Secretary of Homeland Security speaks to US Coast Guard Academy graduates at 144th commencement
NEW LONDON, Conn. (WTNH) — A sea of graduates arrived at Cadet Memorial Field. After four years at the US Coast Guard Academy, they become the service's newest ensigns.
'It couldn't come soon enough and I can 't believe the moment's here,' new ensign Jack Derry of Niantic said.
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Among the more than 260 graduates, 18 are from Connecticut, including the Distinguished Graduate Veronica Krystofik of Colchester.
'Force Design 2028 is the most significant shift in a century but I'm not worried because I know exactly who is stepping up to that challenge,' Krystofik said. 'Our class and our motto says it best, 'For others we fight.''
'We're extra proud that she got to represent Colchester and the great state of Connecticut,' said Donna and Ron Krystofik, who are the Veronica Krystofik's parents.
The changes were laid out by Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, the keynote speaker at the 144th commencement ceremonies.
'Force Design 2028 is our roadmap to revolutionize the Coast Guard,' said Noem.
Noem told graduates Force Design 2028 focuses on four different campaigns — people, organization, acquisition, as well as, contracting and technology.
'As part of this campaign the service will reduce the number of its admirals by 25% so that we can return the decision making to the front line,' Noem said. 'Where it belongs.'
The protests outside the Coast Guard Academy did not interrupt the ceremony inside it.
'We have a lot of criticism of Noem but I've been seeing a lot of just friendly hellos to the families as they walk past,' protestor Charles Thompson said.
Nathan and Tabitha Aime from Easton are brother and sister.
'Just really excited to graduate with my sister so it's been an honor and a blessing,' new ensign Nathan Aime said.
'Yeah I'm so excited to serve my country,' Tabitha Aime added. 'Both our parents gave us so much just by being here so we're excited.'
The new ensigns do get to enjoy some leave, time with family and friends, but in 30 days they will report to their new assignments.
Now though is a time to celebrate an academic mission accomplished.
'I joined to help people and I really just want to help as many people as I can in the future,' new ensign Kira Howard of Wilton said.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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31 minutes ago
Amid recent string of attacks inspired by Israel-Hamas war, some experts worry counterterrorism not a priority
Five alleged high-profile terrorist attacks have occurred across the United States in the first six months of 2025, including four that investigators suspect were motivated by the war in Gaza or radicalized by the ISIS terrorist group. But as law enforcement investigates the violent incidents -- from the New Orleans truck rampage to the Molotov cocktail attack in Boulder -- some counterterrorism experts say they're worried the federal government has taken its eye "off the ball" in preventing terrorism as its priorities shift -- from counterterrorism to mass deportation. "It's stunning to me that we're making the same mistakes we did in the lead-up to 9/11," said Elizabeth Neumann, a former Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary for counterterrorism during the first Trump administration. "Now that does not mean that we're going to have another 9/11, but it's very alarming to me that we are repeating mistakes." A DHS senior official said in a statement to ABC News, "Any suggestion that DHS is stepping away from addressing terrorism is simply false." "Under President Trump, the Department of Homeland Security will use every tool and resource available to secure our border, protect the homeland, and get criminal illegal aliens out of our country," the DHS official said. "The safety of American citizens comes first." The wave of extremist violence has come against a backdrop of a rising number of assaults, vandalism and harassment nationwide linked to the Israel-Hamas war. The war erupted on Oct. 7, 2023, when the Hamas terrorist group staged a widespread ambush in Israel, killing 1,200 people, including children, and taking 251 hostages, with about 20 still held in captivity. According to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, the death toll in Gaza is nearly 54,000 since the war began. Federal and state law enforcement agencies and the Department of Homeland Security have repeatedly issued bulletins, warning the country is vulnerable to terrorism, especially at large events, as a result of the Gaza war. The New York City Police Department, responsible for protecting the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel, issued a bulletin last month, saying, "Jewish people and institutions continue to be the target of violent assaults, harassment, intimidation, hate crimes, and threats, especially since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war." On Thursday night, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned of an "elevated threat" facing the Jewish community in the wake of the back-to-back incidents in Washington, D.C., and Boulder. However, the DHS and FBI did not indicate there are any known threats in a joint intelligence bulletin sent to law enforcement on May 23. "Violent