Nine months ago, in a pre-pandemic world, ICE agents raided a chicken processing plant in Mississippi, arresting 680 workers in a single day. Many of these undocumented workers will be deported, their U.S. citizen children along with them, and not a single company official has been charged. Last week, President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act, essentially compelling workers to return to meat-processing plants, which have become hot spots for COVID-19.

As Americans, we can all agree that our immigration system is broken, though we may disagree as to how to fix it. Now more than ever, it is time that we acknowledge the essential but precarious role undocumented workers play in our economy, and, specifically, call into question provisions in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act that exclude U.S. citizen children and spouses from receiving rebates if they have undocumented family members.

Signed into law on March 27, 2020, the CARES Act infused $2.2 trillion into the economy to help workers, businesses, state and local governments and a health care system hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. For individual taxpayers, the act provides one-time payments called recovery rebates, or "stimulus checks." In recent weeks, Americans earning up to $75,000 in adjusted gross income have received rebates of $1,200, plus an additional $500 per child under the age of 17. (For married couples filing jointly, the rebate is $2,400 for incomes under $150,000.) Inexplicably, many U.S. citizens who are the spouses and children of taxpayers without legal status have been excluded.

Specifically, the CARES Act prohibits rebates to anyone without a valid Social Security number, even those who have been paying federal taxes for decades. However, the CARES Act goes farther to actually penalize those with undocumented family members. Specifically, U.S. citizens who have filed jointly with an undocumented spouse—unless they are members of the military—are excluded. Even worse, U.S. citizen children who are born into families in which one parent is undocumented are also being denied rebates, even if both parents pay taxes.

These rebate prohibitions of the CARES Act, which apparently received little attention in the congressional debate, fail to reflect the reality of undocumented workers and mixed-status families in this country and in our state. Most undocumented workers—between 50% and 75%, according to the Congressional Budget Office—pay income tax using an IRS-issued individual taxpayer identification number. In Connecticut, undocumented workers pay almost $125 million in state and local taxes, even though they themselves do not qualify for public benefits.

As of 2017, the typical undocumented immigrant in the U.S. had lived here for 15 years or more; more than half Connecticut's undocumented population had lived here for 10 years or longer; and 30% for 15 years or more. Many undocumented individuals live in "mixed-status" households—i.e., households whose members have different citizenship or immigration statuses. An estimated 5.1 million to 5.9 million child citizens live in mixed-status families. Put another way, almost 80% of all children living in mixed-status households are U.S. citizens, and it is these American children who will suffer most from the CARES Act's cruel exclusions.

Just last week, a federal class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of six U.S. citizens who were denied rebate checks because they filed jointly with a spouse who had an ITIN number. The case raises a variety of constitutional challenges, based on freedom of association, equal protection, and substantive due process. Even though these arguments resonate morally, they are unlikely to prevail, in part because Congress acts well within its authority when it discriminates based on undocumented status, especially with respect to pandemic stimulus rebates.

Instead, we must look elsewhere for justice. A new federal bill, the Leave No Taxpayer Behind Act, would amend the CARES Act to include taxpayers who use ITINs; the Coronavirus Immigrant Families Protection Act goes even further, expanding both financial relief and health care for undocumented immigrants. States, municipalities and civil society groups are also trying to fill the gaps. To help California's undocumented and mixed-status population, Gov. Gavin Newsom just created a $125 million disaster relief fund, while cities from New York to Minneapolis to Austin, Texas, have made undocumented immigrants eligible for assistance and disaster relief. National and local nonprofits, including those in Connecticut, have asked individuals to donate their unneeded stimulus checks to help undocumented and mixed-status families in need.

The pandemic has exposed how much we as Americans depend on immigrant labor, and, in particular, the flexible and cheap labor that undocumented workers supply. Especially in the post-COVID-19 world, undocumented immigrants serve as essential or front-line workers: they work at all points in the food supply chain, including on farms, in food processing, in shipping and transportation, and at markets; they clean our hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, factories and supermarkets; they construct and maintain our homes, buildings and other infrastructure. As nonessential industries close, we should stop to consider how each of us have benefited personally from the labor of undocumented workers—who bus our tables, clean our hotel rooms, manicure our nails, mop our shop floors—and closer to home—landscape our lawns, paint our walls and even care for our children.

None of us are untouched by undocumented labor. As The Economist has noted in a different context, with respect to migrant workers, the social contract has always been transactional. The irregular status of undocumented workers has allowed us to deny our dependence on their labor and ignore their contributions to our way of life. It is time that we reckon with what we owe them—and their American family members—for their work.

Sheila Hayre, a member of the Connecticut Law Tribune's editorial board, is visiting associate professor of law and Waring and Carmen Partridge Faculty Fellow at Quinnipiac University in North Haven, Connecticut.