ICE: Increase in I-9 Audits

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has announced that there will be an increase in I-9 Form audits beginning this summer, which also indicates an increase in enforcement.

SHRM outlines the ICE “Toolkit”, the agency’s “three-pronged approach to worksite enforcement” as follows:

  • Compliance, via Form I-9 audits, civil fines and debarment from federal contracts.
  • Enforcement, through the criminal arrests of employers and administrative arrests of unauthorized workers.
  • Outreach, by participating in the ICE Mutual Agreement between Government and Employers program, in which ICE certifies organizations for complying with the law. As part of the program, ICE and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services provide education and training on proper hiring procedures, fraudulent document detection and use of the E-Verify employment eligibility verification system.

ICE has also updated how civil penalties are calculated, increasing the fines for I-9 violations.

Employers should ensure that I-9 forms are properly filed via E-Verify in anticipation of an investigation.

For more details, please click here.


The information included in this blog post originally appeared in an article in SHRM’s Talent Acquisition blog on May 23, 2018, written by Roy Maurer.

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