Cotton Campaign Statement on Shoffner’s Hiring Illegal Immigrants and Lying about It

“According to her own senior employee, Shoffner broke the law and lied about it. She has no business being in the U.S. Senate.”

Today, Senator Cotton and his campaign responded to a bombshell news report from a former senior employee of U.S. Senate candidate Hallie Shoffner. The former employee said that, contrary to her public statements to media, Hallie Shoffner did in fact knowingly hire illegal aliens on her farm.

“Democrat Hallie Shoffner’s own employee says she lied to Arkansas media, knowingly hired illegal immigrants, and used false W2s to avoid detection, which is blatantly illegal,” said James Arnold, Cotton campaign spokesman. “Shoffner broke the law, she put illegal immigrants ahead of Arkansans to make a profit, and then lied about it–she has no business being in the U.S. Senate.”

Speaking on the Free Arkansas podcast on September 9th, U.S. Senate candidate Hallie Shoffner said:

“Every farmer will tell you at one point, we did, or still do, employ undocumented immigrants, and it’s absolutely ridiculous that these folks are being rounded up because they’re hardworking people. They’re some of the best people we know, and honestly, we’d trade five Americans for just one of them because of how hard they work.”

“And why is it that there’s no pathway for them to work here legally when they’re good workers? We pay them well,” Shoffner said.

Following those remarks, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette asked Hallie Shoffner whether she had employed illegal aliens. Shoffner said she “only hired immigrants through the federal H-2A Temporary Agricultural Workers Program,” which allows farmers to bring foreign nationals to the United States for seasonal work, and “went through the added expense and trouble to make sure her hires were legal.”

“That’s a lie,” the former employee said.

“Me and her talked about the full-time one quite a bit, being a risk to us. She referred to him as having a ‘questionable social security number,'” the former employee told the Free Beacon. “But I realized what was going on when I had to pass out W2s in the spring, and his W2 I know had his son’s name on it, so I’m gonna say they were using his son’s social security number. The part-time [workers], their W2s had their daughters.”

“Her and her parents always talked about them not being legal,” the former employee continued. “And so I figured out how they were getting W2s.”