Name: jeff kuzmich - Migrate_ICE_9_Raids_and_I-9_Audits_08202025_5031777
Uploaded: 2026-02-26T05:54:30.955Z
Duration: 59 min 50 s
Description: jeff kuzmich - Migrate_ICE_9_Raids_and_I-9_Audits_08202025_5031777

Transcript for "jeff kuzmich - Migrate_ICE_9_Raids_and_I-9_Audits_08202025_5031777": Welcome everyone and thanks for joining us for today's event. ICE Raids and I-nine Audits. How to protect your business from costly mistakes. I'm Rob Parsons and I'll be your moderator today. So before we begin, I have just a few housekeeping notes for you. First, note the audio is going be coming through through your computer. There's no dial in, so just make sure you got your speaker volume set. And also, you may have to refresh your webinar browser at some point during the session. There's some key commands here on screen to show you how to do that, to refresh it and keep things going smoothly. So let's look at some other important features. You can download and print a copy of today's content for future reference. We have additional resources. Just go to the files and resources window at the top right of your console. It's available at any time during the event. We'll also be sending a follow-up email with links to these and a recording of the events so you can get to all these resources. Also, if you have any questions during today's webinar, you could submit them via the ask us a question window. Just write your question and click submit. We do have some folks in the back who are helping respond to your questions. We've also got a planned Q and A discussion at the end of the presentation. We may come against time, we may not be able to get to all of your questions, but we do want to know what they are so we can just create future resources to better meet your business needs. And please note, this presentation does not constitute legal advice. It's for informational purposes only. This is a very complicated and delicate subject, as we all understand. And now, I'd like to introduce today's presenter. As an attorney and technologist, John Fay brings deep applied knowledge of business immigration, I-nine, and E Verify rules and procedures. During his twenty plus year career, he has worked closely with corporations, educational institutions, and government agencies on a variety of U. S. Immigration and I-nine E Verify issues, often in connection with the use of software and case management technology. He currently serves as Director of Product Strategy for Equifax, partners with Paychex to provide i9 services within the Paychex Flex platform. John, welcome. Thank you for joining us today. Why don't you take us through the agenda of all the great information you're going to be Absolutely, and thank you very much for that introduction, Rob. I'm really excited to be speaking with all of you today because we're going to do a deep dive on the Form I-nine process in 2025 with a particular focus on how this impacts employers of all sizes in The United States. And to do that, we're going to cover three of the most significant changes that have all occurred, as it turns out, in just the last seven months. So our first topic is gonna be centered around I nine audits, inspections, and other governmental interactions, if you will, which we broadly refer to as worksite enforcement. This has been all in the news recently and will cover some of the more interesting areas that you as employers should know. For our second topic, we're going to explore how immigration policy changes, there have been quite a few, impact not only the form I nine, but also your potential obligations and liabilities. And then third, we're gonna dive into my favorite I nine topic, which is examining documentation. We're gonna play a very short game where I'll have you guess whether a document is acceptable or not, and you might be surprised by some of the answers. And for each one of these, I'll give you some legal background. I'll tell you what's changed, then I'll give you some action items to consider. Finally, as Rob mentioned, we'll end today's session with some q and a. Now, we we dive into worksite enforcement, I actually wanna tell you a a very quick story. It's a little strange. The past thirty years or so, I have had this same dream over and over again. I'm back in high school, and I show up to class. In fact, usually, I think it usually it's math class, and we're having a final exam, and somehow I've managed to miss every class during the semester, and I have no idea what's going on. Inevitably, of course, I wake up, feeling very stressed, also a little bit relieved. And the weird part is I still have this dream, even now, so many years later. And I think the reason it sticks with me is because it taps into a very real fear of being caught off guard. And if I can tie this metaphor up, into today's session, I would say that for many employers, the form I nine is the ultimate pop quiz. Right? So under the law, it was enacted way back in 1986 when when president Reagan, was in office. Employers, you all were essentially deputized. Right? Congratulations. You are now responsible for ensuring that you hire a legal workforce. And the mechanism for doing that, of course, is the form I nine. So under the law, employers have to verify both the identity and the work eligibility of all new hires using this form. The law about by the way, also established sanctions. So these are essentially penalties if you fail to do the I nine form or you fail to do it properly, or as it turns out, if you knowingly hire and employ someone who is not authorized to work. And then finally, what this law did is it gave the government authority to inspect your I nine documents, at a moment's notice. And that's why I think it really feels like a pop quiz because you have this I nine obligation homework. Right? If