Illegal Immigration: Interior Enforcement, Part 3

For Part 1 of this series, click here; for Part 2, click here.

Employer Sanctions:

Unannounced inspections of factories, restaurants, hotels, farms and other places where illegal aliens frequently find employment must be conducted. If an employer has knowingly hired illegals, he should be prosecuted. Likewise, the illegal alien employees should be taken into custody.

Consistent prosecution of prosecuting unscrupulous employers and illegal alien employees will serve as a deterrent. Consequently, more Americans will be able to find jobs. Importantly, wages earned by American citizens and lawful immigrants are far more likely to be spent and invested in the United States, especially significant during the current economic downturn.

Cutting off employment possibilities would reduce the number of illegal aliens streaming across our borders.

Alien Smuggling Investigations:

Identification of so-called “safe houses,” where smuggled illegal aliens may be held until family members or other can provide the funds to the smugglers, is crucial. It is also important to identify the transporters who, working in cahoots with smugglers, may use a variety of vehicles to transport illegal aliens across the country.

Aliens smuggled into the U.S. generally enter with the intention of making their way into the interior. In addition to the obvious ploy of running our nation’s borders, some smuggled aliens stow away on ships or aircraft.

It is important to note that the smugglers often use illegal aliens as “mules,” forcing them to carry narcotics across the border on their persons, sometimes by swallowing narcotics stuffed into condoms to be retrieved at a “safe house” within the United States. A number of years ago I assisted the DEA in New York in executing a search warrant in Staten Island, where such an operation was being run out of an apartment. Aliens, mostly citizens of Nigeria, entered the U.S. at John F. Kennedy International Airport with condoms in their stomachs. They were met at the airport by a member of the drug organization who drove them to an the apartment, where they were given massive doses of laxatives, Strainers were used to retrieve the drug-laden condoms were from the toilet. It was only after that all of the condoms had passed through their bodies that these aliens were allowed to leave the apartment. In some instances, the condoms would burst before the aliens got off the airplane, the massive overdose often causing death.

Criminal Alien/Fugitive Investigations:

The agents who are assigned to this unit are responsible for locating aliens who have been convicted of crimes in the United States and have been sentenced to prison sentences. Some of these aliens may have been lawfully admitted to the United States as lawful immigrants (resident aliens) or they may have entered our country illegally. Regardless of how these aliens entered our country, by virtue of their criminal convictions, these aliens are now subject to removal from the United States.

Additionally, the agents in this squad also seek to arrest illegal aliens who have been deported (removed) from the U. S. and then, one way or another, have managed to reenter the country.

I am particularly proud of the fact that in the early 1980’s I had convinced then-Senator Al D’Amato (D-NY) to work with the administration to have deportation hearings conducted in correctional facilities and, as well, to sponsor legislation to differentiate between administrative law violators who had been deported from the U. S. and criminal aliens who were deported from the U. S. after serving their criminal sentences.

Part 4 of this series will be posted on July 12.