When federal immigration agents carried out a workplace raid at an electronics repair company in Texas this week, they handed out color-coded bracelets. People whom they deemed authorized to work in the United States received green wristbands. Those suspected of being undocumented wore yellow.
It was an emotional scene punctuated by the arrests of more than 280 employees who were detained on immigration violations — the biggest single workplace sweep since 2008, officials said, and the largest since President Trump took office with a pledge to crack down on illegal immigration.
The operation on Wednesday in Allen, a suburb of Dallas, evoked strong reactions, as families rushed to the site of the raid, protesters gathered outside an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement office in Dallas, and immigrant advocacy groups condemned the operation for throwing families’ lives into turmoil in a matter of hours.
The employees arrested, who were predominantly women, hailed from 15 countries, including El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela, according to ICE. The agency said more than half of the workers had been released with orders to appear before a federal immigration judge, but 110 people remained in custody as of Thursday.
Katrina W. Berger, who leads the agency’s Homeland Security Investigations unit in Dallas, said its focus was on a criminal investigation into the company, CVE Technology Group. But she said the authorities could not “turn a blind eye” to the unauthorized workers who were found there.
The authorities executed a criminal search warrant at the company, which refurbishes and repairs cellphones and other technology equipment, after getting “many tips” that the business was hiring workers who were using fraudulent documents, Ms. Berger said.
“Businesses that knowingly hire illegal aliens create an unfair advantage over their competing businesses,” Ms. Berger said at a news conference after the raid. “They take jobs away from U.S. citizens and legal residents, and they create an atmosphere poised for exploiting an illegal work force.”
By Thursday, frantic families were seeking help from Raices, a Texas-based organization that offers free and low-cost legal services to immigrants and refugees, said Felix Villalobos, a lawyer in the organization’s Dallas office. He said the group had been inundated with requests, as many employees remained detained.
United We Dream Texas, an organization led by young immigrants, condemned ICE in a statement for “targeting black and brown immigrant workers.” “Within hours, the lives of hundreds have spiraled into turmoil and anxiety,” the group said. “These workers are now in the hands of an agency that is abusive and negligent towards the physical and mental well-being of the people they target.”
In an email on Thursday, Edward Cho, the chief executive of CVE Technology Group, said the company has a strong history of complying with federal immigration and employment laws.
“We are cooperating with the authorities and intend to continue doing so,” he said. “We are also focused on providing support to impacted employees and their families, for whom this is a profoundly upsetting development.”
Workplace raids have become more common under Mr. Trump, whose strict enforcement agenda has pushed the population of detained immigrants to the highest levels in history. Homeland Security Investigations opened about 6,850 workplace investigations last year, a jump from about 1,700 the year before. Officials also made nearly 800 criminal arrests, up from about 140 in 2017, according to figures released by ICE in December.
The operations recall the high-profile immigration raids that made headlines during the presidency of George W. Bush. One of the biggest workplace raids, in May 2008, resulted in the detention of nearly 400 undocumented immigrants, including several children, at an Iowa meatpacking plant.
The Obama administration took a more hands-off approach to enforcement, auditing employers’ compliance in documenting their workers’ status without conducting many on-site investigations.
About eight million of the nearly 11 million immigrants unlawfully in the United States participate in the labor force. They account for about 5 percent of all workers, according to the Pew Research Center.
Experts say that workplace raids primarily serve as a deterrent for employees — dissuading workers who are in the country illegally from showing up at their jobs and warning prospective undocumented immigrants that, even if they make it across the border, they may be captured at work.
While the raids may also make employers think twice, it has traditionally been difficult for the government to take criminal action against businesses that hire unauthorized immigrants.
A handful of employers faced prominent criminal cases in recent years. Last year, after federal agents rounded up about 100 workers at a meatpacking plant in Tennessee, the owner of the company pleaded guilty in federal court to fraud and employing unauthorized immigrants.
But many companies avoid serious charges because it is often impossible to prove that they knew someone was unauthorized to work.
Kathleen Campbell Walker, who is on the board of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said unauthorized immigrants seeking work may present fake documents, and it is up to employers to verify that the paperwork is legitimate.
In some cases, she said, businesses are hiring and recruiting undocumented workers to try to cut costs and stay competitive. But there are other situations in which businesses don’t properly assess the documents — or get fooled by realistic fakes. “Many employers don’t have a clue to be able to spot something that is fake,” she said.
The law requires only that employers ensure that documents appear to be valid, and federal law prohibits them from requiring specific types of identification from workers.
The standard is: “To a reasonable employer, on their face, do they appear to be valid?” Ms. Campbell Walker said.
Immigration officials said CVE Technology Group had “knowingly” hired unauthorized immigrants. After an audit earlier this year found “numerous hiring irregularities,” officials executed a criminal search warrant on Wednesday.
The vast and complex operation involved more than 200 law enforcement officials who arrested people suspected of being undocumented while also working to identify the sole caregivers of children and others who should be released quickly on “humanitarian grounds,” Ms. Berger said.
Mr. Villalobos of Raices said his group was working to independently confirm what had happened and to quell a panic that was rippling among immigrants locally and beyond. “Even if they live nowhere near that city,” he said, an operation like this can scare families into changing their habits, including their driving patterns.
The families who rushed to the site of the raid on Wednesday “were pretty emotional,” he said. Some were left waiting for hours or more for their loved ones to be released.
One man told a local television station, WFAA, that his fiancée had been detained. They were planning to get married in May, he said, but he feared she now would face deportation.
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