you will, and you're never quite sure when you're going to be tested. And I think that's what creates really a lot of stress around this process. Right? In addition to to what we've been seeing in the news. But one of the ways that we can diffuse that stress is to learn more about what happens when the government shows up, either for a form I nine audit or for some other reason. So if we look at the enforcement landscape, the first thing I wanna do here is to define the primary government agency who may visit you, and this is Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They're they're known more familiarly by their acronym ICE. They are a federal agency responsible for enforcing the immigration laws. Within ICE, there is a division or unit called Homeland Security Investigations or HSI, and those are the ones who actually conduct worksite enforcement actions and form I nine inspections. So, you know, you might hear ICE, sometimes you might hear HSI, whether it's in the news or elsewhere, when it comes to this topic, but for our purposes, they really are interchangeable. Now in today's session, we're gonna focus on two different types of ICE encounters that may occur at the workplace. So on the left hand side of this slide, we have the form I nine inspection, which I would say, by the way, is by far the most common and prevalent type of interaction that you as an employer might encounter. We're actually gonna spend several minutes talking about the I nine inspection process. But in a nutshell, this is when ICE serves you a notice, which demands that you produce the I nines that you're supposed to be completing for inspection to see if you're in compliance with the law. Meanwhile, on the other side of the slide, a worksite enforcement action is which is unofficially, you'll hear this in the in the in the in the news as a raid. This is when ICE agents show up without warning as part of an investigation, typically into whether an employer is knowingly hiring or continuing to employ unauthorized workers. These are typically large scale operations. You know, they often involve dozens of armed agents. They've got search and seizure warrants. Sometimes they've got helicopters flying above. Other government agencies are also present. And depending upon the actual investigation, ICE might seize documents, computers, cell phones. They will often arrest, individuals who are unauthorized or who they believe to be unauthorized. They'll take them away for deportation, even prosecution. And as you can imagine, this type of operation is very expensive, involves a lot of planning on the part of the government. And I mention that only because while these have definitely been increasing this year, they will always be limited by government resources, and I would say reserved primarily for instances when ICE suspects that an employer is knowingly hiring or continuing to employ unauthorized workers. I nine audits on the other hand, which we're gonna spend more time on, are much less expensive for ICE because it is administrative process. Right? They just show up. They ask for your I nines. So let's, let's dive into that process a little bit more. And one of the most common questions that I've received over the the twenty five or so years I've been doing this is how does an ICE I nine inspection actually begin? So under their guidelines, ICE can serve you as an employer with a notice of inspection. This is usually in person, but it can also be done by certified mail. In this notice, it's a standardized template. It comes on ice letterhead. And essentially what it does is it informs you that they have scheduled an inspection of your, I nines, typically for a particular work site, or though sometimes it could be multiple work sites. And by law, you get three business days to produce these I nines. Now, in some cases, you may be able to get an extension, but that is not always guaranteed. So I always like to say, think of it as those just three federal business days to turn over your I nines. And you might be thinking, okay. Fine. I get it. But what if I'm a busy retail store? What if I'm a staffing organization? I'm a restaurant, and we have a lot of turnover. Right? We have a lot of potential I nines. What does the scope look like? And the answer to that, really is it depends. So in many instances, we see ICE asking I nines for all of your current, so that would be your, you know, your active, employees. Sometimes though, they'll limit the inspection by indicating they only want I nines for employees hired during, let's say, the last year. Right? They're just kinda checking to see how you're doing. In some instances, they'll actually expand it, and they'll say, we wanna see all of your active employees. We want even wanna see I nines for terminated employees for whom you are still required to retain those documents. But it's also important to know that ICE can request additional employer related information, and you can see all of that there on the right hand side of your screen. Typically, comes in the form of an administrative subpoena, although sometimes we've seen it even in a more casual document that's attached to the notice of inspection. And as you're looking at the screen, I think this actually provides one of our first action oriented takeaways for today. So as employers, we need to be prepared to produce and turn over not only the I nines, but all of this other documentation there on the screen. Right? And so if you're not if you're sitting there saying, gee, I don't know how we're gonna get this information or I don't know where it lives. Now is a great time to plan for that. Right? Figure out what the process would look like, who do you need to contact, and this and then most importantly, I would say, document it for future use. You're