressed wages drove many away from wanting to even train to become a welder. It's going to take time to catch up.
It’s a $10,000 fine for each illegal alien employee, isn’t it?
For that kind of money, he could set up his own welding school.
The illegals now have an opportunity to build their own trailer business -in Mexico.
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