McCaskill says immigration agency getting tougher

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service is launching a more aggressive effort to catch employers who knowingly hire illegal workers. The focus has been on detaining illegal workers. But the Homeland Security Department says it’s making an abrupt change of direction in going after the people who hire them.

Senator McCaskill, who has been pressuring the agency for stronger enforcement against employers since she arrived in Washington, could hardly wait to spread the word in the Senate. She says the new policy will be a major deterrent.

"If you thinik somebody’s going to put you in jail for saying, ‘Hey I don’t care if you’ve got papers or not…I don’t care if you’re legal or not…’ If you don’t think those people being held accountable is going to make a difference, you don’t understand law enforcement."

Immigration authorities say they’re going to shift from relying on tips to running audits of employer records and using undercover agents. The agency expects to improve on last year’s record when almost six-thousand people were arrested in workplace immigration raids. Only 135 of them were employers or managers.

McCaskill calls employers the "magnet" that draws illegal workers. The agency calls them "the root causes of illegal immigration."