gonna hear this theme throughout my presentation today. We wanna plan. Right? And to get rid of this potential nightmare, we wanna plan for what this looks like in the event that the government shows up. So now if you're thinking, okay, that's fine. But, you know, how how often do audits really happen? Right? Is this something that we really need to be concerned about? Well, let's talk about that. So in 2025, we have seen a dramatic uptick in the number of worksite investigations as part of the administration's focus on immigration enforcement. Remember, the form I nine is technically an immigration form. You may have heard about some of this in the news, but ICE has been visiting employers in multiple cities, across The United States. Sometimes these are happening in the form of what we refer to as a knock and talk. This is where an officer might just simply show up at a worksite, might ask questions about, you know, your workforce, they might ask whether or not you're using independent contractors. They're essentially looking, right, for information that might lead to investigation. We are seeing form I nine notices of inspection quite a bit. In in May, they issued over a 150 businesses in the DC area, DC Metro Area. Many of them were restaurants and and hospitality, and they they tend to do these kind of in waves. So we we do see these inspections kind of cropping up at different parts of the country. And then and course, we've also seen some of these much larger full blown raids involving those those multiple government agencies. I actually have a case that I'm gonna walk you through so you can see how that happens. In addition, by the way, on this slide, you'll see a link, because you you can download it. It's a link to the ICE newsroom. They are very active on this site. It's a website. They they post all different types of reports of different enforcement actions, and they also occasionally report on fines. So in April, we learned of three companies who were fined $8,000,000 in total between the three of them for form I nine violations. And what's especially striking really was the scale, right? Mean, so two of the companies had, I think, a 100% error rate, the third wasn't far behind. All three of them also had issues with unauthorized employment, and that has certainly been a really big focus, of the administration and of ICE, this year. And finally, before we leave this kind of like hot topic slide, I wanna I want you to all to keep in mind on the right hand side here that as of January year, the fines for I nine paperwork violations had an inflationary increase. So they are now $281 to $2,789 per form with one or more violation. So, you can imagine, right, if you have a variety of I nines, and maybe maybe they have issues, the fines can really add up very quickly in the event of an administrative inspection. So that's kind of our hot topic. So now that we understand or at least appreciate, what ICE is doing at a high level, I wanted to walk you through a real life investigation that occurred this year in May in a small restaurant in San Diego because, I think it really gives us kind of a play by play look at how these investigations can unfold and what employers can do now to prepare. So we'll walk through this pretty quickly. Our story begins actually in November 2020, so several years ago, when ICE received a tip alleging that this restaurant was hiring undocumented workers. But in addition to that, the the tip also included other information. So it was saying that these workers, you know, were being forced to work twelve hour shifts. The manager was being verbally abusive. None of this, by the way, was necessarily proved, but this was the tip. Right? This is an anonymous tip. And so, you know, the government took that information, but they didn't do anything with it at the time. Now let's fast forward to January when ICE receives a second anonymous tip, again, about the same restaurant, which then prompts them to conduct a form I nine inspection. Right? So then it's exactly as we described. They they serve the the restaurant. They get three business days. The restaurant had an attorney, and they turned over about 40 I nines, including copies of documents, which is very common. Right? Employers can choose to keep copies of documents. But when the government reviewed them, they discovered more than half of them had fraudulent green cards. And what's interesting about it is that they revealed the government revealed publicly what was wrong with these documents. So some of them showed obvious signs of being fake. Right? The the fonts were inconsistent. The artwork was lacking detail. There were poor quality photographs. And then because, of course, you know, ICE is the government. Right? So they they they have access to their databases. They looked up the names and dates of birth that were on these cards, and they found actually real immigration records for many of these individuals, which indicated that they were not authorized to work. They they even found matching photos from their California driver's licenses suggesting that they had just taken, you know, whatever driver's license photo they had and then used it on these fake green cards. So based on the I nines and these documents, the agents developed a theory. So they thought, okay. Based on all of what we're seeing here, we think this employer may be knowingly hiring and continuing to employ unauthorized workers. Based on the earlier tip, they might be doing so to pay them lower wages. They might also be exploiting the workers in the process by disregarding labor laws. And again, this is just a theory, but the reason the theory is important is that the agent then used that to request a search warrant from a judge. So it is the judicial warrant. And then all of a sudden