The ICE Audit of American Apparel

A year and a half later, ICE sent American Apparel formal notice that 1,600 of its workers did not have the necessary documents to work in the country and that ICE could not verify the eligibility of 200 more. There was a temporary reprieve while company lawyers negotiated with ICE officials and the corporation gave the workers an opportunity to come up with acceptable paperwork. But late last month the hammer dropped, and American Apparel announced that the 1,800 workers, one quarter of its workforce, were being fired.
Impact of the audits

Over 300 companies had received audit notices at the same time as American Apparel, but almost all the news coverage has focused on American Apparel. Dov Charney, company founder and CEO, is an outspoken advocate of changing U.S. immigration policy, speaking out in support of the company’s Legalize LA campaign and challenging the morality of standing silent while a whole section of human beings are persecuted. Charney is also infamous for American Apparel ads that are even more degrading to women than most, and for an atmosphere of sexual harassment of women employees—but that is not why the government is going after him. The American Apparel factory officially shuts down every May 1st and the workers march in their thousands in annual immigrants rights protests in downtown L.A. As the American Apparel website says: "Why do we support immigration reform? Simple answer: Humanity." It seems likely to many that American Apparel was targeted specifically because of Charney’s stance on immigration and his open opposition to government persecution of the undocumented.

Some argue that American Apparel is not one of those "unscrupulous businesses" taking advantage of immigrants and should not have been targeted, pointing to the fact that the company pays higher wages than most garment workers receive, provides health insurance, even offers workers time off to attend on-site English classes. And Charney did protest the results of the I-9 audit. But there are larger forces at work—as with all capitalist businesses, profit, and not "humane treatment of workers," is the "bottom line" for American Apparel. In the end, when ICE presented Charney with "an offer he couldn’t refuse"—fire the workers or face hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and possibly being forced out of business altogether—Charney went along with it, and 1,800 workers are now out on the street.

Many of the fired workers had been at the company for up to a decade. The New York Times spoke to Jesús, a 30-year-old originally from Puebla, Mexico, who started at the company 10 years ago as a sewing machine operator and eventually worked his way up to an office job as coordinating manager. "I learned how to think here," he told the Times. He said that several job offers from mainstream garment makers were withdrawn once he was asked for documents. "I guess I’m going to have to go to one of those sweatshop companies where I’m going to get paid under the table."

Multiply that by 1,800, then add in cancelled health insurance, bare dinner tables and, until a new job can be found, the threat of homelessness. And just to make sure the message is delivered, ICE director John Morton said that the agency won’t rule out going after and arresting workers proven to be in the country without authorization.

Some argue that the I-9 audits are a "humane" way to reduce the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. But the fired workers and those around them see the real impact. Msgr. Jarlath Cunnane, pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in the Pico-Union area, where many of American Apparel’s workers live, underscored that the mass firing at American Apparel "is going to put all these families under terrific pressure, and who’s going to pick up the pieces?" He added it would be "crazy to think that people are going to go back to their homelands when they’ve married and have American-born children in school here."

From the point of view of the Obama administration, the operative issue is "effective," not "humane." The administration says it is putting emphasis on I-9 audits because they can more effectively reduce the number of undocumented immigrants in the country; if that seems to be working, we can expect many more firings. At the same time, the administration is looking at beefing up all the tools at its disposal: Where it thinks workplace raids by armed ICE agents will be effective, those raids have been and will continue to be carried out. ICE continues to deploy its "Fugitive Operation Teams" that hunt down and arrest people who have failed to report for deportation, along with grabbing up anyone else in the home who appears to be undocumented. The Obama administration is continuing and even expanding the 287(g) program which trains and authorizes local police and sheriffs departments to enforce immigration law, resulting in racial profiling, roadside checkpoints and sweeps through immigrant neighborhoods. In short, ICE under Obama has not eliminated anything that the Bush administration developed; it is instead emphasizing different programs and policies while adding some new twists.
The goal is to "change the practices of American employers as a class."

Important sections of the ruling class have been arguing for years that I-9 audits and other forms of employer verification of workers’ eligibility to work in the U.S. must be put at the center of the fight against "illegal immigration." They contend that pressuring employers not to hire undocumented immigrants will reduce the economic "pull" that leads immigrants to cross the border. The U.S. economy is highly dependent on the cheap labor of vast numbers of undocumented workers—there are an estimated 8 million in the U.S. labor force. At the same time, the presence of as many as 12 million or more such undocumented immigrants in the country exerts pressures that can tend to undermine the strength and stability of American society, and there is widespread agreement in the halls of power that something must be done to keep the undocumented population from growing even larger.

Despite the doubling of the number of Border Patrol agents since 2001… despite the construction of 670 miles of border walls and the installation of remote controlled TV cameras, motion detectors, communication towers and other surveillance equipment along hundreds of additional miles… despite the factory raids, highway check points, "Fugitive Operation Team" assaults, and other round-ups leading to the deportations of hundreds of thousands of immigrants every year, the U.S. government has not fundamentally been able to put a dent in the number of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.

Seventy percent of the undocumented immigrants in the U.S. come from Mexico and Central America. It is no surprise—U.S. penetration into the economies of those countries has driven tremendous numbers of poor peasants off the land and into urban slums where there are no jobs. Millions have made the dangerous trip to El Norte in hopes of finding something better. Economic conditions back home are so depressed that the possibility of working even one or two days a month at $8 per hour in the U.S. is better than many of these workers can do in the countries they came from. So long as there are jobs for them in the U.S., undocumented immigrants will continue to risk their futures and often their very lives to make their way across the border.

Thousands of children travel alone from Central America and Mexico, making the harrowing journey to the U.S. on top of freight trains coming north. Watch the moving HBO documentary Which Way Home or read Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario. The children are in search of mothers or fathers who came to the U.S. years earlier; they believe they will find work to help support families back home, or they simply come dreaming of a new life. The Border Patrol catches thousands of children a year traveling alone trying to cross the border into the U.S., while many perish along the way—falling off trains, or dying in the sweltering heat of the deserts of the U.S. Southwest.

The Obama administration is putting I-9 audits to the test to see if they will reduce the pull of jobs. Three months after Obama took office, ICE issued an internal memo, "Subject: Worksite Enforcement Strategy," that says:

Enforcement efforts focused on employers better target the root causes of illegal immigration. An effective strategy must do all of the following: 1) penalize employers who knowingly hire illegal workers; 2) deter employers who are tempted to hire illegal workers; and 3) encourage all employers to take advantage of well-crafted compliance tools. ("Immigration Agents to Turn Focus to Employers," by Ginger Thompson, New York Times, April 30, 2009).

In June 2009, the same month ICE made clear to American Apparel that the 1,800 workers had to go, ICE announced 652 new I-9 audits and promised more before the year is out. John Morton, the head of ICE, said, "Now all manner of companies face the very real possibility that the government, using our basic civil powers, is going to come knocking on the door." The goal, he said, is to create "a truly national deterrent" to hiring unauthorized labor that will "change the practices of American employers as a class."

In short, ICE’s rigorous enforcement of immigration laws at the workplace will not only compel employers to change who they hire, the employers themselves will be coerced into playing the role of immigration police.