Employers adapt to ICE raids and a workforce on edge

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REBECCA SHI: Some parts of the administration would like to deport up to a million people by the end of this year and 2.2 million by the end of next year. So that’s who’s picking our food. Who is taking care of our American elders and who’s building our homes? Right? And so if the level of removal is achieved, I mean, that’s going to impact every single American citizen, whether we realize it or not.

BOB SAFIAN: That’s Rebecca Shi, executive director of the American Business Immigration Coalition. I wanted to talk with Rebecca about the controversy over ICE’s immigration raids at workplaces across the U.S. Rebecca takes us through the looming impact on the U.S. workforce, plus the internal conflict within the Trump administration over deportation and how business leaders are pressing the White House and lawmakers for alternate solutions. Rebecca also explains why, counterintuitively, right now offers a rare moment of opportunity to update U.S. immigration policy. Her insights manage to be both eye-opening and optimistic. So let’s get to it. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

[THEME MUSIC]

I’m Bob Safian, I’m here with Rebecca Shi, Executive Director of the American Business Immigration Coalition. Rebecca, thanks for joining us.

SHI: Thanks, Bob. It’s great to see you.

Copy LinkHow the ABIC is responding to ICE deportations

SAFIAN: So for our listeners, can you explain what the American Business Immigration Coalition is, when it came together, and why?

SHI: Yeah, so ABIC, we are a bipartisan coalition of 1,700 employers and CEOs around the country representing agriculture, healthcare, long-term care, construction, hospitality, manufacturing, and technology. Really any and all sectors that depend on immigrants as their workforce, as entrepreneurs, and our goal is to advocate for common sense immigration solutions that both ensures a managed secure border, but also supports a legal and stable workforce to keep our economy competitive.

SAFIAN: This year has seen a dramatic change in immigration policy including a major increase in immigration raids, people arrested in public, at work. ICE says it arrested 30,000 people in June alone, which was a record in the last five years. How does your coalition view this change in policy, this change in activity? What’s been your response?

SHI: It’s been a really uncertain and anxiety-inducing time for employers and especially our smaller mom and pop local farmers, restaurant owners. So if they are looking for somebody who’s a violent criminal, who’s convicted, MS-13, they shouldn’t be in the community, but as we know and FBI’s own data shows that immigrants by and large are law-abiding and they’re working. And so employers and ABIC, we’ve dedicated an enormous amount of time and energy and lobbying efforts to try to change the law so that we can actually have a modern and legal immigration system that can benefit both employers but everyday Americans.

SAFIAN: I mean, the number of undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S during the Biden administration was unprecedented, right? I mean it was a huge wave. The impetus to address that, does ABIC object to that or just sort of how it’s being done?

SHI: The American public and employers are in the same boat that they don’t like a chaotic, disorderly, unmanaged border and that we have to restore some type of sanity, and President Trump has secured the border. Last week, border crossings are down by 99.5% from a year ago. So the border is secure and that’s why, as employers, and we’re working with both sides of Congress right now and we’re reasonably encouraged by what the president has actually said, that we can’t just deport everybody because nobody’s going to be picking our food or preparing our favorite dishes. We’re caring for our elderly American citizens, but we have to have a balanced approach and that includes a legal work permit for people that are working. They’re law-abiding, they’re paying taxes, and so there’s just got to be a balanced approach here.

SAFIAN: The style of immigration enforcement has changed with National Guard mobilized and proliferation of these masks and other identity shields. I mean, enforcing the law is laudable and appropriate, but these tactics seem like they send other kinds of messages too.

SHI: Exactly, and I think we’re seeing it in the polls. I mean the polling in the last few weeks, and we actually did some polling ourselves that says, look, Americans support a secure border and deporting violent criminals, but if you’re talking about somebody getting picked up at a work site and is vetted, is law-abiding, those people shouldn’t be deported, and over 60% of the American public don’t believe this type of enforcement-only approach is the right way.

SAFIAN: Some workers, they’re going to stay home or skip work because they’re scared of these raids or of ICE.

SHI: Yeah, we’re seeing this in North Carolina. We have a member, U.S. military certified manufacturers of parachutes. He had to lay off about 50 of his workers because their legal work permits have ended. That has caused him to reduce the number of parachutes that he’s able to manufacture for the U.S. military, and he’s also found that it’s having an incredible impact on his American-born workers. People, even if they themselves are legal, are worried about their co-workers, worried about their neighbors, or their family members who can be grabbed and detained and deported one day.

