In this episode of the Immigration Insights Podcast, Greenberg Traurig attorneys Kate Kalmykov and Miriam Thompson discuss the significant shift in I-9 enforcement signaled by ICE's March 2025 guidance memo and what it means for employers across all industries.
The discussion opens with an explanation of the new guidance, which reclassifies numerous previously correctable, technical I-9 violations as substantive ones that trigger immediate fines. They walk through specific examples across each section of the Form I-9, explaining how errors that employers once assumed could be fixed during an audit may now result in penalties ranging from $288 to $2,861 per form — a figure that can grow rapidly for employers with large or multientity workforces.
Kate and Miriam also address the concept of continuing violations and the five-year statute of limitations in the I-9 context, explaining why legacy errors on forms for current employees can remain actionable for years if left uncorrected.
They talk about the heightened risks associated with electronic I-9 systems, the strict compliance obligations tied to remote document verification for E-Verify participants, and the government's increasingly expansive use of data from partner agencies to identify non-compliant employers.
The episode concludes with practical guidance on how employers can get ahead of enforcement, including conducting proactive internal audits with counsel, implementing I-9 training programs and hiring handbooks, and developing a rapid response plan for when a Notice of Inspection arrives, noting that recent audits have seen ICE decline to grant the extensions that were more commonly available in the past.