Amazon is purging warehouse workers who had their work authorizations revoked after President Donald Trump’s administration ended an immigration program put in place under President Joe Biden, according to The New York Times.
Hundreds of employees at a warehouse in West Jefferson, in central Ohio, have lost their jobs as part of the purge. Across the country, thousands of foreign workers have lost their right to live and work in the U.S. and been removed from jobs where they were in high demand.
The Trump administration has orchestrated immigration raids in workplaces and at businesses such as Home Depot seeking out illegal day laborers.
A Springfield, Ohio Haitian community leader, Viles Dorsainvil, told The NYT that the dismissals are “not unique to Amazon,” adding that terminations have also occurred in other warehouses, auto-parts plants, and stores.
The removals are taking place at many of Amazon’s more than 1,000 facilities across the country. The terminations have affected warehouses in Massachusetts and Staten Island, New York. Hundreds were let go at a warehouse in Florida, The NYT found.
Amazon told the The NYT it had prepared for the change in policy by the Trump administration, changing its staffing plans as it waited for guidance from the administration, which arrived in June.
The Independent has reached out to Amazon for comment.
“We’re supporting employees impacted by the government’s recent changes in immigration policy,” a spokesperson for the company told The NYT. Amazon has reportedly informed its workers they may be eligible for free or low-cost outside legal services.
The company went on a hiring spree as the pandemic increased demand for deliveries and it provides information in several languages in some of its warehouses, including Spanish, Vietnamese, and Haitian Creole.
Other workers at the West Jefferson warehouse come from Afghanistan, Bhutan, and Somalia. However, workers and local officials told the paper that Haitians make up the largest share of foreign workers and may outnumber Americans.
The Supreme Court granted a temporary approval on May 30 for the Trump administration to end a program called “humanitarian parole.” It had allowed more than half a million migrants to quickly get work permits if they had a financial sponsor. The migrants came from countries experiencing political upheaval, such as Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The effort to roll back the program was part of the administration’s promise to conduct mass deportations. The Department of Homeland Security said on June 12 that it had started notifying migrants the program was coming to an end, arguing that the migrants had not been properly vetted and that they undercut Americans.
As the change was announced, D.H.S. spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said that the end of the program “will be a necessary return to common-sense policies, a return to public safety and a return to America First.”
In a June 22 email obtained by The Times, Amazon told its managers that it had “received the first list from D.H.S. identifying impacted Amazon employees” from the program, in addition to “some employees outside of this specific program whose work authorization is similarly affected.”
Amazon reportedly told its managers the affected employees would be made aware the following day via a push notification in the employee app. If they couldn’t provide alternative documents showing their right to work in the U.S. in the next five days, they would be suspended without pay and subsequently dismissed.
“The Department of Homeland Security (D.H.S.) has informed us that the work authorization that you had submitted is no longer valid,” the notification stated.
