INS has limited intelligence on sweatshop operations and their links to alien-smuggling organizations. INS employer sanctions units have the resources to investigate only a small percentage of the leads they receive concerning the employment of illegal aliens. Furthermore, INS' relationship with DOL and state labor agencies in the field has been troubled by the latter agencies' sense of conflicting missions and their reluctance to cooperate in operations and intelligence sharing. INS employer sanctions enforcement has relied heavily on civil fines. Civil enforcement may be a less effective deterrent for sweatshop employers than for the typical mainstream employer.
Sweatshops often have a brief and clandestine existence.
Sweatshop operators may prevent the collection of civil fines by quickly moving their operations, dissolving or simply discarding shell corporations, and opening up in a new location under a new name. The deterrent effect of civil fines on sweatshop operators may be vitiated by collection difficulties and INS' failure to track delinquent collections cases. Other obstacles to effective sweatshop enforcement include INS' inability to remove most aliens found working illegally in the U.S. and the proliferation of inexpensive fraudulent documents. INS' detention and removal efforts in the interior are concentrated primarily on criminal aliens. INS removals of non-criminal aliens arrested in the worksite are so few as to have a statistically insignificant effect on the remaining work force.