they can request all kinds of things, personnel files, time cards, bank account information, work schedules, recruiting information, photographs of the employees. And then finally, the last stage of this investigation was surveillance, of the restaurant over several, days. So they observed workers coming and going. They identified them based on their I nine photos, and then ultimately figured out the best time to conduct their operation, which was right before the dinner rush, which is definitely not the best time for the restaurant, because it it created this this huge spectacle, which which was in the news. So now I don't share the story to scare anyone, but really just to show how enforcement can play out in the real world. This this wasn't a theoretical scenario. It started with a tip. It turned into an I nine inspection. And because of the way the employer had handled their hiring, their documentation, their employer relations, it escalated very fast. And the key thing I think to take away from all this is that once that ball starts rolling, it's not just about your I nines anymore. Right? It's about how ready your organization is. How clearly, excuse me, you've defined your internal roles. How well you've documented your protocols. How quickly you can respond to that notice of inspection or the warrant, when it shows up. That's why now we're going to introduce, our next action item, which is building a worksite enforcement action plan because obviously the most effective way to reduce risk is to prepare before anything happens. So what I have here on this slide are really just some some components. I wanna emphasize this is always a good idea to do in connection with counsel. Every organization is different. Every every organization has different risk profiles. Not all of this will be applicable to you, but I wanted to at least give you an idea of the types of things that you can see in these, in these plans. And the first thing that we usually see is a response team. So in other words, you're at your organization, government shows up, who's going to be involved and what's their role going to be? So, you know, the response team typically involves, you know, a front desk or receptionist at each one of your work locations. Right? Because these are the people that are most likely gonna interact with the government. It usually involves legal counsel. This can be inside or or external counsel who can advise on immigration or employment related matters. This might involve someone from a senior HR leadership perspective. Or if you're a really small organization, you know, it might be just, you know, that very small core group of teams. And then once you've identified your response team, then typically we see these plans go through a response protocol. So for example, perhaps the receptionist will inquire about the purpose of the visit. There might be a rule to say, well, we should always confirm the identity of the government agents if they're, you know, assuming they're willing to provide that information and they should. That's often really a critical piece actually, which agency is showing up and why are they there? As part of that protocol, you might also, you know, inform the receptionist that they're not authorized to give consent to enter private areas of the worksite or respond to questions unless it's actually, you know, specified in a in a judicial warrant. So, you know, these are all the types of things that you consider. We often tend to see other information, like, you know, emphasizing that people should remain calm and professional, that, you know, regardless of the type of investigation, the response team members should be as cooperative as possible while also working to ensure that the investigation does not exceed the scope of the warrant or the subpoena or whatever has been presented. And then lastly, having defined steps if ICE shows up with a form I nine notice of inspection. Remember, this is the most common one, and so this is where we see generally the most attention from employers. I nine audits, I would say, can be very costly for employers in in many ways, but one of the ways is if an employer is not able to produce those I nines within the required time frame. And so it's really critical that you know and understand where your I nines are stored, how you can retrieve them, the steps for delivering them to the government. Right? I mean, all of those things. This is also a great opportunity for you, again, ideally working with counsel, to establish some baseline rules about how you will interact with the government, you know, when they show up and when they request these types of I nines. For example, we've seen situations where employers have turned over their I nines right away. Right? The agent shows up, it's kind of intimidating, and they just turn them over. They're essentially waiving their three day requirement, which is, you know, typically not a good idea. You should you you should take, you know, your three days or whatever they'll give you. Or some, employers have inadvertently expanded the scope of the audit by turning over I nines that were not requested. Oh, I see you're here for this location. You know, I've got another store down the block. You want those too? I mean, I know it sounds silly, but but we've actually seen employers do this. And so these are the things that you can avoid with a carefully designed plan. Now the last I nine audit preparedness, component that I want you to be aware of is for all of you out there who are using, electronic, I nines to, electronic I nine systems or software to complete your I nines. And the first thing to note here is that it's critical that you identify where all of your electronic or sometimes they're paper scanned into electronic I nines may live. Because