extremist messaging continues to highlight major sporting and cultural events and venues as potential targets, and threat actors -- including domestic violent extremists (DVEs), homegrown violent extremists (HVEs) inspired by Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), and other mass casualty attackers not motivated by an ideology -- previously have targeted public events with little to no warning," according to the bulletin. John Cohen, a former Department of Homeland Security undersecretary of intelligence, said he is concerned that at this time of heightened security, the White House has proposed cutting the FBI's fiscal-year 2026 budget by $545 million dollars, or about 5% of the bureau's budget. An internal memo from the FBI Chicago office, obtained in March by ABC Chicago station WLS-TV, confirmed that members of the office's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), and terrorism task forces nationwide, will be supporting Homeland Security task forces focused on making immigration arrests. "So at the very time that we are seeing more and more acts of violence and destructive demonstration activity by people who are being, in some cases, not only inspired but facilitated by foreign threat actors, the concern is that the resources being devoted to addressing that threat are being decreased," said Cohen, an ABC News contributor. Neumann said it's not just the FBI's counterterrorism departments getting slashed. She said an office she helped establish within the Department of Homeland Security to help communities across the nation prevent hate-fueled attacks is being drastically cut back. ProPublica reported this week that the office, the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3), is currently being spearheaded by a 22-year-old recent college graduate with no previous counterterrorism experience. "What this office does is it creates capability locally, within a state, to be able to educate bystanders on the signs and indicators of somebody that might be radicalizing ... and then it helps states create the capability for mental health practitioners and other professionals to be able to intervene with individuals," Neumann said. "It was needed because we just have so many people moving into that stage of, 'Well, they might commit an act of violence, but they haven't done anything criminal yet.'" Neumann, an ABC News contributor, said she has noticed a complacency set in after the U.S. declared victory over ISIS in 2019 and withdrew troops from Afghanistan in 2021. "We are moving our eye off the ball to focus on things that I don't know are what I would put in the top of my counterterrorism bucket," Neumann said. 'Immigration security IS national security' In a statement to ABC News, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said concerns that the administration has taken its eye off counterterrorism to focus on its deportation crackdown are unfounded. "Immigration security IS national security -- look no further than the terrorist, who was in the United States illegally, that firebombed elderly Jewish women," Jackson said, referring to 45-year-old Egyptian citizen Mohamed Soliman accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at a group of marchers advocating for the release of hostages being held in Gaza. "Enforcing our immigration laws and removing illegal aliens is one big way President Trump is Making America Safe Again." Soliman entered the U.S. in 2022 on a B2 visa that expired in February 2023, according to DHS. A senior official told ABC News he was then granted a work permit that expired in March 28, 2025. Answering critics questioning the administration's preparedness for protecting the homeland in the wake of the string of recent terror attacks, Jackson said, "But the President can walk and chew gum at the same time -- we're holding all criminals accountable, whether they're illegal aliens or American citizens. That's why nationwide murder rates have plummeted, fugitives from the FBI's most wanted list have been captured, and police officers are empowered to do their jobs, unlike under the Biden Administration's soft-on-crime regime." According to the Department Justice and annual FBI violent crime statistics, that nation's murder rate has fallen for the past three consecutive years. The White House also pointed to President Donald Trump's proclamation on Wednesday banning travel from 12 countries -- including Afghanistan, Iran and Libya -- and imposing travel restrictions on seven other countries as evidence the administration has not lost its focus on national security concerns. Egypt, where the suspect in the Boulder attack is from, was not included in the list of countries. Ben Williamson, the FBI's assistant director for public affairs, told ABC News in a statement that while the bureau does not comment on specific personnel decisions, "our agents and support staff are dedicated professionals working around the clock to defend the homeland and crush violent crime -- a mission which certainly overlaps with the consequences of the previous administration's open border policies for four years." Williamson added, "We are proud to work with our interagency partners to keep the American people safe." DHS: Terrorist attacks linked to Gaza war Cohen, the former DHS intelligence official, said neither the Trump administration