This WSJ article does a great job summarizing the problem Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) approach to immigration enforcement.  They exclusively going after "good faith" employers who have unknowingly hired illegal immigrants, paid them fair wages, provided benefits, and paid all appropriate taxes.  In comes ICE and the worker disappears, works for cash, without benefits, or taxes withheld.  Who is benefiting in this system?  It is not the employer (he just lost a good worker).  It is not the taxpayer (he just lost tax revenue).  It is not the worker (he just lost a higher paying job with benefits).  Here is an excerpt:

Before the recession, millions of Latin Americans snuck across the Mexican border to take jobs in construction, cleaning and other blue-collar work. Alba and Eugenio were part of that wave, making the journey to Minneapolis in the late 1990s after hearing jobs were plentiful and the cost of living relatively low.

They settled in the burgeoning Latino enclave around East Lake Street, a commercial corridor dotted with orange, yellow and pastel buildings that are home to "taquerias," and other businesses that cater to the Spanish-speaking community. They would eventually have two children in the U.S. and send them to the local public school.

Both Alba and Eugenio got jobs at ABM, a publicly traded building-services contractor. For nine years, Alba was on a bathroom crew, swabbing toilets and wiping sinks in a 56-story tower designed by the famed architect I.M. Pei.

Alba made $7.75 an hour, above the federal minimum wage at the time. She worked eight-hour shifts five days a week and was entitled to paid vacation and sick days. She received paid maternity leave when she had each child. "Each January, my salary inched up a few cents," she says.

Wages for Eugenio, who is currently 37 and also worked in the Capella Tower, also climbed each year.

In October 2008, Eugenio was promoted to shift supervisor, at an hourly rate of $14.42, according to his last pay stub, which also shows Medicare, Social Security and tax deductions. The following month, the couple secured a bank loan and bought a 2005 blue Ford Explorer for $17,000.

By January 2009, the month President Obama took office, Alba had been promoted to vacuuming and emptying waste baskets for $12.97 an hour.

The family's monthly expenses at the time included $565 for rent, $200 for gas and $50 for cellphone usage. The family dined at buffets on the weekends and Alba signed up for English lessons. Their children, Alexander, 6, and Narely, 8, wore crisp new clothes. The couple was sending $100 to $200 a month to relatives in Mexico.

"We had job security and never imagined what was coming," said Alba, 28 years old.

...

ABM, which employs nearly 100,000 nationwide, paid $108,000 in civil penalties, according to ICE, which declined to elaborate. It was able to replace all the undocumented workers, the spokesman said.

The effects of the audit reverberated through the East Lake Street immigrant enclave. Alba and Eugenio's neighbor, Marta, and her husband, lost their jobs at ABM and then lost their three-bedroom house, where they had lived for 12 years, to foreclosure. Marta's husband eventually got a job as a dishwasher making $8 per hour.

Nearby, Brenda, the daughter of another ABM employee who lost her job, dropped out of high school so she could get a full-time cleaning job to help pay bills, including the mortgage on the powder-blue house that her parents had bought in 2006.

"When my mom got fired, that's when all the problems started," said Brenda, 20, who had planned to attend college and become a police officer.

In November, Alba and Eugenio landed jobs at ROC Inc. for a net sum of $155 each per week to wash a Chevrolet dealership six nights a week in the St. Paul suburb of Roseville. Pay stubs don't show an hourly rate. The couple say they didn't receive benefits or paid time off.

ROC didn't give them an auto scrubber, a machine customarily used to wash large areas. Mike Chmielewski, the dealership's finance manager, confirms the couple swept and mopped the 10,000-square-foot area themselves. "They were very hardworking," he said. "They had personal pride in doing the job well."

 Read the whole thing. 

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