remember, when you receive a notice of inspection from from ICE, they might be asking for I nines that could be in paper, electronic, you know, scanned somewhere to a hard drive. So it's very important to understand where those I nines live in your organization, and ideally to move them to a central place that complies with the rules for for storing electronic I nine documents. Then once you have a good sense of where those I nines are located, I think the next thing to figure out is how you're going to obtain and deliver them to ICE. So again, just have it, as part of your playbook. And the last point I want to make here is that under the regulations, the government can also request a live demonstration of electronic I nine solution so they can evaluate it for compliance. So again, for own little planning purpose, you might designate a team member at your organization who will plan to participate in the demo, help answer questions, show how you're using it, and all of those sorts of things. So before we we we move on, let's do a quick review. In order to prepare for a form a nine inspection, it's helpful to have a plan in place, for how you'll assemble the requested I nines and supporting documents. You're using electronic systems that you should be aware of the systems involved and have a plan in place for delivery and related, of of the I-9s and the related system information. But there's actually one more critical piece that many employers will do to help mitigate risk, and that is to conduct a Form I-nine self audit before the government shows up. I'm going to tell you a little bit about that in a minute, but first I'm going to turn it back to Rob to launch an audience poll on this very topic. Thank you, John. It's so much great information there and a lot of great questions are coming in. I appreciate the interactions there. A lot of great points. So how many of you out there have performed an I-nine self audit in the past year. As we heard from John, there's a variety of steps we need to go through. We need to understand where the I-9s are, how we're storing them, how are we going to produce them, how are we going to deliver them, what is our processes, what are our procedures, Can we demonstrate how we're doing this live? So I'd be really interested. Have you performed an I-nine self audit in the past year? It seems to me this would be, John, a great way to really know where you stand. Just give yourself little pressure test, little self check, make sure your ducks are in order and your ducks are in a row. Absolutely. Let's see what we've got here. How have we got on our poll? What have we got for I-nine audit in the past year? Wow, that's a really good number have done it, John. I really like to see that, but still, the majority, of our attendees have not performed an I-nine self audit. Yeah, and it's very interesting over time to look at this. So if we had conducted this webinar, let's say like two or three years ago, I think that yes number would have been even lower. But this year in particular, we've just been seeing such an interest in the self audit process. So yeah, I'm also very encouraged by that. But if you're in that group that that that hasn't done it yet, don't worry because we're actually going to highlight some of those things, right now. And so, you know, regardless of whether or not you you've done a self audit in the past, I would say it's widely considered to be one of the most, cost effective methods for reducing your I nine related risk. Right? Because it's not enough to be prepared for ICE, you know, to show up and and and to know what to say and what to deliver. That's certainly part of it. But you also have to remember that your I nines are gonna be under the microscope in the event of inspection. They're gonna be looking for missing I nines, missing reverifications, errors and omissions on your I nine. And in each one of those instances, you run the risk of ICE finding a violation. Remember, that's the whole idea behind employer sanctions. Sure. They wanna make sure you're not hiring and employing unauthorized workers, but they also want to make sure that you're following the correct process. And when you do an I nine improperly or you do it late or you don't do them at all, that's a failure in process, and that's when you can, receive an administrative fine. Now the good news is that under the law, you can correct, or otherwise remediate many of these issues long before ICE shows up, and in doing so, you can help demonstrate good faith. Right? I mean, you're you're showing that, hey, we're we're doing our jobs. We recognize this is our obligation, and we're trying to fix things, regardless of how they happened. Right? And so that's, you know, very, very important. So what I've done here is to outline the four pillars of what I think are, success for conducting a self audit. We obviously don't have time to go through these in any level of detail, but I'm gonna quickly review the main points here. So the first one is to locate the I nines that you're going to assess and also define your own self audit scope. So some organizations will maybe just do a spot audit. They just wanna see, okay, how bad can this be? Others, and I think this is a better practice, is just they'll just do all of their I nines. Right? Because you never know where ICE is gonna show up, what they're gonna ask for, so it's better to do that full scale review. But regardless, you need to make that decision. The second step is to figure out your correction process. And here it's important to note that the government has provided some general guidelines on how to make corrections. I've included a link to that guidance here on this slide, but there are a lot of gray areas, and I I think it's important to work ideally with immigration