By contrast, not one of the Mississippi employers has yet been charged.

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Court papers filed in support of the raids made clear that the companies that ran the plants, mainly chicken-processing facilities, knew that some or many of their workers were undocumented. They hired them anyway, even though Mississippi is one of eight states that require nearly all businesses to check the immigration status of new hires by using E-Verify, an electronic system that checks workers’ documents against databases of the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.

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E-Verify is relatively useful at identifying fake documents but much less effective in spotting ones that are stolen, shared or belonging to someone recently deceased. Its real problem is that no one is much interested in lending muscle to its enforcement.

Not employers, who (in the Mississippi example) neglected to run the names of many of their undocumented workers through the system. Not states that have legislatively mandated the use of E-Verify but omitted tough penalties for politically influential businesses. And not the federal government, which has done little more than shrug at companies and individuals that hire unauthorized employees — including President Trump’s family business, which until recently had dozens on the payroll.

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Mr. Trump is one of a number of prominent Republicans who have paid lip service to expanding E-Verify, only to drop the matter once in office. As a candidate for governor of Florida, now-Sen. Rick Scott promised to require the program statewide but abandoned the pledge after he won because it would “put Florida companies at a competitive disadvantage.” In Mississippi, state lawmakers rejected Democratic proposals that employers in the state suffer tough consequences for hiring illegal workers.

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Federally, according to a database maintained by Syracuse University, just 11 individuals and no companies were prosecuted in the 12 months ending in March this year. At the same time, more than 85,000 undocumented immigrants were prosecuted for illegal entry and some 34,000 for illegal reentry.

It’s true that it can be difficult to gain convictions of businesses. It’s equally true that the country faces labor shortages in an array of industries. A more rational immigration system would put the millions of unauthorized migrants already in the country on a path to legal status and expand legal immigration to meet the market’s demands. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has been tacking in the opposite direction.