Blue States Combat Trump’s Migrant Crackdown Using Workplace Law

Blue-state policymakers including in California and Washington are taking steps to reinforce immigrant-friendly approaches to workplace law as a counterweight against the Trump administration’s deportation campaign.

A new Washington state law (SB 5104) set to take effect July 1 bans employers from using threats related to employees’ immigration status to deter complaints about wage underpayment, discrimination, or other labor law violations.

California’s labor commissioner recently issued memos reminding employers and workers that the state’s workplace laws apply to all workers regardless of immigration status and limit the ways employers use the federal government’s E-Verify system. And Illinois lawmakers are considering legislation to expand restrictions on employers’ E-Verify use, while the state defends its existing law against a legal challenge by the Trump administration.

The latest efforts are part of a broader pushback by Democratic states against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. While states can’t shield immigrant workers from deportation, several do impose employer obligations aimed at preventing their exploitation.

The Washington measure, for example, “doesn’t have any impact on federal immigration law,” said Bruce Buchanan, an immigration-focused attorney with Littler Mendelson PC. “This is strictly about the employers’ conduct toward folks who have immigration status such as an EAD or a green card. It’s meant to protect those immigrant employees.”

Bolstering those protections is a timely policy move, as “the return of worksite raids and the out-of-control immigration enforcement that’s happening all around the country” emboldens some employers to use immigration-related threats as leverage over employees, said Jessie Hahn, senior counsel for labor and employment policy at the National Immigration Law Center.

Hahn’s organization is hearing increasing claims of employers threatening to report—or actually reporting—workers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, she said.

That matches the experience of California regulators in Trump’s first term. Workers in California filed 94 immigration-related retaliation complaints with the labor commissioner in 2017, up from 20 in 2016, according to a National Employment Law Project report.

Trump’s immigration enforcement has included ramped-up workplace raids and cancellation of temporary protections for hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, leaving employers wrestling with when to terminate employees who lose work authorizations. The president said on June 12 he planned to limit enforcement efforts at farms and hotels, but reportedly walked back that approach within a few days.

Anti-Retaliation Protections

The Washington law, like a similar measure New Jersey enacted in 2024, is a more expansive, proactive version of anti-retaliation protections in state and federal labor laws, Hahn said.

It builds on protections in Washington’s anti-discrimination law barring workplace bias based on citizenship or immigration status. Washington lawmakers also enacted legislation this year to let workers use state-mandated paid sick leave to attend immigration-related hearings for themselves or family members.

State and federal anti-retaliation provisions generally bar employers from firing or otherwise penalizing employees who complain of workplace law violations such as safety deficiencies. Many states and federal agencies recognize threats related to immigration status as retaliation either through case law or agency guidance, Hahn said.

At least a handful of states explicitly protect against those threats in statute, including Delaware, New York, and Rhode Island.

California law bars immigration-related threats or retaliation by employers, while also requiring employers to notify employees within 72 hours of learning federal authorities plan an immigration audit at the workplace. The state also doesn’t ask the immigration status of workers filing labor-law complaints, according to the labor commissioner’s memos.

“I would hope all employers are not trying to exploit any workers, not engaged in threats and coercion,” Buchanan said. “Unfortunately, we know on occasion those things do occur, whether it’s about immigration status or union activity.”

In most states, as with the Washington law, the enforcement risk is likely minimal, he said. The Washington measure calls for the state’s labor department to investigate violations based on worker complaints and gives it power to issue civil penalties, with no explicit private right of action for workers to sue on their own.

“Time will tell whether this was a statute that was passed to look good to the immigrant community or whether it will actually be effective,” Buchanan said.

Red States

Lawmakers in red states are considering a range of bills this year to match Trump’s tough-on-immigration stance, such as requiring private-sector employers to use E-Verify.

The support for Trump’s approach has emerged in states like Ohio, where Sen. Kristina D. Roegner (R) recently urged her colleagues to pass a bill barring state officials from obstructing immigration enforcement in courthouses and schools. The deportation push is designed to keep the country safe, including from dangerous drugs like fentanyl, she said.

“We are a nation of immigrants,” she said during a June 18 Senate floor debate. “We are also a country of law and order, and that’s important to have a civilized society. Your first act upon entering this country cannot and must not be one of breaking our laws.”

State policy aside, federal law also bans retaliation against workers who file complaints or participate in an investigation.

The US Labor Department’s website says the agency protects workers’ legal rights regardless of their immigration status. It encourages workers to report violations to its Wage and Hour Division and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, as well as the separate Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—which is now focused on “Anti-American” hiring bias.

But blue-state measures like the Washington law also seek to counteract priority shifts and possible decreases in enforcement at those agencies, Hahn said.

“We’re seeing a retrenchment of labor law enforcement from the federal agencies, and workers are concerned about the risks of coming forward,” given reports of other federal agencies sharing information with the Department of Homeland Security, she said. “The state agencies are a really important bulwark for enforcing labor standards, because the states generally are not sharing information with immigration authorities.”