The co-owner of a Baltimore restaurant says 30 of his employees quit en masse following a targeted visit from an ICE agent demanding an audit of the business’s workers over the past two years.
While BoatHouse Canton owner Gene Singleton says every one of his employees “passed the restaurant’s vetting process and appeared to be in the United States legally,” the fear in immigrant communities due to Donald Trump’s deportation force is unprecedented, with immigrant moms and dads getting targeted by ICE for things as minor as traffic infractions—or nothing at all. After news spread in the restaurant about the ICE agent’s visit and demand, they fled:
In an open letter to his customers Saturday, BoatHouse Canton owner Gene Singleton blamed the Trump administration “for targeting the Hispanic community.” He has since been alternately condemned or praised for defending his workers regardless of their legal status.
So now the restaurant is short 30 workers, with the remaining staff working double shifts and the departed seeking help from an immigrant advocacy agency.
“Properly documented and potentially less than properly documented are all fearful of being separated from their families, many with small children,” Singleton wrote in a Facebook post Saturday, a day after their departure. “Many went home to pack up and leave.”
They were, Singleton told The Washington Post, “some of the best citizens we have.”
A former acting director of ICE says that while the kind of auditing request made by the ICE agent isn’t unprecedented, it has been uncommon in the past:
An ICE spokesman said the agency conducted nearly 1,300 similar audits the year before — sometimes when it suspected an employer was violating hiring laws.
John Sandweg, an acting director of ICE under President Barack Obama, said the time-consuming audits were used sparingly during the last administration — usually when public safety was at risk or egregious crimes were suspected.
But “a lot of that is changing,” Sandweg said. “Trump has gone to a more randomized approach.”
from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2up3VKo
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