Employers may pay price for not embracing changes

•Asset Forfeiture: It allows ICE agents to seize and forfeit illicit proceeds and other criminally derived assets.

•Border Enforcement Security Task Forces: It allows Homeland Security law enforcement agencies, working cooperatively with other law enforcement entities, to comprehensively identify organizations posing significant threats to border security. BEST Task Forces are currently in Arizona, California and Texas.

•Criminal Alien Program: It focuses on identifying criminal aliens who are incarcerated within federal, state and local facilities, ensuring they are deported upon serving sentences.

•Customs Cross-Designation: It allows federal, state, local and foreign law enforcement officers who participate primarily on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement task force operations to be cross designated as "customs officers” and be granted the authority to enforce U.S. customs law.

•Document and Benefit Fraud Task Forces: It targets benefit fraud, identity theft and documentation fraud. It was initially launched in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Newark, N.J., Philadelphia, St. Paul, Minn., and Washington, D.C. In April 2007, additional task forces were added in Baltimore, Chicago, Miami, Fla., Phoenix, San Francisco and Tampa, Fla., bringing the total to 17 nationwide.

•Equitable Sharing/Joint Operations: This gives Homeland Security the ability to offer payment to local law enforcement for their cooperation and assistance in immigration enforcement. In fiscal year 2006, ICE coordinated payments of $5.65 million in overtime costs for state and local police officers working alongside ICE agents throughout the U.S., and provided $43.46 million in direct payments of equitable sharing of forfeited assets to 362 state and local agencies, four federal agencies and one foreign government.

• Fugitive Operation Teams: They identify, locate, apprehend, process and remove fugitive aliens from the United States with the highest priority placed on those fugitives who have been convicted of crimes.

•Other enforcement programs operating under the ICE ACCESS umbrella: The ICE-led National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, Law Enforcement Support, Operation Firewall, Operation Predator and Operation Community Shield — which in 2007 netted the arrest of 65 alleged illegal immigrant gang members in Oklahoma City.