Employers threaten immigrant workers with deportation
The deal the worker struck was simple: $150 a day to tile a bathroom and stucco the walls of a home in Arcadia, Calif. The pay was to come at the end of each day but never did, according to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court by the California labor commissioner.
After six days with no pay, the lawsuit alleges, the worker finally confronted his boss, who then snapped, called him a “wetback” and threatened to report him to immigration authorities.
“Let me share something with you, not only am I (an ex)-sheriff, my family are all in the police department,” the lawsuit says the boss wrote in a follow-up text message after refusing to pay the worker. “You want to come to my job & create a issue, I will handcuff you take you into custody & wait for I.C.E to come take you in for felony threats.”
The employer could not be reached for comment, but the claim is increasingly common. Complaints over immigration-related retaliation threats surged last year in California, according to the Labor Commissioner’s Office. Through Dec. 22, workers had filed 94 immigrationrelated retaliation claims with the office, up from 20 in all of 2016 and only seven a year earlier.
The cases include instances in which employers allegedly threatened to report workers to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, after they raised issues over working conditions, including wage theft. Other allegations include employers demanding different documents than those required by federal immigration law or refusing to honor documents that appear genuine.
Such threats have long been a fact of life for California’s community of more than 2.3 million people who are in the country illegally, advocates say. One lawsuit filed by the commissioner alleges a boss threatened to report a worker to immigration authorities “several times each year.”
Laws that took effect in 2014 specifically barring the practice probably played a role in the increase of official complaints filed with the state agency, as workers become more familiar with their rights.
But Labor Commissioner Julie Su and immigrant advocates said the rise also could be attributed to employers feeling more empowered to wield ICE as a weapon given an increase in anti-immigrant rhetoric and stepped-up enforcement by ICE.
Employers have even told the commissioner’s staff that they would call ICE on their workers, Su said.
“That is the emboldening,” she said. “It is not just a coincidence and it’s not an accident there has been such a spike in threats to immigrant workers.”
At the same time, immigrant advocates said workers who are here illegally seem less likely to report workplace violations, given the political climate.
Su declined to single out a source of the antiimmigrant rhetoric. But President Trump has railed against illegal and legal immigration during the 2016 campaign and his presidency, often citing crime, including terrorism, as a reason for his stance, even though a number of studies show immigrants generally are less likely to commit crimes than those born in the U.S.
Such remarks make some employers “feel there is official support that these workers don’t deserve any protection and don’t deserve any rights,” said Sebastian Sanchez, an attorney with the Employment Rights Project at Bet Tzedek, which provides legal services for low-income individuals. Sanchez helped the worker in the Arcadia case file claims with the labor commissioner, which eventually led to the commissioner’s lawsuit.