The Department of Homeland Security blamed local officials in Maine for using the department’s federal database to determine the employment eligibility of a police officer who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month, according to NBC News.
ICE arrested Old Orchard Beach Police Department reserve Officer Jon Luke Evans late last month, shocking local law enforcement officials who had been told by the federal government that their colleague was permitted to work in the United States. ICE told the Associated Press Monday that Evans, who is originally from Jamaica, would be given the opportunity to voluntarily leave the country immediately.
Evans has agreed to leave the United States.
As Donald Trump ramps up his purported crackdown on crime in the nation’s capital (and elsewhere), the removal of a law enforcement officer strikes a particularly ironic note—but Evans’s removal hits on yet another crucial issue.
Old Orchard Beach had previously confirmed Evans’s immigration status by using E-Verify, DHS’s online system for employers to quickly certify whether a potential employee can legally work legally in the U.S. based on records at the Social Security Administration and DHS.
But apparently that’s not good enough for the Trump administration. Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin accused Old Orchard Beach of “reckless reliance” on her own department’s program, according to NBC News. Critics of the program had said that it’s easy to fool the E-Verify system with fake I-9 documents and stolen IDs.
But employers have few alternatives to E-Verify. Nine states have even implemented laws requiring private-sector employers to use the fast and free program. Some opponents to the program have said that stricter enforcement could lead to discrimination and worker shortages.
In the wake of Trump’s sweeping deportation scheme, employers who use E-Verify have not been spared from immigration raids. In June, a food-packaging company in Omaha saw more than half of its workforce arrested, though the employer said he’d used E-Verify to check the work status of all of his employees.
DHS recently added a new tool to notify employers when someone’s employment authorization is revoked and must be reverified. If employees cannot provide new evidence of valid employment authorization, they will be terminated immediately.
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