Dollar General (DG) , which has almost 20,000 locations in the U.S., just sent a stern message to employees instructing them to comply with a controversial policy that the Trump administration recently implemented.
President Donald Trump, for years, has touted his plan to secure the U.S. borders and mass deport immigrants who are in the country illegally.
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“Illegal immigration costs our country billions and billions of dollars each year … And I will therefore take every lawful action at my disposal to address this crisis,” said Trump during a White House briefing in 2018.
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Shortly after Trump was sworn in for a second term as president on Jan. 20, he signed several executive orders focused on immigration, such as increasing border security and limiting birthright citizenship.
One executive order even reinstates the “enhanced vetting” of visa applicants, which was enforced during Trump’s first term as president but was paused under the Biden administration. This includes increased workplace raids and I-9 audits conducted by U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security investigations.
Dollar General sends a strict notice to employees
In light of this recent executive order, according to a new report from Bloomberg, Dollar General has sent a memo instructing its store managers to comply with ICE agents if they show up in stores to speak with staff and customers.
“Please allow the agent to speak with the employee,” said Dollar General in the memo. “Ask the Agent to meet with the employee outside the store and away from customers and other employees if possible.”
Dollar General has sent a memo instructing its store managers to comply with ICE agent requests.
The memo also tells managers to immediately notify their superiors if an ICE agent visits their store and to write down the agent’s name and credentials.
“If Agent seeks to speak with customers, please ask Agent to be discrete and as least disruptive as possible to store operations and to conduct the interview outside the store,” reads the memo.
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Dollar General also notes in the memo that ICE agents are prohibited from entering non-public parts of stores without a warrant and that employee information should not be provided to them without instruction from field or HR management. Dollar General also stated it “intends to comply with its legal obligations in connection with such visits.”
Trump administration advances mass deportation plan
The memo from Dollar General comes after ICE agents have arrested more than 8,000 immigrants since Trump took office two weeks ago. The move is part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation plan, which is headed by Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan, who warned in an interview last year that the U.S. will soon see a “historic deportation operation.”
ICE raids have so far taken place in cities in New York, Chicago, Colorado, Florida, Arizona, Texas, Atlanta, Washington and California. These raids have sparked controversy on social media and were even the cause of massive protests in a few cities nationwide.
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The Trump administration’s promise to crack down on undocumented immigrants in workplaces across the country comes during a time when many industries in the U.S. rely on the employment of undocumented immigrant workers.
According to 2022 data from the American Immigration Council, the U.S. is estimated to have over 6 million undocumented workers in various industries.
The construction industry has the highest amount of undocumented workers, who make up about 14% of its workforce. Following construction is the agriculture industry where almost 13% of its workforce is made up of undocumented workers. The hospitality industry comes in as No. 3 as undocumented workers make up about 7% of its workforce.
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