Donald Trump’s unshackled Immigration and Customs Enforcement has made a public show of its unchecked power, conducting massive workplace raids that have left a trail of wrongful arrest lawsuits and devastated communities across the country. But when it comes to investigating the president’s own hiring practices, ICE is MIA.
More than 30 people are now on the record as having worked at his businesses despite lacking permission to be in the U.S. Some of these workers have made serious allegations of emotional and physical abuse, and have further said that management helped them procure false papers. Congressional leaders who met with some of these workers have pressed for probes into these allegations, and that workers be shielded from deportation as any investigation plays out. These leaders, though, have been met with only silence.
ICE “missed a Tuesday deadline to respond to a request from House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), asking whether an investigation had been opened into the hiring practices of the president’s company,” the Washington Post reported. “ICE said only that it wouldn’t meet the April 9 deadline, a Thompson spokesman said.”
Deadlines and dates are only for the little people that ICE arrests, apparently. “The allegations set forth in numerous reports are truly troubling,” Thompson wrote to now-former acting ICE Director Ronald Vitiello. “Not only do the allegations suggest that not only were these employers were aware of workers’ true immigration status, but also that managers physically and emotionally abused undocumented workers.”
Rep. Raúl Grijalva is still waiting for his response. “I sent a letter to the FBI demanding an investigation into the Trump Organization's dubious employment practices and have yet to receive a response,” he tweeted. “It's unacceptable to demonize immigrants while exploiting their labor for personal profit.” But that’s exactly what Trump’s done, with the Trump Organization shamelessly firing undocumented workers as its owner was shutting down the U.S. over his wall.
“White House officials declined to answer questions about Trump’s use of undocumented labor, and ICE did not respond to requests for comment this week.” That’s quite a statement itself, considering the administration is obsessed with immigrants, and ICE publicly threatens localities for passing perfectly legal pro-immigrant legislation. Immigrants are an issue, they constantly claim, until apparently they’re not.