U.S. to modify business crackdown on immigration

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration said Friday it will modify its planned crackdown on U.S. companies that employ illegal immigrants, asking a federal judge to delay hearing a lawsuit brought by major U.S. labor, business and farm organizations until the new strategy is completed.

In papers filed in San Francisco, Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bucholtz told U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer that the Homeland Security Department (DHS) is making unspecified changes to its plan to pressure employers to fire up to 8.7 million workers with suspect Social Security numbers.

A DHS spokesman declined to comment, but court papers asked the judge to delay the case until March 24 or until a new program is ready.

On Oct. 10, Breyer barred the government from mailing Social Security "no-match" letters to 140,000 U.S. employers, citing serious legal questions about requiring companies to resolve questions about their employees' identities, fire them within 90 days or face potential fines and criminal prosecution.

President Bush made the initiative a priority in August after the Senate killed his proposed overhaul of immigration laws.

In issuing a preliminary injunction, however, the judge cited plaintiffs' arguments that the Social Security Administration database includes so many errors that using it to enforce immigration laws would cause "staggering" disruptions at workplaces and discriminate against tens of thousands of legal workers.

The judge also said the government failed to weigh the cost of the new regulation on small businesses, as is required.

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lucas Guttentag, who argued the case with plaintiffs including the AFL-CIO, said, "DHS should finally abandon this illegal approach instead of repeating the same mistake."

Randel Johnson, a vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which joined the case with agriculture-, restaurant- and construction-industry associations, said businesses are bracing for the new effort: "I hope they give the employer community adequate time to comment and do not just jam it through during the holidays."

In a related development, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) adopted federal guidelines aimed at softening treatment of illegal immigrants who are arrested in work-site raids and are pregnant, nursing infants or serving as sole caregivers to minor children or seriously ill relatives.

The federal guidelines, released last week, said agents should develop a comprehensive plan to identify such people in raids targeting more than 150 people and work with social-service agencies to assess their needs in deciding whether to detain them while processing their deportation cases.

The agency developed the guidelines with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and plans to issue them to all enforcement offices, ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said.

In addition, Kice said, the agency's Assistant Secretary Julie Myers issued a memo directing agents to consider releasing nursing mothers on their own recognizance and using alternatives to detention, such as electronic monitoring, as long as the women pose no threat to national security or public safety.

The guidelines come amid a sharp increase in the number of workplace raids and other enforcement actions, leading to growing concerns about their impact on children.

In recent years, work-site administrative arrests of illegal immigrants have increased sevenfold, from about 500 in 2002 to about 3,600 in 2006, according to ICE statistics.

Material from the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.