Silver Taube: Militarized workplace immigration raids batter the economy

In recent days, we have seen an escalation and militarization of workplace raids as the Trump administration has grown frustrated at the pace of deportations.

One ICE official told the Washington Examiner last month that Stephen Miller asked ICE staff: ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’ On June 6, ICE detained day laborers at Home Depot in the Westlake District of Los Angeles. At a news conference the same day, Angelica Salas, director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said there were seven raids throughout Los Angeles. Local news outlet KTLA reported that the Department of Justice told reporters the raids were focusing on workers with “fictitious employee documents.”

Protests against these military style raids have been met with overwhelming force and have turned Los Angeles into a war zone. SEIU California President David Huerta was arrested while observing and documenting the ICE raid and hospitalized as a result of injuries inflicted by federal agents.

President Donald Trump activated 4,000 national guard members despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s opposition, and deployed 700 Marines.

Under an 1878 law, the Posse Comitatus Act, it is illegal to use federal troops on domestic soil for policing purposes. But an 1807 law, the Insurrection Act, creates an exception for situations in which the president decides “unlawful obstructions, combinations or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States,” make it “impracticable” to enforce federal law. The president did not invoke the Insurrection Act in Los Angeles.

Instead he invoked Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which allows him to call National Guard units into federal service under certain circumstances, including during a rebellion against the authority of the federal government.

However, Section 12406 also says orders for National Guard call-ups “shall be issued through the governors of the states,” which could provide a basis for Newsom to argue the California National Guard can be federalized only with his agreement. Newsom says he will file a lawsuit.

Deporting undocumented workers would decimate the United States workforce. Undocumented immigrants are concentrated in landscaping and private home services (20%), agricultural cultivation (17%), food processing (15%) and construction (13%), according to Goldman Sachs.

The American Immigration Council estimates mass deportations would remove up to 1.5 million workers from the construction industry, 225,000 from agriculture, 1 million from hospitality, 870,000 from manufacturing and 461,000 from transportation and warehousing.

According to a 2016 report by the Center for American Progress, deporting 7 million workers would “reduce national employment by an amount similar to that experienced during the Great Recession.” GDP would immediately contract by 1.4%, and eventually by 2.6%. In 20 years, the U.S. economy would shrink nearly 6% — or $1.6 trillion. Deportations would lead to a dire shortage of low-wage workers, which would “bring on a recession while reigniting inflation,” predicts Robert J. Shapiro, a former undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration.

The labor shortages that result from mass deportations would raise costs for all Americans. Economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimate deporting 1.3 million immigrants would raise prices by 1.5% by 2028, while deporting 8.3 million immigrants would raise prices by 9.1%. Additionally, mass deportations would reduce consumer spending, as undocumented workers are not only workers but also consumers.

Besides the incalculable human cost of deportations and the specter of more war zones in our cities, the deportation of essential immigrants will be devastating to an economy already battered by tariffs.

San José Spotlight columnist Ruth Silver Taube is supervising attorney of the Workers’ Rights Clinic at the Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center, supervising attorney of the Santa Clara County’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement Legal Advice Line and a member of Santa Clara County’s Fair Workplace Collaborative. Her columns appear every second Thursday of the month. Contact her at [email protected].