Copy LinkAdvice for business leaders around immigration uncertainty

SAFIAN: I’m curious, do you have advice for what measures business leaders can take because they can’t say with certainty that it’s safe for people to come to work, can they? They never know if ICE is going to take whoever they’re going to take?

SHI: That’s correct. And people are reading in the stories about even U.S. citizens being mistakenly detained. And so the fear is real. I mean, what we advise with employers and we have an employer, what we call a rights and responsibility training program in the event of an ICE visit or an audit or enforcement actions to make sure that you’re calm and you’re respectful with the ICE officers, that you do have both the rights and the responsibility to allow 72 hours before you hand in documents like I-9s, and that you take that time to really do a self-audit, a self-assessment. Sometimes it might not even be an immigration issue. It may be that you incorrectly filled out page nine of the I-9 form, right? And so that’s something very simple that you can correct. At the end of the day, Congress has to step up and fix this issue.

We have brought members of Congress from both aisles to workplaces and job sites so that they can visit and really take the time to understand your workforce needs and your challenges, and your members of Congress can be advocates for you with the Department of Homeland Security, with the administration, and really be able to achieve some meaningful solutions and not just this enforcement-only remove-them-all approach. The last time our immigration system was updated was 1986. We didn’t have the internet. Nobody talked about AI. And so it’s just an incredibly outdated policy that we’re trying to jam into a modern economy. And so it is time for this administration and for Congress to really step up and fix this so that it is aligned with the economy of 2025.

Copy LinkCan the Dignity Act serve as a bipartisan solution?

SAFIAN: There is a new legislative effort, the Dignity Act to reset immigration policy. Can you explain what it would do? Is it a good solution? Is it a likely solution?

SHI: First, it does provide a path to legal status and a work permit for people that have been here at least five years. They’re working, they’re paying taxes, they’re law-abiding. They have to be vetted in order to get this legal status and work permit. It has 20 members of Congress, 10 Republicans, 10 Democrats working together to push this forward. There are provisions in this bill that’s uncomfortable for both sides. It has border security, it has asylum reforms. And so it is something we’re very encouraged by, and I know the sponsors have been active in terms of talking to the administration to gather support.

SAFIAN: To pass a big immigration reset, that is a tall order. I mean, there’s a reason that we haven’t had any legislation since 1986, right?

SHI: Yeah, exactly. I mean, both sides have kicked this can down the road and also have rather politicked than making solutions. I mean, this issue has really been held hostage by the extremes of both sides. I think a couple things that makes me optimistic in this moment, one is that voters are really, really fed up in terms of how chaotic the system is.

And then I think the second thing is that the border is secure. I mean, I’ve been working on this for nearly two decades and just the number of times members of Congress, particularly on the Republican side have said, “Hey, we can’t do anything, can’t do anything for the Dreamers, for the farm workers, for these groups that are very, very popular even or H-1B or tech workers.” Why, is because the border needs to be secured first and the border is secured now, right? The president has secured the border, and so that makes me more optimistic. Let’s work on the other steps that can secure our workforce as well.

Copy LinkWorkplace concern of deporting immigrants

SAFIAN: Yeah, I mean the president hasn’t just sort of declared victory. I mean there’s still new money that was allocated recently for more border security, which if I’m hearing you right, may not actually be what’s needed at this point.

SHI: So the 175 billion dollars from the Big Beautiful Bill for detention centers, beds, hiring additional ICE officers to detain and arrest immigrants, and we know that internally some parts of the administration would like to deport up to a million people by the end of this year and 2.2 million by the end of next year. And that’s extremely concerning for us because when you think about it, the undocumented workforce is really only about 1% of our entire American workforce. So it’s very small, but in certain sectors. So agriculture, over 40% of our farm workers are undocumented, construction over 30%. And then for elder care, long-term care, there’s about 20 to 30% of those healthcare aides are undocumented. So that’s who’s picking our food, who is taking care of our American elders, and who’s building our homes. And so if the level of removal is achieved, I mean that’s going to impact every single American citizen whether we realize it or not. So groceries prices going up, American elderly not being cared for and housing prices going up, and that’s not something… I know the president doesn’t want that headed into a competitive midterms.

SAFIAN: As you talk about this, it sounds like well, for business continuing at the pace that we’re going at with enforcement, maybe isn’t what’s best for the business. To what extent do you find that business leaders are wary about expressing this concern about immigration policy to the White House? They sort of fear of becoming a target if they speak out?

