ICE Increases Liability for I-9 Electronic Programs 

As a new enforcement approach, ICE has done away with an I-9 enforcement practice giving employers a period of time to correct minor or technical document errors before being fined.  This period is now gone for errors like missing employee birthdays or hire dates, and penalties for each such missing employee data range from $288 to $2,861 for each form. 

This change applies to all I-9 errors, but the Guidance reflects a bigger government focus on failures in electronic programs.  For example, a business with 100 I-9 forms containing errors could face a penalty of more than a quarter million dollars.  It is anticipated that so-called paperwork violations take on a bigger focus in the current administration.  The new Guidance turns most technical mistakes into “substantive” errors that trigger immediate penalties.  In a more recent enforcement action involving Walmart, ICE issued a $24 million proposed fine over thousands of recordkeeping violations.  An audit trail for thousands of electronic I-9s allegedly did not show the employees themselves logged into the software system and submitted a signature attesting to basic information like their name and date of birth.

This article is part of our October 2026 Newsletter. 

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