nor the Biden administration have done enough to prevent terrorism, while foreign actors and terrorist groups like ISIS have upped their game on the internet to radicalize converts within the U.S. "We're continuing to see efforts to not just inspire but instruct those individuals who are angry, who are certain, who are looking for the justification to engage in violence, to express that anger," Cohen said. "So content is developing and introduced online that's intended to inspire them to commit violence, but also providing instructions on just how to do it. We've seen videos talking about vehicle ramming. We've seen videos talking about how to construct explosive devices. We've seen video online encouraging mass shootings at the same time." In August 2024, two Austrian teenagers were arrested and accused of plotting to attack Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna. Authorities said both suspects appeared to have been inspired by ISIS and al-Qaeda, and one of them had researched bomb-making techniques and uploaded to the internet an oath of allegiance to the current leader of the Islamic State. "Law enforcement analysts over the last several months have seen online content posted by al-Qaeda-related and Hamas and Iranian-linked groups advocating violence as a way for people to respond to their concerns about what's going on in Gaza," Cohen said. 'COVID is a huge reason why it's more complicated' Neumann said the pandemic opened the door for terrorist groups to manipulate people during a time of extreme vulnerability. "COVID is a huge reason why it's more complicated," said Neumann, adding that the usual modus operandi of terrorist groups is "offering a certainty in an uncertain world." "It's offering this black-and-white answer of why the bad thing happened to them," Neumann said. "When you look at why people mobilize to violence or radicalize, it is not the ideology. The ideology is kind of the bow that comes on top after all of these other factors have kind of gotten into play for an individual." She added, "We, largely as a field, understand those that commit acts of violence have underlying psychosocial factors that have led them to this place where they are willing to be convinced that violence is the right solution for their problems." Neumann pointed to a 2023 poll by University of California, Davis Violence Prevention Research Program that found 32.8% of respondents considered violence to be usually or always justified to advance some political objectives. "And then you add to it, COVID, Oct. 7, social media, it's just a perfect cauldron for a lot of people to be led astray," Neumann said. In three of the alleged U.S. terrorist attacks that have occurred since mid-April, investigators said the suspects were motivated by the war to commit violence on American soil. The suspect in the April 13 firebombing of the Pennsylvania governor's residence allegedly targeted Gov. Shapiro, who is Jewish, "based upon perceived injustices to the people of Palestine," according to a criminal complaint. The man who allegedly gunned down two Israeli embassy staff members on May 21 outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., was captured on video shouting "Free Palestine" following the shooting. Neither suspect has entered a plea. In Boulder, Colorado, on June 1, authorities say Soliman, shouting "free Palestine" and wielding a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails, targeted demonstrators, injuring 15. Soliman has been charged in both state and federal court. He is also charged with hate crimes in the federal case. He has yet to enter a plea to any of the charges. The year started off with the New Year's Day truck-ramming on Bourbon Street in New Orleans that left 14 people dead. The suspect, who was killed in a gunfight with police, had pledged support for ISIS, according to investigators. In a Facebook video the suspect posted as he drove to commit the attack, he said he "originally planned to harm his family and friends, but was concerned the news headlines would not focus on the 'war between the believers and the disbelievers.'" Cohen said, "Regional conflicts in the past were isolated events occurring in foreign lands. But because of the internet, they are now taking place in communities across America." A fifth terrorist attack, that was apparently unrelated to the Middle East war, occurred on May 17 in Palm Springs, California, where a car packed with large quantities of ammonium nitrate was detonated, allegedly by a 25-year-old man who investigators said died in the blast and lived by "pro-mortalism, anti-natalism, and anti-pro-life ideology," or the belief that people should not be born without their consent. An alleged co-conspirator in the Palm Springs attack was arrested this month with federal authorities saying he provided large quantities of ammonium nitrate to the suspect killed in the blast. The attacks in Washington, D.C., New Orleans and at Gov. Shapiro's Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, residence were all allegedly carried out by U.S. citizens, according to investigators. The suspect in the Boulder attack is an Egypt-born man who lived in Kuwait until he moved to Colorado three years ago and had overstayed his B2 tourist visa, investigators said. Additionally, a dual American-German citizen was arrested on May 19 after