What is the point of cruel and deadly border policies if employers could just be penalized for hiring unauthorized labor all along?

The purpose of a system is what it does, and to quote Stafford Beer, there's "no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do".

If immigration law and border policies are much more succesful at brutalizing immigrants than taking actual steps to curb illegal immigration or let alone the hiring of illegal workers, then regardless of what people claim the intentions behind those systems are, their de facto purpose is to be cruel and deadly

As it always has since the 1776 bourgeois revolution, the capitalist class largely runs the state, and many of them exploit immigrants:

1. For their cheap, compliant, and politically & legally impotent labor
2. To weaken the bargaining power of the domestic labor force and suppress its wages
3. To pit domestic labor against immigrant labor, which distracts some of the domestic working class from its real enemy: the capitalist class

Some portion of the capitalist class publicly rails against “illegal” immigrants while privately exploiting them. It’s kayfabe.

Penalize employers? The job creators who produce everything we need? Are you insane?

Because the point of cruel and deadly border control isn't to stop immigrants from "taking everyone's jobs".

they are in my region (EU country). everyone working needs to be insured, of age and permitted or else the employer gets in trouble

I was NO fan of George W Bush.

But he prosecuted the shit out of companies that hired illegal workers.

That's always been my argument, revoke citizenship and deport anyone caught hiring illegal aliens. But that's not what any of this is really about.