You’ve been hearing a lot about immigrants and undocumented workers lately — and all of it is a pack of lies. A great champion of immigrant worker rights throughout her entire career, former Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, is here to correct the record.

JULIE: Immigrant workers are nothing like the villains Trump is making them out to be.

The exploitation they face on the job is sadly nothing new. 

In 1995, I was the lead attorney in a landmark case brought by over 70 Thai garment workers who’d been trafficked to the U.S. and forced to work behind barbed wire and under armed guard. These workers, the majority of them women, were lured from Thailand with the promise of a good job, but were forced to sew clothing in a sweatshop for 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, for pennies. They worked under the constant threat that if discovered, they would be the ones who would be punished — not their captors. 

But instead of further punishing the workers, we punished the companies. By supporting the workers’ own power to exercise their rights, we sued those who profited from their labor and won millions of dollars in unpaid wages. We fought against their deportation. We sent a message that immigrant workers could demand corporate accountability.

These garment workers wanted to escape poverty, support their families, and contribute to a new country they called home — just  like so many others who come to the United States seeking opportunity today.

Do these people sound like the “worst of the worst” to you?

Immigrant workers help raise our children, care for our sick and elderly, wash our cars, serve food in restaurants, harvest our produce, and sort and deliver our packages. They are indispensable to their communities and the economies that depend on their labor.

But instead of being valued, some greedy corporations use these workers’ immigration status — both undocumented and documented — to terrorize them into keeping silent about workplace abuses.

“If you report me, I’ll report you,” is one of the most common threats that immigrant workers hear from employers who abuse and exploit them. As a result, they face more abuse and difficulty getting justice.

One of the most common abuses workers face is bosses stealing their pay. More money is stolen from low-wage workers in wage theft a year than the total cost of all other property crimes combined — and the problem is more prevalent in U.S. industries with more immigrant workers.

This abuse can be a matter of life and death. Immigrants are more likely to work in dangerous industries like construction and agriculture. In 2023, Latino immigrant workers were twice as likely to die on the job than U.S.-born workers.

Immigrant women workers in particular face high rates of sexual harassment and violence. One study found that a staggering 80 percent of Mexican and Mexican-American female farmworkers in the U.S. have experienced sexual harassment at work — and many are threatened with deportation if they report the abuse.

And under Trump, immigrant workers have endured relentless racial targeting. Trump’s deportation machine has abducted thousands of workers of color on the way to work or at their job site. They’ve been thrown into detention centers and some have been illegally deported to countries they have never even been to. 

This is not just about vilifying immigrants. Trump has also used lies about immigrants to fuel attacks on all communities of color — including on many U.S. citizens.  

No worker is safe when anyone can be targeted.

So what can we do to protect immigrant workers?

First, stop the raids. 

They are making workplaces less safe and tearing workers, families, and communities apart.

Second, hold corporations responsible for labor law violations

Workers deserve real protections. Breaking labor laws can’t just be a cost of doing business. Government is supposed to enforce the law, not aid and abet corporations in breaking them.

Third, immigrant workers must be protected from retaliation and deportation when they speak up. 

When I was Acting Labor Secretary in the Biden administration, we expanded Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement, or DALE. This protected immigrant workers involved in labor investigations by granting them a work permit and temporary protection from deportation when they came forward to report abuse. Programs like DALE should be expanded, not eliminated, so bad actors can be held accountable.

Fourth, workers need real power on the job.

That’s what unions and worker centers do. It’s still too hard to form a union in this country, and now Trump’s corporate-backed war on workers has made it even more difficult. Immigrants have powered the labor movement for over a century, and we need to remove the barriers that keep workers from successfully organizing.

Fifth, enforce anti-monopoly laws.

Part of making sure workers have real power is curbing corporate power. When corporations have too much power, they can suppress wages and impose harsh working conditions across entire industries.  

Enforcing anti-monopoly laws gives all workers — immigrant and American-born alike — a fairer shot. 

Sixth, and finally, we need a clear, attainable pathway to citizenship. 

Undocumented immigrants are forced into the shadows and called freeloaders. But they pay billions in taxes every year while being ineligible for benefits like Medicaid, Social Security, and unemployment insurance. They deserve to reap the benefits of the backbreaking labor they pour into our communities.

Let me be clear: attacking immigrant workers doesn’t help American-born workers. Corporations pit these workers against each other so they can drive down wages for both groups and make the workplace less safe for all workers. Protecting vulnerable workers improves standards and safety for everyone — no matter where they were born.

So don’t believe the lies you hear about immigrant and undocumented workers. The real villains are the greedy corporations that want workers fighting one another while they rake in record profits at workers’ expense.

We must not succumb to this administration’s scapegoating immigrant workers for the problems caused by powerful corporations.

We are always strongest when we stand together.