he allegedly attempted to attack the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, but was thwarted by a guard, investigators said. The suspect was captured after dropping a backpack filled with Molotov cocktails, authorities said. "We have to do a better job at maintaining awareness of the threat, and that means by tracking what foreign domestic threat actors or what foreign intelligence services terrorist groups are posting online, the types of attacks they're calling for and the techniques that they are promoting to conduct those attacks," Cohen said. "Law enforcement can take that intelligence then and have a better understanding of the targets that are at risk and ensure that security measures are put in place to reduce the likelihood that these types of public events would be targeted." Neumann said that the current threat environment requires an urgent response from the federal government. "As with everything that happens in Washington, there will be another attack of such a scale that people are going to say, 'We should do something,' and then all of a sudden, the money will flow, and then they'll be like, 'Oh, look, here's this new shiny object that we can solve this problem with,'" Neumann said. "It will get restarted, but we will have lost a long period of time and expertise and will have to make some similar mistakes again as we relearn. That's kind of sad, because in the intervening time people will die because we're not investing in this now."
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Miami Herald
2 hours ago
- Miami Herald
Immigrants choose to leave the U.S. amid fear and discrimination
For 14 years, Jessika Cifuentes built a stable life in the United States. She ran her own business, forged strong community ties, and even became a U.S. citizen. But the increasingly hostile climate toward immigrants — fueled by harsher policies and deepening economic hardship — led her to make an unthinkable decision: return to Guatemala. Cifuentes, a 51-year-old professional, packed her bags, left her home in Utah and relocated with her two daughters to Antigua, a city ringed by volcanoes in southern Guatemala, where she has only a few friends. There, she hopes to launch a food business with her eldest daughter. After months of anxiety over shifting immigration policies under the Trump administration, a period of unemployment following layoffs at her company and a lack of support to sustain her food business, she made the difficult choice to go back home last April. 'Now, from what I've seen, being a citizen is no longer enough; just being Latino is enough,' she told el Nuevo Herald in an interview from Guatemala. 'I didn't want to expose myself to that. I couldn't keep living in a place where I'm discriminated against without people even knowing who I am — just because I have a Latino last name.' Her story is not unique. A growing number of immigrants are returning to their countries voluntarily in the wake of expanded detentions and deportations, the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for several nations, the end of humanitarian parole programs for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, and the suspension of new DACA applications. Many of them had built full lives in the United States — with families, jobs, property and deep roots in their communities. But faced with the threat of detention, family separation and no path to legal status, they have chosen to return — often to countries they haven't called home in decades. Not everyone is using 'CBP Home,' the app launched in March by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that allows undocumented immigrants —or those with revoked permits— to voluntarily self-deport and apply for $1,000 in financial assistance. Juana Iris Estrada, originally from Mexico, is preparing to leave the United States this summer. She's packing up most of her belongings to move to Puebla, a city in east-central Mexico known for its colonial architecture and cuisine. There, she plans to start over with her husband and their two young daughters, ages 9 and 5. Estrada arrived in the U.S. at the age of 10 and is currently protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, as is her husband. But now, she fears that protection could vanish at any moment. 'One of the reasons we're leaving is because of everything that's happening under this president's administration,' she told el Nuevo Herald from Washington state. 'Honestly, the emotional toll is heavy. I'm a mother. My husband and I both have DACA, and it could be revoked at any moment, leaving us completely unprotected.' Confronted with that uncertainty, Estrada made the decision to leave. 