· Border Crossing Law Firm · By Shahid Haque · From the Border Crossing Law Firm media archive.
In this firm post accompanying a video statement, Shahid Haque explains how ICE had used Montana unemployment-insurance records containing names, Social Security numbers, and wages to search for undocumented workers. He connects Jordon Dyrdahl-Roberts's resignation to longstanding concerns about the state's disclosure of confidential employment data.
Shahid used the moment to give the public legal and institutional background that a resignation story alone could not provide. The issue affected not only immigrant workers but also every Montana business whose records could be searched without a judicial warrant.
Yesterday, an employee of the Montana Department of Labor quit in protest over the fact that his employer was about to give out confidential employment information to Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE”), so that they could use that to raid businesses in search of undocumented immigrants.
So, yeah, about that.
I put in my two weeks notice.
I work at Montana Department of Labor.
There were going to be ICE subpoenas for information that would end up being used to hunt down & deport undocumented workers. https://t.co/TqBBjPDmNa
— Jordon Dyrdahl-Roberts (@dyrbert) February 8, 2018
ICE has used these tactics in the past, to fish through quarters unemployment insurance reports, containing the names, social security numbers, and wages of employees, to try and find undocumented workers. I wrote about these concerns long ago .
In this video I law out some of the important background information on this issue.