SHI: Yeah, I mean I think businesses are worried and they’re worried about planning, but I would say that businesses at the height of the enforcement that we saw the last few months, like when there was a quota of 3,000 people removed a day, I know that businesses did make outreach to the White House. Some of them were able to get to the president directly, to the smaller farms and hotels have talked to the Republican members of Congress and sort of this chorus of voices from the business community. Whether it was privately or some of them were public, it did lead to the president in seven different incidences. At cabinet meetings, at press conferences or at the Iowa 4th of July celebration, the president said, “Look, I see these aggressive ICE raids are hurting our farms and restaurants and hotels. I’m hearing from the businesses, so I’m telling people to stop, and I’m moving forward on a legal work permit program.” And that was a direct result of businesses speaking up about the situation.

SAFIAN: I mean, we’ve seen a lot of back and forth within the administration on easing rules and ICE raids for farm workers, for the hospitality industry, different statements from different parts of the administration, the White House, Homeland Security, Department of Labor, of Agriculture. Where does all that stand? I mean, can employers or workers trust that any announcement will stick?

SHI: That’s an excellent question. And there is a clear internal struggle within the White House on this policy, and we want more words of legal work permits from the president. At the end of the day, Congress has to legislate. There is only so much they can do by executive order and then we’re caught up in this back and forth and all of these legal fights. And so Congress has to step up at this moment. What our polling showed last week, it was really interesting that the fact that the president has said several times about a legal work permit program does give the cover for Congress to move forward because the president said it, the Republican primary base are with him at 78% and then you see also Hispanic voter growth up to 83% for this type of balanced approach.

SAFIAN: In some ways, President Trump faces a classic innovator’s dilemma. He’s arguably solved the border security crisis, but looking at how voter sentiment has shifted in the face of mass deportations, he may need to pivot to a new strategy. In the meantime, how is the U.S. workforce adjusting and what might the economic impacts be for American-born workers? We’ll talk about that and more after the break. Stay with us. 

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Before the break, Rebecca Shi of the American Business Immigration Coalition talked about how business leaders are quietly pressing the Trump administration to pull back on its aggressive enforcement and deportation efforts. Now she talks about the economic pros and cons of undocumented workers, why American-born workers could pay the price for mass deportations, and what makes her optimistic about the future. Let’s jump back in.

Copy LinkUnleashing the economic potential of immigrants

Your own family story is part of the motivation for your work. Your mother was an undocumented worker for many years, as I understand it, and you yourself came to the United States as an immigrant. What was needed so that your family could have safely lived and worked here together?

SHI: So I came when I was 10 years old and my father is a U.S. citizen, and then I quickly became a U.S. citizen and my mom struggled with her legal status while I was growing up, and she was a doctor in China. So for 25 years when she didn’t have legal status, she was working in restaurants and then she had a second job taking care of elderly in the nursing homes. And I just remember she worked all the time. She was making sure that she was helping me and then paid for my college. But when she got her green card and she was 61 years old, the first thing she did was she applied to 10 different jobs at the hospital for her profession. And she ended up running a laboratory directing 20 other histologists, and she was helping patients with ulcer, cancer and later COVID and just loved it. And it just shows that when you legalize people who are already contributing, you just unleash their economic potential and that’s good for all of us.

SAFIAN: This country’s relationship with immigration is so complicated because of course we all came here as immigrants at different times in different ways, and it’s been a great advantage to the businesses and the economy of the U.S. to have sort of fresh, young, often, talent be part of it. And yet there’s also this anxiety, this fear that new people are going to take away what we have. How do you square that? Those two different sides of this.

SHI: If you look at history, the last time that our immigration levels pushed 15, 19% was in the 1910s. And around that time, also, there was huge backlash and the economy wasn’t doing well. And so then the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed. And for nearly 50, 60 years up until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, there was almost zero immigration. So that number of foreign born was reduced to about 3, 4%. And we kind of experienced the same thing the last few years when for the first time our foreign born population pushed up to 18, 19%. And we are experiencing a similar backlash. 

But again, we are in the economy of 2025 and no longer in 1965. So we really should have a different response. We saw the jobs report last week and the job growth in July is 74,000. And nearly all economists say that we need at least a hundred thousand jobs created in order just to keep this economy moving.

And the main reason is because we’re short about a million workers over the last four months, people who have either been detained or deported or people that just for fear of being sent to a different country have self deported. And so it is something that we’re going to have to deal with head on, but I think we’re encouraged by what the president has said recently, and he’s a businessman. He knows what the workforce requires, and to your point, the hunger of immigrants and foreign born is necessary for any company or any economy to be fully competitive.

Copy LinkThe flawed E-Verify system & business responsibility

SAFIAN: In all the news about immigration raids, we don’t hear very much about employers facing consequences for hiring people without proper documentation. Why is that? Might that change with more onus being put on businesses?