'It's no longer up for debate —we're not going to sit around and wait to see what happens.' Still, the decision brings considerable stress: gathering documents required for resettlement in Mexico, coping with the emotional weight of leaving the country where she grew up, handling the paperwork to sell her house —all while headlines about raids and deportations dominate the news cycle. President Donald Trump, upon taking office, announced mass deportations with a focus on immigrants with criminal records. But human rights organizations have criticized the removal of non-criminal immigrants without due process, warning that such deportations can expose people to persecution. The DHS reported that in the first 100 days of the Trump administration, more than 142,000 deportations were carried out. In May alone, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted 190 deportation flights —up from 125 in April— bringing the total to 1,083 for the year, including returns and domestic transfers, according to data compiled by immigration activist Thomas H. Cartwright. Cartwright noted on X (formerly Twitter) that May's total marked the highest number of flights since he began tracking them in January 2020. Immigrants on alert: fear, raids and discrimination in the U.S. Immigration attorney Richard Hein says that fear is now a defining feature of life for many immigrants in the United States. Some are avoiding going outside altogether; others are choosing to leave the country voluntarily. He describes a climate of 'terror and fear' being cultivated —raids carried out by agents without visible name tags, only patches indicating the federal agency they represent, arresting people with little to no transparency. He mentioned the lack of due process, which he asserted is fundamental to a civilized society and that there are 'attempts to overthrow it.' 'We truly have an administration that is outside the law and is ignoring a Supreme Court ruling, in the specific case of Kilmar Abrego García, to facilitate his return to the United States. And not a finger has been lifted to respect that Supreme Court ruling,' argued the attorney from Hein Law Firm in St. Louis, Missouri. In immigration hearings, Hein says, people are being treated with a level of disrespect he hasn't witnessed in '15 or 20 years.' Estrada, too, has noticed a shift. 'It doesn't matter what country you're from, whether you're a citizen, a resident, or undocumented —we're all treated the same now,' she said. 'It feels like there are no laws left to protect us. Everything you do, every move you make, is used against you.' She recalled an incident in which her husband was crossing the street when someone, unprovoked, began shouting at him, 'Go back to your country,' simply because he looked Hispanic. 'We had never experienced discrimination like this before,' she said. One of her daughters, she added, has been deeply shaken by recent remarks from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who stated that anyone entering the U.S. illegally would be caught, deported and permanently barred from reentering. Changes speed up the departure Mireya Valladares arrived in the United States at age 20, crossing the border. She never intended to stay permanently. She and her husband set a goal for themselves: to return to their home country before turning 40. With that plan in mind, they worked hard for years to make it happen. They initially postponed their return after Valladares became pregnant. But as sweeping immigration changes unfolded —marked by raids and deportations— they decided to accelerate their timeline. 'Because of the immigration situation and everything that's happening, we moved up our trip and said, 'We're not going to wait any longer. Let's leave now, because we can't live here anymore,'' she said in an interview from Tampa, Florida. Read more: The Supreme Court allows Trump to revoke TPS for thousands of Venezuelans. Neither Valladares nor her 38-year-old husband has legal status, although they had tried for years to obtain it. Valladares said she was issued a deportation order 'years ago.' She expressed frustration that families like hers —who own registered businesses in Florida, pay taxes, create jobs and have no criminal records— still have no viable path to legalize their status. 'We're making a very risky decision, which is to leave and not be able to return, leaving practically everything we have and our businesses that are operating,' she said. But her greatest concern, she added, is that her 10-year-old son and baby might grow up in an environment of 'racism and discrimination.' 'Honestly, I'm not willing to expose them to that. Besides, I want to live in peace, to wake up and have no one knocking on my door to get me out of here and leave my children alone. No, I'm not willing to have that,' she said. Valladares plans to restart her life in the Department of Olancho, in northeastern Honduras. Other Honduran immigrants are also preparing to return. Consular authorities in Florida told el Nuevo Herald they have registered an increase in citizenship applications for U.S.-born children of Honduran parents. Deysi Suyapa Tosta, Consul General of Honduras in Miami, said that both in Miami and Tampa —where the country maintains consular offices— they are receiving more requests for documents, particularly citizenship certificates. 'We are addressing these cases. Because of this situation, many Hondurans are applying for dual citizenship and registering their newborn children —something they used to delay until it was time to enroll them in school. Now we're seeing many more people requesting these documents,' she said. The diplomat noted that the consulate is assisting Hondurans even without appointments and has opened on Saturdays to meet demand. Valladares was among those who visited her consulate to obtain the paperwork needed to return to Honduras. 'Yes, we're going to go back. I'd rather try than stay here with these policies, these laws they're trying to change every day,' she said.