counsel to figure out what that process is gonna look like. Our third step is prioritization. And this is arguably, I would say, the most important factor because again, you know, if ICE shows up, they're going to potentially find you for the most serious violations, the no I nines, the mystery verifications, I nines that don't have you have incorrect documents. So you wanna make sure that you fix those types of issues first. You might have other issues as well, but figuring out which ones are most serious can generally help you reduce your liability. And then finally, when you're mapping out your internal and an audit process, I would include timelines and communication strategy. Right? I mean, as part of this process, you're gonna be asking employees to potentially bring in documents again, fix mistakes, you wanna make sure that they understand what's going on. Make sure that they understand you're not singling them out because you wanna always wanna make sure that you're avoiding any potential complaints, that that that could that could arise relating to unfair employment practices. We always have to think of I nines kind of in two, really, two different competing things. We have enforcement, but then we also have anti discrimination provisions in the law, and so we need to really serve both of those strategies. So that's the Self I-nine audit in a nutshell, and I think while the process itself is critical for reducing risk, let's not forget that the root cause of many I-nine issues, especially the more complex ones, often lies in immigration. But before we dive into this year's biggest changes in immigration, I wanna take a quick step back and look at the broader picture because, you know, I nine compliance, for non citizens really isn't just about one visa or one category. It's about navigating the many different paths. So we're gonna go through this really quickly, a speed round if you will. And so on the left there, first, have employer sponsored pathways. So you might be familiar with these like h one b visas, for example. But there's it is a whole alphabet soup of them. These are cases where you as an employer are playing a direct role in petitioning for a foreign worker. And from an I nine perspective, some of these can be tricky, but generally, find that organizations are fairly good at that because you're involved in the immigration process. You already know what's going on with this individual. The second one in the middle there is humanitarian based categories, and these present a lot of potential complexity. Work authorization here is often discretionary. It's time limited. It's policy dependent. And so we're gonna spend a little bit of time on that in just a minute. And then finally, have other pathways. These these could be things like foreign students, exchange visitors, green card applicants, and other special case scenarios where you may or may not be involved as an employer. Now, all three of these can show up in your I-nine process, but today we're going to focus quickly on that second category, that humanitarian based work authorization, because that's where we've seen the most significant changes this year, and frankly, of the greatest compliance challenges. So let's dive right in here. And the first thing I want to draw your attention to is in the left hand side of the slide, we're going to talk about humanitarian parole. So this is a discretionary program. It allows noncitizens to enter, reside, and in many cases work in The United States for urgent humanitarian reasons. So during the past few years, the government launched country specific humanitarian parole programs. You know, some of them were we had some in Afghanistan, Ukraine, but then we also had programs for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, who who are all experiencing dangerous conditions in their home countries. And so you might hear this described by its acronym CHNV. However, here's the update. The government this year has ended that process for these countries. Now it's been subject to back and forth litigation, but as it currently stands, the Supreme Court is allowing the government to revoke the humanitarian parole and the underlying work authorization for these CHNB individuals, some of whom may be employed at your businesses, which we'll talk about in a minute. But before we do, I want to shift to the other immigration benefit, which has been in flux this year, and that is called Temporary Protected Status or TPS for short. TPS has actually been around for many years since way back in 1990, and the way it works is it's provided to nationals of very specifically designated countries that are experiencing problems. Sometimes it's natural disasters, sometimes it could be war, it could be economic issues, whatever it is, it makes it difficult for these individuals to return home. However, once again, this year we have seen a steady stream of announcements from the government that is either terminating or in some cases shortening TPS for several countries as you can read here on your screen. Now, most notably, I would say there's been a lot of back and forth litigation with Venezuela and Haiti, but even other countries have been impacted as well. So let's put this all in perspective. Right? So these immigration policy changes have impacted in total a little over a million, workers, that are actually in one of these programs. So how does this impact employers? Well, as these programs end, impacted employees will generally see one of two things happen. Either their work authorization is formally revoked, and that's what we've been seeing with the CHNB people, or with TPS, they just they can't extend anymore. So their their work permit expires. They can't get an extension. Either way, they can't work. And so if you have individuals, that