In a statement, 7-Eleven Inc., which is based in Irving, Tex., distanced itself from its franchisees, saying they were independent business owners who “are solely responsible for their employees, including deciding who to hire and verifying their eligibility to work in the United States.”
“7-Eleven takes compliance with immigration laws seriously and has terminated the franchise agreements of franchisees convicted of violating these laws,” the company said.
If ICE hoped to make a bold statement, it could hardly pick a more iconic target than 7-Eleven, a chain known for its ubiquitous stores that are open all the time and sell the much-loved Slurpees and Big Gulps. Many a franchise has been a steppingstone for new, legal immigrants who want to own and run their own small businesses.
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Not all franchisees have been scrupulous about whom they hire. ICE called its Wednesday sweep a “follow-up” of a 2013 investigation that resulted in the arrests of nine 7-Eleven franchise owners and managers on Long Island and in Virginia on charges of employing undocumented workers. Several have pleaded guilty and forfeited their franchises, and were ordered to pay millions in back wages owed to the workers.
“This definitely sends a message to employers,” said Ira Mehlman, the spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors more limits on immigration and stricter enforcement.
According to ICE, federal agents served inspection notices to 7-Eleven franchises in California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and Washington, D.C.
Under President George W. Bush, ICE tended to make deportation arrests at worksites the government had reason to believe hired undocumented workers. The agency under President Barack Obama performed more inspections of the I-9 forms employers are required to fill out and keep to verify their workers’ eligibility.
One of the biggest workplace immigration raids, in July 2008, resulted in the detention of nearly 400 undocumented immigrants, including several children, at an Iowa meatpacking plant. Sholom Rubashkin, the chief executive of the Agriprocessors plant, then the largest kosher meatpacking operation in the country, was eventually convicted of bank fraud in federal court.
President Trump commuted Mr. Rubashkin’s 27-year prison sentence last month, after years of lobbying by a number of prominent lawyers and politicians who considered his term unduly harsh, and perhaps even anti-Semitic.
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