Boston Globe
10 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Trump targets workplaces as immigration crackdown widens
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The high-profile raids appeared to mark a new phase of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, in which officials say they will increasingly focus on workplaces — taking aim at the reason millions of people have illegally crossed the border for decades. That is an expansion from plans early in the administration to prioritize detaining hardened criminals and later to focus on hundreds of international students. Advertisement 'You're going to see more worksite enforcement than you've ever seen in the history of this nation,' Thomas D. Homan, the White House border czar, told reporters recently. 'We're going to flood the zone.' It remains to be seen how aggressively Trump will pursue sectors like construction, food production and hospitality. Raids are sometimes directed based on tips, but otherwise appear to be distributed without a clear pattern, hitting establishments large and small. Advertisement A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to an email seeking details about the government's plans, including an explanation about why the administration is ramping up worksite arrests now. Police detained a man during a protest in the Paramount section of Los Angeles on Saturday, after federal immigration authorities conducted operations. Eric Thayer/Associated Press Over the past month, though, the White House has pressured immigration officials to increase deportations, which have fallen short of the administration's goals. The number of arrests has risen sharply in the past week, according to figures provided by the Department of Homeland Security. Related : Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for Homeland Security, said 2,000 immigrants per day were arrested over the last week, up from 600 earlier in the administration. It was not clear how many of those arrests were made at raids of worksites. More than 4% of the nation's 170 million-person workforce was made up of immigrants lacking permanent legal status in 2023, according to estimates from Goldman Sachs, making job sites a prime setting for agents to find people. The number of immigrants who could be subject to such sweeps increased by at least 500,000 at the end of May, as the Supreme Court allowed the administration to revoke the temporary status that had allowed many Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans to work. Workplace raids require significant planning, can be costly and draw on large teams of agents, but they can yield more arrests than pursuing individual targets. The raids may have become feasible in recent weeks, experts said, as personnel from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have been enlisted on immigration operations. Advertisement 'Goosing the numbers is a big part of this because it's so much more efficient in manpower to raid a warehouse and arrest 100 illegal aliens than it is to send five guys after one criminal,' said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates less immigration. Workplace raids also send a warning to a far broader group of people lacking permanent legal status, most of whom have not committed crimes. 'If you want to get people packing up and leaving, that isn't going to happen if you're just focusing on the criminals,' Krikorian said. In interviews, migrants and employers expressed alarm about the toll a sustained crackdown could take on the workforce. Immigrants lacking permanent legal status are concentrated in a few American industries, making up 19% of landscaping workers, 17% of farmworkers and 13% of construction workers, according to the estimates from Goldman Sachs. During his first term, Trump — whose own businesses have employed workers without papers — sent mixed messages about his eagerness to crack down on undocumented labor. Early on, his administration carried out several workplace raids and conducted more audits of worker eligibility paperwork than the Obama administration had. But Trump's Justice Department prosecuted relatively few employers for hiring workers lacking permanent legal status. And in 2017, the president commuted the sentence of an Iowa meatpacking plant executive convicted in the Obama era after a jury found that he knowingly hired hundreds of workers lacking permanent legal status and paid for their forged documents. The COVID-19 pandemic halted efforts to go after workers lacking permanent legal status. 'These were people who were processing our food, making our food, delivering our food so we could all live in the comfort of our Zoom existence,' said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. 