“It’s all about the impact for the worker and very little for the employer,” one expert said of the immigration imbalance.
If immigrants leave the U.S. or stop coming at all, the economy could suffer.
A quieter border due to reverse immigration impacts the U.S. economy. This article was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.
A Michigan couple was recently arrested and charged with hiring and housing hundreds of illegal immigrants for a lucrative plumbing business.
The case gained public attention after a five-year investigation, made national headlines and was detailed on the Internal Revenue Service’s website. One reason this story has garnered national attention is that it is a rare example of an employer being held liable for allegedly employing an undocumented worker.
Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has launched a massive deportation campaign, surging federal resources across the country in operations that overwhelmingly target immigrants believed to be in the country illegally rather than their employers.
The Trump administration’s enforcement efforts have increasingly targeted small businesses, from car washes to family farms and restaurants. But in most cases, at least for now, employers are immune from criminal liability.
Experts said employer liability for hiring unauthorized workers has puzzled officials, including both Democratic and Republican administrations, for decades.
There are several reasons why business owners are rarely accused of hiring illegal immigrants.
First, it is a case that is difficult to prove. The government must prove that the employer knew that the employee was in the country illegally and demonstrate intent. (Such cases can take months or even years to complete, as in the case of the couple arrested in Michigan on November 18th).
Additionally, tools that allow for further scrutiny of employee performance are not widely available. E-Verify, the largest program run by the Department of Homeland Security, is not a federal mandate, and most states, including many Republican-led states like Texas, do not require all employers to use it.
And even if these requirements become stricter, many companies still work off the books, allowing employers to shift the burden to contractors to protect themselves from civil penalties and criminal prosecution.
Experts say rampant loopholes, high legal standards and limited enforcement mean employers are largely immune from criminal liability, while workers can be rounded up and deported within minutes.
“This whole imbalance is so blatant,” Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Immigration Policy Institute, told USA TODAY. “It all affects the worker, but very little of it affects the employer.”
Weak laws and little enforcement hinder enforcement in the workplace
For most of U.S. history, there were no consequences for employers who hired illegal immigrants. This situation changed in 1986 with the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act. This law created civil and criminal penalties for employers who knowingly employed people in the country illegally.
The theory behind the law was that stricter workplace enforcement would reduce the rate of illegal immigration by eliminating job opportunities, the biggest attraction to the United States.
But after intense lobbying by business interests, the law included the phrase “knowingly,” forcing the government to prove intent and significantly raising the bar for prosecution.
As a result, enforcement levels are low.
From 1986 to 2019, fewer than 15 employers were indicted on immigration-related charges each year, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a nonpartisan research organization at Syracuse University. Even fewer were convicted and sentenced to prison, and most were fined.
“It’s really pathetic,” Chishti said.
He said civil fines, which have so far totaled millions of dollars, are not enough to deter business owners from hiring people without work permits.
“If you fine them a million, that’s the cost of doing business,” he said. “This is a blow to employers who make millions of dollars off the exploitable labor of illegal aliens. They just write it into their business plans.”
A similar trend is seen with E-Verify. First introduced as a pilot program in the late 1990s, E-Verify requires employees to provide documentation to their employers proving their legal work status. Despite efforts to reform and expand the program, it is still used by only a small number of companies nationwide.
As of June 30, 2025, only 14% of all U.S. employers participated in the federal program, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Efforts to pass a federal E-Verify mandate have failed, and most states do not require all employers to use the system.
Changing presidential administration priorities
Over the years, presidents have handled immigration enforcement differently in the workplace.
President George W. Bush’s administration conducted several large-scale workplace raids, including at a meat processing plant in Iowa that involved hundreds of federal agents and led to the detention of about 400 undocumented workers.
Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden ended workplace immigration raids in favor of scrutiny of employers and employment practices, but the number of employers facing criminal charges remained small, studies show.
Trump has seen a surge in workplace raids and sweeping immigration crackdowns across the U.S., especially as he enters his second term in office, drawing criticism, economic repercussions and setbacks from some in the White House.
Since January, there have been dozens of attacks at construction sites, restaurants and farms. However, in the vast majority of these cases, no charges are brought against the employer, leading to a perception of unequal enforcement, with workers being detained and deported while employers remain unscathed.
Experts pointed to cases during the first Trump administration in which business owners who hired illegal workers were let go.
In 2017, President Trump commuted the sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, the owner of the Agriprocessors meat processing plant, who was raided under the Bush administration. Rubashkin served eight years of a 27-year sentence on financial charges after immigration charges were dismissed.
How does a criminal case against a business owner come together?
One of the main reasons employers who hire illegal immigrants are rarely prosecuted is the high hurdles to proving intent. Federal court records in the case against a Michigan couple arrested in mid-November offer clues to how investigators might construct such a case against an employer.
Federal authorities allege that between January 2022 and December 2024, Moises and Raquel Orduna Rios employed more than 200 undocumented immigrants to work in their plumbing business, housing many of them in dilapidated motels and homes, while earning $74 million in income.
Attempts to contact the couple and their legal representatives were unsuccessful.
Records show federal agents closely monitored the company’s vans, financial transactions, communications and undocumented workers for years to prove their case. Over the summer, Border Patrol agents arrested several active illegal alien agents and persuaded others to provide information they believed would help prosecutors prove intent.
For example, on December 27, 2024, Border Patrol agents went to a towing yard in Rochester, New York, where one of the officers, wearing plain clothes, struck up a conversation with the employee. According to the complaint, the man told the undercover agent that even though he was in the country illegally, the company would employ him and provide housing, a vehicle, tools and a small crew.
A years-long investigation also uncovered messages between Moises Orduna Ríos and some employees discussing their concerns about being in the country illegally and being arrested.
On February 1, 2025, Ms. Orduna-Rios wrote to several employees in a group chat: “Folks, with all this controversy going on, it’s better to be prepared, drive the speed limit, limit your trips to the store, run minimal errands, and avoid gatherings like barbecues.”
Nine months after sending that message, the company’s owner, Moises Orduna Rios, and his wife, the company’s financial director, were arrested as federal authorities continued to scrutinize his company’s records, deposits, and communications.
Contributor: Tresa Baldas, Detroit Free Press
