DHS Plans To Protect Whistleblower Immigrants From Deportation

New York City NY

15 October, 2021

5:45 PM

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By Giulia McDonnell, Nieto del Rio, DocumentedNY October 15, 2021 The Biden administration is considering extending deportation protections to undocumented immigrants if they report an abusive employer, the Wall Street Journal reports. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas sent an internal memo to acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Tuesday morning, which included the administration's idea for certain deportation protections. The memo detailed the Biden administration's intentions to go after employers who hire undocumented people instead of the employees. The department can reduce the demand for illegal employment, Mayorkas reportedly wrote in the memo, by going after "unscrupulous" employers who take advantage of undocumented immigrants by paying them lower wages." The Wall Street Journal In other federal immigration news… White House Halts Large-Scale Immigration Job Arrests In the same memo, the Biden administration also ordered an end to "large-scale immigration arrests at job sites," The Washington Post reported. In his memo, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that the deployment of mass worksite operations was not focused on the most "pernicious" aspect of the country's "unauthorized employment challenge: exploitative employers." The memo states: "These highly visible operations misallocated enforcement resources while chilling, and even serving as a tool of retaliation for, worker cooperation in workplace standards investigations." The Department of Homeland security said that this new approach will help American business. The Washington Post Immigration Advocates Frustrated With Biden's Reluctance Some immigrant advocates are frustrated with the Biden administration, saying it isn't "taking advantage of existing legal pathways for those seeking to come to the U.S.," the Hill reports. Advocates point to the White House letting visas expire before giving them to immigrants, and the country hitting the lowest number of refugees resettled in the United States in the history of the program. "We've lost hundreds of thousands of visas that were meant for people to come here through the employment-based system or to join family members that, because of federal bureaucracy, were not processed in time, which is absolutely unjustifiable," said Jorge Loweree, policy director for the American Immigration Council. The Hill This summary was featured in Documented's Early Arrival newsletter. You can subscribe to receive it in your inbox three times per week here. Support our work Documented is the only NYC newsroom that creates journalism with and for immigrant communities. Help fuel this mission for $10/month. Documented NY is a non-profit news site devoted solely to covering New York City's immigrants and the policies that affect their lives.