The amount is about 14 times more than the fines levied in all of fiscal year 2009, when four employers in the state were fined $44,728.

ICE spokesman Harold Ort in Newark said Thursday the fines are part of the agency's focus on building cases against "egregious employers,'' and increasing enforcement of immigration-related employment law.

ICE officials have declined to name the businesses.

Ort said the agency conducts "silent raids'' by checking forms that document a person's eligibility to work in the United States. The move is part of a nationwide push by ICE to create, as Ort said, "a culture of voluntary compliance among employers.''

"(Employers) need to understand that the integrity of their employment records is just as important to the federal government as the integrity of their tax files or banking records,'' he said.

Nelson Carrasquillo, the general coordinator of the Farm Workers Support Committee in New Jersey, which provides assistance to migrant farm workers, many of them undocumented, said such actions are "dealing with the symptoms, as opposed to the illness.''

Carrasquillo said the change in tactics by ICE is a matter of efficiency for the agency, which can now send a few agents to review a company's payroll records rather than send dozens to conduct a raid. The end result is the same for immigrant workers, Carrasquillo said.

"Enforcement at workplaces shouldn't be the priority at this moment,'' he said. "The priority should be for a moratorium on actions against migrant communities, including in workplaces, until immigration reform is dealt with as a whole.''

But supporters of the crackdown say this type of enforcement is overdue.

"Jobs are the key to the whole problem, so I think this is really the way to go,'' said Gayle Kesselman, co-chair of New Jersey Citizens for Immigration Control. "People come here for work, so if there are no jobs, they won't come here.''