....Todd their immigration lawyer is a very skilled immigration rights advocate. Today he supposedly told Newsweek that they have "valid status" and "work documents." But Newsweek didn't actually quote him verbatim in the report I read online.

Found another article reporting statements by Pomerleau:

Todd Pomerleau, a Boston attorney representing the workers, told Boston 25 News that several of them have legal work authorization and pending immigration cases.

msn.com - New video shows the moment boston car wash workers were detained by ice

Throwing what the lawyer, and the DHS official, said, in the blender, I get "they entered without dox, surrendered to Border Patrol, claimed asylum, received work dox, and a date to state their case to an immigration judge. (SOP for undocumented people crossing the border claiming asylum) ICE scooped them up, without waiting for them to have their day in court".

The ICE teams have aggressive quotas to meet.

I'm old enough to remember the network evening news, iirc on Fridays, reporting the week's body count in 'Nam. Reading the accounts of 'Nam vets, years later, there was so much pressure to meet their "number", that every dead body was added to the body count: civilians, livestock, everything they could find, to inflate the total of "NVA/VC".

Steve