This week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) served a hundred 7-Eleven stores nationwide with notices of inspection and detained twenty-one undocumented workers. ICE will require the 7-Eleven stores to produce documents showing 7-Eleven required work authorizations from their employees. The 7-Eleven action comes a few days after the Trump administration announced that they are ending a humanitarian program, known as Temporary Protected Status, for approximately 200,000 El Salvadorans who have been allowed to live and work in the United States legally since devastating earthquakes hit their country in 2001.

The action against 7-Eleven stems from a four-year old case against a 7-Eleven franchisee in New York. While the action this week may have been a surprise to some, the Trump administration’s commitment to immigration enforcement shouldn’t be. Last year, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a new directive on immigration enforcement which focused on re-entry and entry prosecutions and mentioned 8 U.S.C. §1324, which addresses smuggling and harboring, the core statute used for worksite enforcement cases.