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- Workplace raids demonstrate the vulnerability of the E-Verify system, experts say</p>
<p>Nicole Sganga July 17, 2025 at 2:39 AM</p>
<p>Homeland Security Investigations</p>
<p>Omaha, Nebraska — Gary Rohwer built his QuickSteak empire at a meat processing center in Omaha, Nebraska.</p>
<p>But then, a tactical team of federal agents raided his facility on June 10, and more than 70 of his assembly line employees were arrested by Homeland Security Investigations.</p>
<p>He showed CBS News an old company photo, disclosing that about half of the employees in that photo were swept up in the raid.</p>
<p>"Oh my God, half of them," Rohwer said. "It makes me sad, it really does, because these guys made us successful." Rohwer said he put his faith in E-Verify — the federal system used by more than 1 million employers each year, and which is mandatory in 10 states and by most federal contractors — to confirm the employment eligibility of would-be hires.</p>
<p>"We did everything right, but yet we got penalized big, I mean, big-time," Rohwer said.The government tells employers like Rohwer that E-Verify provides "peace of mind."</p>
<p>To green-light employees, the system matches documents, such as licenses and Social Security cards, to a U.S. government database of eligible workers. But it vets paperwork, not people.</p>
<p>Experts say the E-Verify system is broken, not only exposing employers like Rohwer to raids, but also increasing an all too common crime: identity theft."This is a nationwide problem," Elhrick Cerdan, assistant special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations Omaha, who led the investigation into Gary's QuickSteak, told CBS News.</p>
<p>Cerdan called Rohwer and his business victims.</p>
<p>"This was in fact a targeted criminal investigation to rescue over a hundred victims of stolen entities," Cerdan said, emphasizing that this was a criminal investigation, not civil immigration enforcement.</p>
<p>"Everybody is the victim of this broken system," Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies for the Libertarian Cato Institute, told CBS News.</p>
<p>Nowrasteh called E-Verify a "wink-and-nod" system.</p>
<p>"The thing that experts know that is sort of a dirty little secret, is E-Verify is a very easy-to-fool program," Nowrasteh said.</p>
<p>He added that part of its appeal is that it doesn't work.</p>
<p>"It allows politicians to talk tough about illegal immigration without actually imposing enormous costs on the U.S. economy," Nowrasteh said.</p>
<p>United States Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson Matthew J. Tragesser told CBS News in a statement that "E-Verify consistently receives high marks from users and maintains a nearly perfect accuracy rate, while requiring no special software or additional costs to employers."</p>
<p>"In recent months, staff at USCIS have taken an aggressive approach in concert with the Social Security Administration to systematically block E-Verify from automatically accepting SSNs that are known to have been used fraudulently," Tragesser went on. "E-Verify supports employers, but it does not take the place of their legal responsibility to ensure employee-presented documentation reasonably appears to be genuine and relates to the person presenting it."</p>
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Source: "AOL AOL General News"
Source: AsherMag
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