Nine undocumented immigrants lived in this house while working for a Plymouth couple who hired more than 200 undocumented immigrants to build a $74 million plumbing empire, the government says. The couple were criminally charged on Nov. 18, 2025 in federal court.
This is inside a 3-bedroom house, where nine undocumented immigrants lived while working for a Michigan plumbing company that the government says made $74 million by hiring more than 200 illegal workers.

A Michigan couple was arrested recently and charged with employing and housing hundreds of undocumented immigrants for their profitable plumbing business.

The case, which entered the public eye after a five-year investigation, drew national headlines and was described in detail on the Internal Revenue Service’s website. One reason the story caught national attention: It’s a rare instance of an employer being held accountable for allegedly hiring undocumented workers.

Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has launched a mass deportation campaign, surging federal resources across the country in operations that have overwhelmingly targeted immigrants believed to be in the country illegally – not their employers.

The Trump administration’s enforcement has increasingly targeted small business, from car washes to family farms and restaurants. But in the vast majority of instances, employers have managed to escape any criminal liability, at least for now.

Experts said accountability for employers for hiring unauthorized workers has vexed officials for decades, including both Democratic and Republican administrations.

There are several reasons why business owners are rarely charged for employing undocumented immigrants.

First, it’s a difficult case to prove. The government must show intent by demonstrating that business owners knew their employees were undocumented. (Such cases can take months or years to build, as was the case with the couple arrested on Nov. 18 in Michigan.)

Moreover, tools that would enable more scrutiny of employees’ work status aren’t widely enforced. The largest program, E-Verify, which is run by the Department of Homeland Security, is not federally required and most states don’t mandate its use for all employers, including many Republican-led states, such as Texas.

And even if those requirements became stricter, many businesses work off the books and employers can shift the burden to contractors to protect themselves from civil penalties or criminal prosecution.

As a result of rampant loopholes, high legal thresholds and limited enforcement, experts say, employers are largely shielded from criminal liability, while workers can be rounded up and deported in a matter of minutes.

“The imbalance in this whole thing is just so blatant,” Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute told USA TODAY. “It’s all consequences for workers, very little consequences for employers.”

Toothless laws and little enforcement plague workplace enforcement

For most of U.S. history, there were no consequences for business owners who hired undocumented immigrants. That changed in 1986 with the passages of the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which created civil and criminal penalties for employers who knowingly hire someone in the country illegally.

The theory behind the law was that stricter workplace enforcement would take away the main draw to the United States – employment opportunities – and, therefore, drop the rate of illegal immigration.

But the law, after heavy lobbying efforts from business interests, included the word "knowingly," forcing the government to prove intent and dramatically raising the bar for prosecution.

The result: low levels of enforcement.

From 1986 to 2019, fewer than 15 employers were prosecuted annually on immigration-related charges, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a non-partisan research organization at Syracuse University. Even fewer were convicted and faced jailtime, and most received fines.

“That’s really pathetic,” said Chishti.

Civil fines, which have previously totaled in the millions, are not enough to deter business owners from hiring people without work permits, he said.

“If you fine them a million, that’s the cost of doing business,” he said. “That’s a slap on the wrist for an employer who’s making millions off exploitable labor of undocumented people. They just write it into their business plan.”

E-Verify has seen a similar trend. First launched as a pilot program in the late 1990s, E-Verify requires employees to provide documents demonstrating their legal work status to employers. Despite efforts to reform and expand the program, it’s still only used by a small fraction of businesses nationwide.

As of June 30, 2025, just 14% of all U.S employers participated in the federal program, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Efforts to pass a federal E-Verify mandate has failed and most states don't require all employers to use the system.

The changing priorities of presidential administrations

Over the years, presidents have differed in how they handle workplace immigration enforcement.

President George W. Bush’s administration carried out several large workplace raids, including at a meatpacking plant in Iowa that involved hundreds of federal agents and led to the detention of almost 400 undocumented workers.

Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden halted workplace immigration raids in favor of scrutiny on employers and hiring practices, though the number of employers to face criminal charges remained small, research shows.

Trump, especially in his second term in office, has overseen a surge in workplace raids and sweeping immigration crackdowns nationwide – prompting criticism, economic repercussions and some backpeddling on the White House’s part.

Since January, there have been dozens of raids at construction sites, restaurants and farms. But in the vast majority of these cases, charges against employers have not followed, leading to a view of uneven enforcement where workers are detained and deported while their employers get away unscathed.

Experts noted an instance during the first Trump administration when a business owner who hired undocumented workers was let off the hook.

In 2017, Trump commuted the sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, the owner of the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant raided under the Bush administration. Rubashkin had served eight years of his 27-year sentence on financial charges after his immigration charges were dismissed.

How does a criminal case against a business owner come together?

One of the main reasons charges are rare for employers who hire undocumented immigrants is the high bar to prove intent. Federal court records in the case against the Michigan couple arrested in mid-November offer a window into how investigators build such a case against an employer.

Federal authorities allege that between January 2022 and December 2024, Moises and Raquel Orduna-Rios hired more than 200 undocumented immigrants to work at their plumbing business and housed many of them in run-down motels and houses ‒ all while they raked in $74 million in revenue.

Attempts to reach the couple and their legal representation were unsuccessful.

To build their case, federal agents kept close tabs on the company’s vans, financial transactions, communications and the undocumented workers for years, records show. Border Patrol Agents arrested several of the undocumented employees in operations over the summer, and convinced others to provide information that will likely help prosecutors prove intent.

For example, on Dec. 27, 2024, Border Patrol agents went to a tow yard in Rochester, New York, where one agent in plainclothes struck up a conversation with an employee. The man told the undercover agent that even if he was undocumented, the company would still hire him and provide him with housing, a vehicle, tools and a small crew, according to a complaint.

The yearslong investigation also uncovered messages between Moises Orduna-Rios and some of his workers in which they discussed concerns about them being undocumented and getting caught.

On Feb. 1, 2025, Orduna-Rios wrote to several of the workers in a group chat: "Gentlemen, with all the controversy that is going on, it's better to get ready, drive the speed limit, limit yourselves going to the store, only do minimal running of errands, and do not have any gatherings such as barbeques."

Nine months after sending that message, as the feds continue to scrutinize his company records, deposits and communications, Moises Orduna-Rios, the owner of the company, and his wife, who is the company treasurer, were arrested.

Contributing: Tresa Baldas, Detroit Free Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Employers rarely face charges for hiring undocumented workers. Why?

Reporting by Christopher Cann, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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