As the ACLU pointed out in their report of the incident, the 4th Amendment protects everyone in the United States, both citizens and noncitizens, from warrantless searches of their homes. In the absence of a warrant, the 4th Amendment requires that the authorities obtain informed consent from the people whose homes they intend to search, which was clearly not forthcoming in this case.

Truth-Out.org notes that this raid is the most recent in a string of warrantless raids by ICE throughout the United States in the past several years. Similar lawsuits to the one filed in Nashville this week have been brought following warrantless raids in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Georgia and California.

Deportations have climbed to near record levels during the Obama Administration's tenure. Nearly 400,000 people were deported in fiscal year 2011 alone. The tool that the Obama administration has used to ratchet up deportations is a program known as ‘Secure Communities.'

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) runs Secure Communities, in association with the F.B.I. and local law enforcement officials. Historically, local law enforcement shared fingerprint data with the F.B.I. in order to facilitate the capture of federal criminals. Secure Communities works by requiring that the F.B.I. share the fingerprint data obtained from local police with I.C.E. Then, I.C.E. crosschecks the fingerprints against their database of immigration violators and the person is deported if they are found in the database. The Obama Administration has been at pains to express that Secure Communities is primarily focused on criminals within undocumented immigrant communities.

However, data from the Colorlines report shows that Secure Communities has had more of an impact on the percentage of parents of American citizens deported (increasing from around 8% to 22% of all deportees). What's more, another study has criticized Secure Communities for being discriminatory against Latinos. That study found that 93% of people deported under Secure Communities were Latino. This is troubling because Latinos only account for around 75% of all undocumented immigrants. Critics have also said that Secure Communities amounts to a fishing expedition, because the structure of the program lends itself to an arrest first, investigate later mentality. This mentality has been blamed for the fact that Secure Communities has netted an estimated 700 American citizens during its short runtime.

Authorities caught wind of the company's illegal employment activity when the owner of the company was pulled over in a routine traffic stop. Apparently, the owner was returning from the Mexican consulate in Kansas City with a number of the undocumented workers. They went to the Mexican consulate to secure identification documents for the workers in case they had a run-in with police. On the way back, the owner was stopped for speeding and the five undocumented immigrant workers were discovered.

Employing undocumented immigrants workers is one of the hottest immigration-related topics politically right now. Numerous states, including Missouri, have passed laws that punish employers more harshly than the federal law requires. Missouri's law allows the state to cancel the contracts it has with companies that employ undocumented immigrants. Additionally, the state can revoke the charters of companies that are repeatedly found to be employing undocumented immigrants. The Supreme Court recently upheld this sort of employment law in Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America v. Whiting.

Alabama's new immigration law is among the most controversial to date. It is currently the topic of three lawsuits, including one by the Obama Administration. Among other things, the law allows police to detain and question anyone suspected of not being in the United States legally. If the person cannot provide documentation of their legal immigration status, they are guilty of a misdemeanor and may be held without bond.

When the law went into effect, it prompted numerous people to pull their children out of Alabama public schools and even move out of the state. Like similar laws in Arizona, Utah, Indiana and Georgia, this law is of questionable legal authority. Historically, the only organ of government in the United States capable of making immigration law is Congress. These recent state laws have been the greatest challenge ever  to Congress' prerogative in this area.

In one way, these laws are a way for state governments to show their discontent with federal enforcement of immigration laws. At the same time, the broad terms of the laws make many fear that the laws will be enforced in a discriminatory manner. While it is almost certain that all of the controversial state immigration laws will be struck down in time, their effect on immigrant culture in the United States continues to be profound.

Insituform's work for the city is surprising because the company was suspended from working for the city after an audit uncovered that eight company workers lacked the required documentation to prove that they were eligible to work in the United States. The company's ban was set to run until April 30, 2012.

A representative from the city claimed that Insituform was allowed to complete work as a subcontractor due to an administrative error and that their suspension continues to be in place. The representative stressed that Elgin remained committed to ensuring that all of the companies that the city contracts with abide by federal immigration laws. For their part, Insituform's representative stated that he did not know that they were suspended from work for the city.

There are a number of different types of unlawful employment offenses provided by the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). In Insituform's case, their violation appears to be what is known as a paperwork violation. Something about their worker's paperwork was not in order and, if identified by federal authorities, they could be subject to a fine.

This case highlights one of the most controversial areas in immigration law today. The federal government has done a great deal to stop employers from hiring unauthorized workers. Suspensions, like the one placed on Insituform by the city of Elgin, could be the next step in enforcement as more and more localities have been increasing their enforcement of federal immigration laws recently.

If you are an employer or an employee and are confused about the interplay between federal and local immigration laws, please feel free to contact the St. Louis immigration lawyers at the Hacking Law Practice, LLC.

Lopez-Amador came to the United States in 2002 as a tourist. After failing to change her status to that of a student, she applied for asylum. In her initial application, completed without the help of an attorney, Lopez-Amador claimed that her sexual orientation was the reason she had a well-founded fear of persecution. In a later application, completed with the assistance of an attorney, Lopez-Amador claimed that she was a long time member of the Democratic Action Party, who oppose Chavez's government and had been shot at by snipers when police broke up an anti-Chavez rally that she attended. She also described being stopped and questioned at checkpoints in Caracas after the rally and stated that she was harassed by a police officer because of her sexual orientation when she was holding hands with her lesbian partner while walking in a park.

After her initial asylum claim failed, Lopez-Amador moved to re-open her case. She claimed that the political situation had changed in Venezuela since the denial and presented a letter from the Organization of Venezuelans in Exile, which stated that the Venezuelan government recently compiled a list of Venezuelans who had applied for asylum in the United States and was using the list to revoke the passports of those Venezuelans. She also presented evidence showing that violence against lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual communities was on the rise in Venezuela.

These new arguments were also to no avail, as the 8th Circuit agreed with the BIA that Lopez-Amador would not likely face persecution if she was returned to Venezuela. They held that loss of her passport and being forced to sell her second condominium did not rise to the level of persecution.

In order to prove a well-founded fear of persecution, you have to prove either that you were subjected to really harsh treatment, on the level of torture. Without past persecution, an asylum applicant has to prove that persecution is likely if they return to their home country. In order to prove this, they generally must point to specific threats or a history of persecution of people from the same race, religion, nationality, social group or political opinion. If a reasonable person would not fear persecution due to the evidence presented, then the asylum claim will fail.