'That was not lost on people.' Advertisement President Joe Biden, who began his term facing a beleaguered economy and a severe labor shortage, never prioritized workplace immigration enforcement. Still from video of people that were detained and removed from Nantucket last week in a immigration raid by ICE and FBI agents. Jason Graziadei/Nantucket Current The system that gave rise to this shadow workforce dates to 1986, when President Ronald Reagan signed a bill granting amnesty to nearly 3 million immigrants lacking permanent legal status, allowing them to pursue citizenship. The bill also criminalized hiring people without legal status and required that employers collect an I-9 form from every new hire, substantiating their work authorization with identification. In 1996, the IRS created an alternative to a Social Security number that allowed immigrants to file federal tax returns on their earnings. Related : Over the years, raids at farms, meatpacking plants and construction sites have grabbed headlines, but employers have seldom faced severe consequences. Many subcontract to avoid liability, and managers have long asserted that it is difficult to identify fake documents. 'They have plausible deniability for just about any hires,' said Daniel Costa, an immigration labor expert at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. 'The system was kind of rigged against workers and in favor of employers from the beginning.' Immigrant workers tend to be younger, while the U.S.-born population is aging into retirement. Millions of people who arrived between 2022 and 2024, largely from Latin America, Ukraine and Afghanistan, were generally eligible to work, since the Biden administration granted most of them some kind of temporary legal status. Advertisement For those reasons, the share of the labor force that is foreign-born rose to 19.7% in March, the highest on record. That is why a serious worksite crackdown could severely affect some industries, especially if employers begin preemptively firing people known to lack permanent legal status. Employers also must balance verifying a worker's status with risking accusations of discrimination on the basis of race and national origin, which is also illegal. 'If you've done your due diligence as an employer, your own doubt or suspicion isn't going to be enough for me to say, 'Yeah, fire that person,'' said Eric Welsh, an attorney with Reeves Immigration Law Group, which helps individuals and companies with visa issues. 'You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.' After Trump's election, employers started performing more internal audits to verify employees' identification documents and work permits, immigration attorneys said. Chris Thomas, a partner with the firm Holland & Hart in Denver, said his business clients had seen more notices of investigation and letters from the IRS flagging Social Security numbers that don't match the agency's records. Protesters gathered after federal immigration authorities conducted an operation on Friday in Los Angeles. Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press The Department of Justice raised the stakes in early February with a memo that directed attorneys to use 'all available criminal statutes' to enforce immigration laws. 'If you know you have undocumented workers, and you're not severing ties with them at this stage, you're in a position where they're coming pretty soon,' Thomas said. 'If you wait until they arrive on the scene, it's probably too late.' Greg Casten, who co-owns several restaurants, a fish wholesaler and a few other hospitality businesses in Washington, D.C., has watched the government's shifting approach for more than 40 years. Many of his 600 employees are immigrants. He has found Salvadorans in particular to be skilled at cutting fish. Advertisement Every year, he gets a list from the IRS of Social Security numbers on his payroll that don't match official records, and every year, he goes through to try to address any gaps. Still, it's not perfect. 'I do have some people who work for me who can barely speak English, and I find it hard to believe sometimes when they're giving me paperwork,' Casten said. But since he puts in the necessary effort, he doesn't worry much about punishment. In early May, the Department of Homeland Security served inspection notices to 187 businesses in Washington, though none of Casten's. 'Right now, as fragile as this industry is, if they came in and took 20% or 10% of someone's work staff, they would be out of business,' he said. This article originally appeared in .
