Mass. Market Basket suspends 47 workers after audit, ICE 'operations'
A Market Basket in New Bedford suspended several employees after an audit of these employees' job applications in connection with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) "operations", the New Bedford Light reported Thursday.
Forty-seven Market Basket employees were suspended for not having the Social Security cards used to apply for their jobs, Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores, an organization advocating for immigrant workers in New Bedford, told the Light.
Last month, store managers conducted an I-9 inspection or audit to ask employees to produce the Social Security cards they used to apply for their jobs, the Light wrote. When employees fill out their applications, they must fill out and show proof that they can work in the United States.
If these audits show that employees are not authorized to work in the United States, their employer cannot allow them to work for their business, according to ICE's guidance .
"ICE conducted operations recently in New Bedford at Market Basket and took enforcement actions against some employees," a Market Basket spokesperson told the news website. "This happens from time to time in the regular course of business."
The spokesperson later told the Light on Friday that the suspension stemmed from a "[Department of] Homeland Security Investigation dating back to 2023."
"The employees have an opportunity to be reinstated pending updating their working papers," the Market Basket spokesperson told the Light.
MassLive has reached out to Market Basket, the Department of Homeland Security and Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores for more information.
One immigrant in New Bedford was detained on Monday, but none of the suspended workers have been detained, the news website reported.
Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores is looking into whether or not the suspensions are a violation of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining (WARN) Act, which requires Massachusetts employers who let go of 50 or more workers at a time or employ 500 or more employees at a site to provide them with enough notice and help them find new work, the group's executive director Adrian Ventura told the Light.
"They called them in and spoke so beautifully, saying they could come back once they had Social Security cards," Ventura added to the news website. "But that's not true. They got rid of them forever."
The suspensions come the same week that ICE's acting director, Todd Lyons, spoke with CBS News about immigration raids and said agents would arrest undocumented immigrants employed by American businesses even if they do not have criminal records.
"ICE is always focused on the worst of the worst," Lyons told CBS News' Margaret Brennan. "One difference you'll see now is under this administration, we have opened up the whole aperture of the immigration portfolio."
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