are currently on your payroll in one of these statuses, that will obviously not only impact your workforce, but it'll also impact your compliance obligations. So let's, now that we have that quick background, one of the more common questions that I get, and I'm sure it's coming in right now, is okay, that's fine, we understand that, but how can I tell whether an employee is in one of these statuses? And the short answer is, unfortunately, you may not always be able to do so conclusively without some other information, but I do think it is helpful to understand the documentation that may be presented. So the first thing to look for, if you are like saying, do we have anybody in these potentially in these statuses, is to look for whether or not you've accepted an employment authorization document, which is also known as an EAD. So you can see an image of it there on your screen. So if you're a TPS or humanitarian parole beneficiary, you generally must apply for and receive an EAD if you want to work in The United States. And as it turns out, right there on this EAD, there's a thing called a category or a category code. In each one of those, that actually indicates the basis for that EAD. So if you see one that says C 11, that's humanitarian parole. If you see one that says A 12 or C 19, that's temporary protected status. So again, it's information you may not know, but it can be helpful to help identify those individuals. Now, I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on this because obviously this could take a whole hour by itself, but I think just knowing or having a general understanding of what these documents look like, how to recognize those category codes can again help you identify individuals, and who might be affected by these policy changes. So now that we've walked through some of that documentation, let's talk quickly about something else which is brand new, and that is how E Verify is playing a role here. So employers enrolling Verify, as you may as you may know, this is a system that, where you take I nine information, you feed it into the E Verify system, and it tells you whether or not individual based on that information is authorized to work in The United States. So in late June, the government released a new tool for participating employers to help identify those employees with revoked EADs. It's called the E Verify status change report. And the way it works is if you're an E Verify participant, you can run this report or if you, or you can ask your E Verify provider to do so if you have a E Verify provider, and it will list any employees that you have run through the E Verify system who had presented an EAD, which has now been revoked. But that's not the end of the story. Right? So then you have this information, and then you have to reverify these employees immediately according to the government guidance, to see if they have a new basis for work authorization and to complete the process within a reasonable period of time. So this is a brand new process. It's somewhat novel use of eVerify, frankly, and the government has indicated that they're going to continually update the status report with additional revocations as they occur. So with all of that in mind, I've got one more slide on this immigration policy updates, and this is really how to how to manage all this. Right? I know I just threw a lot at you there, but my first suggestion is to know your employee population. And the best way to do that, again, for these programs is to review those EAD category codes in your document copies if you've retained them. So here I've listed again some of those codes you may wish to pay attention to. We already talked about TPS, we talked about humanitarian parole. I've also listed DACA. This is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. They also refer to it as Dreamers. This program has been under litigation for several years, and so I think it's just a good thing to know. And then once you have those in mind, I would recommend staying on top of your reverification obligations that may arise due to any of these policy changes. In some instances, your employees may be unable to continue working based on a change to one of these programs, but as a general rule, you should always give them the opportunity to present any acceptable document in the event that they've had a change in immigration status. In many instances, these individuals, are in the asylee or asylum process. Some of them are able to, obtain green cards. So it's always a good idea, and it's a requirement of the law, to let them choose whatever documents they can. And then finally, I do highly recommend, I've mentioned it a few times, but this area in particular, working with an immigration attorney when you're reviewing these types of things. This is a highly complex, dynamic area, and we certainly anticipate there may be additional changes that are coming down the pikes to come. Alright. So, so far, we've talked about enforcement. We've talked about what's happening in the field, and we've looked at the policy changes that are shifting beneath us. Now we're turning to the third pillar of our, new I nine world, which is examining documentation. So this is the part of the I nine process that happens in real time, you know, often under pressure, I think it's becoming more complex than ever. So in this next section, we're gonna look at how to balance, accuracy with fairness and what you can do to strengthen your ability to detect potential fraudulent documents or potential documents which are simply not acceptable. So in order to do that, I want to talk about, the Delicate Balancing Act, as we refer to it, and this is really kind of the heart of the I nine review process. On the one hand, you've got a legal responsibility to examine