SHI: I think you’re starting to see that change. So there was that large raid at a meat processing plant in Nebraska, and that meat processor actually was E-Verify compliant. He did E-Verify and ICE came and detained and removed about 90 workers and his response, and he is right, this E-Verify system is a really flawed system. Sometimes it will mistake people’s names, catch people that are U.S citizens, or just completely misidentifies people.

It’s important to recognize that one of the key reasons, drivers of why immigrants are in this country, is because somebody gave them a job. And so it is one of the reasons why our coalition and our employers have really taken upon themselves to really push for a solution that they can come out of the shadows and work legally, and that’s actually good and protects every American worker when we don’t have a second class system. When we don’t have an easily exploitable group of people because they’re in the shadows and living in fear, you ensure that their rights and wages are protected, not just for them, but for every American worker as well.

Copy LinkPolitical realities & the possibility for change

SAFIAN: I mean ABIC came together looking for a lasting long-term reform to immigration policy. And I wonder, is that possible in an environment that’s so charged? And I know you’re optimistic about it, but why is this all so hard?

SHI: I think it’s hard because it’s easy to play up the fears and it’s easy to blame, to point fingers. But I think at the same time, the majority of Americans do believe in steps forward and especially for people that have been here and have earned that legal status, that the everyday American is a lot smarter than the professional politicians, that they don’t need all or nothing. Something like a legal work permit like the president has said, is something that’s broadly supported. And then I think the other piece is just that politicians, for some of them, have to run every two years. And so it’s very easy to run and add, calling something amnesty even when it isn’t to try to score cheap political points.

SAFIAN: So what’s at stake from here for businesses? For all of us?

SHI: A lot of research has been done that this enforcement only approach, this removal, say up to a million people a year can cost the economy. It’s ahead of 350 billion dollars. It’s about up to three and half percentage in terms of job and GDP. It can also translate up to 2.5 million job losses for American workers. The work that immigrants do and Americans do tend to be complementary, immigrants are, say, milking a dairy cow while American workers are the foremen or the managers of the farm. In a restaurant, the immigrants are the busboys or they’re washing the dishes and Americans prefer roles at the front of the house in terms of waitressing or hosting or they’re the bartending.

And so then when you remove that back of the house where there isn’t sufficient labor in the back of the house, that impacts the work of everyday Americans. And then the other thing is just inflationary and food prices. And we had a dairy farmer that, in Wisconsin, that talked to his neighbors about, look, if they continue down this road, the cost of milk, are you willing to pay $30 a gallon? Or even worse, are we okay with milk not being domestically produced and having to be imported? So I think that those are some of the consequences that we might face.

SAFIAN: The pendulum on things like immigration tend to swing from one end to the other. And certainly during the Biden administration, maybe the doors were open too much, maybe the doors are closed too much now. Where do you feel like the pendulum is right now?

SHI: I think it is swung to the other way, and I think Americans like the latest Gallup poll showing that Americans welcome immigrants, are finding immigrants more favorable at 79%, which is the highest since the pandemic, since we called immigrant workers essential because when the rest of us could quarantine safely, they were still working and picking crops. So yeah, I think the American attitude is definitely a reaction to the current more restrictive policies. And I think that bodes well too for solutions that give some cover and support for particularly Republicans and the administration to move forward, especially if they want to keep power in 2026.

SAFIAN: And so you’re not relying on the Democrats retaking power to be able to get these changes through.

SHI: Well, in the last 20 some years I’ve been at this, Democrats had full control of both chambers and the White House three times and nothing was done. And same with Republicans, right? Also, Republicans have had their chance to get something done, and we haven’t, and we see this president having just incredible influence over the Congress. And so I think employers will keep pushing.

SAFIAN: Well, Rebecca, this has been great. Thank you so much for doing it.

SHI: Thanks for the conversation.

SAFIAN: Coming away from my conversation with Rebecca, I was struck by how simple she makes the issue of U.S immigration sound. While administration after administration have struggled to make headway, Rebecca manages to channel an empathic perspective to find a common sense middle ground. I know that I’ve struggled personally about immigration. I don’t believe in totally opened borders, but I do think attracting talent from around the world is incredibly valuable to the U.S economy. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t deeply concerned by the raids and mass deportations. As business leaders, we pride ourselves on solving knotty challenges. To maintain a healthy U.S. workforce, we probably need to talk plainly about immigration, as Rebecca and her members are doing.

When any topic is politicized, it can get messy. To avoid it, we need no nonsense clarity. I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.