Trump should enforce immigration law through employers, not ICE raids

President Donald Trump has acknowledged that his enforcement of immigration laws was likely perceived as too tough and contributed to the Republican debacle last week. He’s right, but that doesn’t mean he should back off of enforcement. It simply means he should focus on what he should have done all along: Push employers to enforce the laws for him.It’s clear that the very public, and at times vicious, efforts to find, arrest, and deport illegal immigrants turned large segments of the population against Trump and the GOP. The regular confrontations between masked ICE agents and protestors may have delighted former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her indispensable aide and confidant, Corey Lewandowski. But they did quite the opposite with non-white voters, many of whom had voted Republican for president for the first time just a few months before.The switch in tactics under current DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin took enforcement off television screens but did nothing to lessen Americans’ displeasure. Workplace raids and arresting individuals on public streets meant people in communities with large numbers of illegal immigrants were kept informed about what was happening. Nearly half a million people were arrested on immigration charges in the last fiscal year, the highest level on record. Many of these people were criminals whose arrest and deportation or incarceration surely caused little regret. Large numbers, however, are ordinary people who work and whose children attend local schools. They may not have had legal status to work in the United States, but to their neighbors they are ordinary people just like them. It is very easy to empathize with them and imagine what might happen to you if ICE agents made a mistake about your legal status.This forces a crucial question to the forefront of political debate: Should the federal government seek to remove everyone here illegally, regardless of criminal or work history? Many people say no, that their opposition to illegal immigration is directed largely at the admittedly large number of criminals and grifters who arrived under President Joe Biden’s de facto open-borders policy. There will be a lot of pressure on Trump to greatly restrict immigration enforcement and turn a blind eye to the millions of people here illegally who nonetheless work and stay under the legal radar.That would be the wrong approach, however. Most of Trump’s base has always wanted strict enforcement of the law regardless of an immigrant’s criminal status. That’s been the case for a long time. Even in 2012, nearly half of Mitt Romney’s voters supported deporting illegal immigrants to the country of their origin.Trump would appear, then, to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Enforce the laws and people in the center turn against you. Don’t enforce the laws and you anger the Republican base voter.That may be true if the active, individual enforcement that ICE carries out is the primary means by which the laws are enforced. That approach always risks violence and disorder, and even a few cases of mistaken identity discredit the entire effort. These problems will likely increase the more successful any effort is, because those remaining are more likely to be precisely the generally law-abiding people whose arrests create the most controversy.This calculus shifts, however, if employers are pushed to do the work for ICE.Employers are not required under the law to confirm that a job applicant is here legally. They are only required to accept certain documents, such as a Social Security number, that seem to grant legal status. If those documents are false, as many clearly are, the employer seems to be off the hook.The Administration, however, should think outside the box to push employers to ensure their employees have legal status. That can include mandating that only employers who use the government’s identification-checking system, E-Verify, can obtain government contracts. Such a requirement should extend to contracts that state and local governments make using federal money. While that won’t cover all illegal immigrants, it will surely make many more employers use E-Verify and thereby reduce the number of illegal immigrants they employ.Trump should also examine whether the law allows the Internal Revenue Service to deny employers’ ability to deduct payments, including wages and benefits, to illegal immigrants. If so, the IRS could ramp up audits of firms in industries that normally employ large numbers of illegal immigrants. Hitting a company in its bottom line with audit expenses and retroactive tax bills will surely cause it to look more carefully at its employees’ legal status.He should also examine whether the law allows him to require that entities that wire money to individuals outside the country verify that the person attempting to send money has legal status within the country. Many illegal immigrants use American jobs to support their families in their native lands. Cracking down on their ability to do that eliminates their reason to be here and will likely lead to their returning home.Any effort to deny illegal immigrants the ability to work and live here will surely raise opposition. But that just forces the issue to the forefront. Does America want to legalize the status of tens of millions of people? That’s amnesty, and it’s clear Trump’s base won’t support that.TRUMP SAYS DEPORTATION POLICY ‘TOO TOUGH’ IN PUSH FOR BIPARTISAN DEAL HANDLING LEGAL STATUS TO ‘GOOD’ ILLEGAL IMMIGRATIONHe could seek to ignore his base and cut a deal, something he’s implied he’s open to. Getting a good deal, though, requires him to have leverage that forces his pro-open-borders opponents to deal. The specter of mass self-deportation through drying up the employment pools could be that leverage and force them to come to the table with significant concessions.Trump’s instinct, that laws need to be enforced and mass illegal immigration hurts Americans, is sound. He’s discovered that his initial approach to putting that into practice has created a backlash. It’s time for him to keep his eye on his goal and change tactics to reduce the backlash and increase the chance of a serious, comprehensive deal. Pushing innovative policies to put financial pressure on illegal immigrants in the workplace and the financial marketplace is a good place to start.