About 240 janitors fired from Harvard Maintenance

A janitorial company in Minnesota is expected to fire more than half its local workforce due to improper documentation, as the federal government focuses immigration enforcement on employers and their recordkeeping.

About 240 janitors with Harvard Maintenance Inc. will be fired over the next several weeks because they failed to prove they were legally eligible to work in the United States, according to the workers' union, Service Employees International (SEIU). The first round of dismissals is happening this week, the union said.

"Our community is traumatized," said Javier Morillo, president of SEIU Local 26.

Harvard Maintenance, a privately held company in New York, said Tuesday that immigration officials started inspecting the company's Twin Cities operations in October. The company wouldn't confirm the dismissals, nor would U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The layoffs over documentation are the latest to rattle workers and businesses in Minnesota. In December, Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. fired 450 workers in Minnesota after immigration officials inspected its employment records. The Denver-based burrito chain remains under investigation in Virginia and Washington, D.C.

In 2009, ABM Janitorial Services in the Twin Cities, part of New York-based ABM Industries Inc., was forced to fire about 1,200 workers after a similar immigration review.

There's been a surge of such inspections of Twin Cities companies over the past year, local immigration attorneys report, although no firm count is available. The local ICE office in Bloomington won't confirm or deny ongoing investigations, and most immigration reviews occur beyond public view.

DeAnne Hilgers, an immigration lawyer at Lindquist & Vennum in Minneapolis, agreed. "The business community seems surprised by the number of audits that are going on."

The sweep covers a range of industries: restaurants, construction-related companies, janitorial services and agricultural operations have all been hit locally, lawyers say. An ICE spokesman in Bloomington said Minnesota has not been targeted for any special enforcement effort.

The immigration probes are called I-9 audits, after the form used to verify workers are eligible to work in this country. They've replaced the worksite raids of earlier years in which employees were rounded up.

Now, officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) comb through the work records employers are supposed to maintain. Workers lacking the right documentation are given 90 days to come up with proof they're authorized to work in the country, or companies must let them go. Unlike in the earlier raids, workers dismissed after audits typically aren't deported.

According to SEIU, the Twin Cities janitors at Harvard make an average of $13.32 per hour, mostly cleaning office buildings in downtown Minneapolis, and the jobs provide benefits and health insurance. Harvard Maintenance's other locations weren't subject to the immigration probe, it said.

The new silent raids still hurt workers more than employers, said the union's Morillo.

"Once again, we watch the ramifications of a failed enforcement policy: hundreds more homes in foreclosure, American children dropping out of school to support their parents and local businesses losing patrons," Morillo said. "Almost systematically, the federal government has become an employment agency for the worst employers, pushing hardworking people into the underground economy where they face exploitation by bad-actor corporations."

A spokesman for the ICE office in Bloomington said it's just doing its job.

"ICE is charged with enforcing the nation's immigration and customs laws," spokesman Shawn Neudauer said. "One of our primary immigration enforcement responsibilities is to ensure that employers hire only authorized workers, whether immigrants or citizens."