About Damn Time

This is low-hanging fruit, but credit needs to be given to a government agency enforcing the existing laws.

The apprehension on Wednesday of more than 1,100 illegal immigrants employed by a Houston-based pallet supply company, as well as the arrest of seven of its managers, represents the kickoff of a more aggressive federal immigration enforcement campaign intended to hold employers accountable for breaking the law, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said today.

Saying the hiring by companies nationwide of millions of undocumented workers is often a form of organized crime, Mr. Chertoff, a former federal prosecutor, said the government will now attempt to combat the practice with techniques similar to those used to try to shut down the mob.

"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," Mr. Chertoff said during a news conference at the headquarters of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division.

The news conference came the day after immigration officials apprehended 1,187 illegal immigrants who worked in 26 states for IFCO Systems North America, a company that supplies plastic and wood pallets used to ship everything from produce to pet food.

Company supervisors knowingly hired illegal immigrants, provided them with housing and transportation to and from work, and even reimbursed one undercover agent for the cost of obtaining fraudulent identity documents, Homeland Security Department officials said.

IFCO is a decent-sized company that must have not been paying its campaign donations on time. There's going to be a lot of pushback on this from companies, but there's urgency on the other side to get something done. Do you know how many companies were fined in 2003 for knowingly hiring illegal workers? 3.

The bigger employers often hide behind subcontractors to essentially maintain plausible deniability over document forgery or knowing hiring of illegals. Breaking up that ring might be even more effective than going after the employers themselves.

I have to say I strongly support the effort to enforce existing laws. Eventually an earned-legalization program will be needed to deal with those illegals already here. But actually cracking down on workplaces will help take care of the growth of the problem, and will end up raising wages for lower-income Americans, who will do the jobs many say "they won't do," if it's at the right price. I believe in expanding the opportunity of America to those who want it. But I believe that nobody should get an exception from the law.

And I support the Minutemen building a border fence themselves because I can't resist seeing a bunch of xenophobes doing an honest day's work, and maybe starting to be sympathetic to those who do the same, for pennies, every day, to put food on their families' tables.