A suburban tree-trimming company from Willow Grove, Philadelphia, was caught red-handed, employing thousands of illegal workers, and will now have to pay the largest monetary penalty ever levied in an immigration case after pleading guilty, but hey at least they had the decency to save the taxpayers a lot of money on legal fees.
The name of the company is Asplundh Tree Expert Co.and they are famous for their toyish looking orange trucks, which can be seen all across the United States roads pruning and removing trees around power lines. The company ran a massive scheme of hiring illegal workers, three Asplundh managers, including a vice president, were left with no other choice but to plead guilty last Thursday to the federal criminal charge. They have now been ordered to pay a fine of a whopping $95 million.
According to the U.S. attorney’s office in Philadelphia, Asplundh’s lower-level supervisors, knowingly employed thousands of unauthorized workers between 2010 and 2014, with top level management remaining conveniently “willfully blind”. The supervisors cynicism knew no limits, as they would rehire people who had been previously let go by the company due to their immigration status.
“This decentralized model tacitly perpetuated fraudulent hiring practices that, in turn, maximized productivity and profit,” Said one of the prosecutors in a statement. “With a motivated workforce, including unauthorized aliens willing to be relocated and respond to weather-related events around the nation, Asplundh had crews which were easily mobilized that enabled them to dominate the market.”
This malpractice has jeopardized the jobs of 30,000 workers in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, not to mention that it has tarnished the name of a 90-year-old, family-owned company, who will now have a very hard time getting more of those municipal, state and federal contracts that have maintained the company over the years.
Back in 2009 the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement audited Asplundh and found that it employed unauthorized workers. The company quickly dismissed the workers, and momentarily saved face, but soon after, unscrupulous managers hired the same workers back and some others also undocumented, taking bogus driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers, green cards and every other fraudulent forms of identification, the workers could get their hands on, according to court documents.
“We accept responsibility for the charges as outlined, and we apologize to our customers, associates and all other stakeholders for what has occurred,” Chairman and CEO Scott Asplundh said in a statement on the company’s website.
Upon first learning of the ongoing investigation against them back in 2015, the company took immediate corrective action, that included appointing a compliance specialist, trained in ID examination at every Asplundh region nation-wide, implementing the same face recognition software that ICE uses for their ID’s, among other practices.
Let’s not forget that Asplundh deployed 4,700 of their workers to assist the states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee to help them restore their power and services in the wake of Hurricane Irma.