documents to determine whether they reasonably appear to be genuine and they relate to the employee that's in front of you. On the other hand, you also have a legal obligation not to go too far, right, not to question certain document types more closely than other, not to request specific documents, right, which is easier said than done, right, when you realize that there are many tricky rules and gotchas when it comes to I nine documentation. And to illustrate that, we are gonna play one of my favorite games. It's called, is this acceptable? It is a pop quiz because we're actually gonna ask all of you to participate, but the good news is there are no failing grades here. This is all about education and learning. Now, before we get started, I've got a couple of warm up questions that I'm going to ask Rob here, to answer, and then we'll get to our three question quiz. So, Rob, imagine, new hire shows up to work and presents to you a Social Security card that looks perfectly fine, but you notice it's got this language at the top of the card which states it's valid for work only with DHS authorization. Now I'm going to make this a little more interesting. You happen to know this person is authorized to work, right? Maybe you sponsored them for an H1B visa, you know they're good, but would you accept this document for Form I purposes? Well, I want to say yes, John. It's a social security guard. They've to be able to pay their taxes. It's all part of the system. We're managing things in a very, above board manner. Thank you for the hint that I know this person. It looks like formal, government type, so I will vote yes on this one. And that is a perfectly reasonable response. However, in this case, it is not the correct response. So as it turns out, don't feel bad, It's a common mistake. As it turns out, under the form I nine requirements, it specifically states that you as an employer can only accept an unrestricted Social Security card. And for purposes of unrestricted, it means it cannot have any bearings on it, such as valid for work with DHS authorization. There can be situations where somebody is work authorized, maybe they lose that work authorization, at some point, so they don't they don't want employers to accept that. But a very, very, very common mistake. Next one here, I got one more for you. So an employee shows up, let's say they have an old salmon colored resident alien card. They call it a green card. The photo on the document looks like the individual, but it was clearly taken many years ago. You also noticed that it does not have an expiration date. How about this one, Rob? You gonna take it? Yeah. I'm going to I don't like that it doesn't have an expiration date. Like, it's it's it's there. It's it seems like, I'm going back to your balancing act. Yeah, it seems acceptable. I don't want to push too hard, but I feel like, something like this, a resident alien would have an expiration date that you've got to resubmit. So I will say, no, I will not accept this one. I'm sorry to say Rob that this one actually is acceptable. Oh, for two. Oh, for two. It's okay. It's alright. So as it turns out, the government has stated that resident alien cards that were issued from January 1977 to August 1989 did not contain an expiration date and are valid indefinitely. So this is acceptable as long as it reasonably appears to be genuine and relates to the person presented it. So if so if Rosa Maria looks nothing like this now in the document and you really can't tell, then as an employer, you would be within your rights to request a different document. But otherwise, this is acceptable. Alright. So now we're gonna ask all of you to participate. I'm gonna show you all a document. I'll describe it, and then we're gonna launch a poll where you can indicate your responses. So our first one here is a Parks and Recreation card. It's issued by the city of Portland. It has the person's photograph. It has their name, even their title, and we'll imagine, by the way, that they also presented a valid unrestricted social security card. So my question is whether this document, this parks and recreations card, is acceptable, and you obviously have two different responses. And while you're looking at this, you know, I would note that this was actually part of an actual Department of Justice hotline call. So, we spoke with a Department of Justice official many years ago, They said they got a call, an employer received something very similar to this. They were unsure what to do with it, which is understandable. They contacted the DOJ, and, they provided a response. Now the question is, are you all able to guess which response that was? I will remind you, let's hope that you're better than me, John. Let's hope that you're better than me. Yes, shall see. And I will remind everybody this will be a list B document. All right, so, 12.1% are saying, yes, this is good. And the vast majority, almost 90% are saying no. As it turns out, the the yeses were correct. So this is actually an acceptable document because it is an ID card issued by a federal state, in this case state, or local government agency, and it contains a photograph. So if you look at their list of acceptable documents, that is list b number two. It always gets everybody. So for those 12.1%, congratulations. That is impressive. Alright. Let's go to our next one. This is a digital or sometimes referred to as a mobile driver's license. It's being increasingly issued by a variety of states. So you imagine employee shows up and they have on their phone this driver's license, right? It's not a physical card, it's just on their phone, is this acceptable? Rob, have you ever seen any one of these? I have not. The closest I saw was back when New York had required some of the vaccination cards. So we had proof of vaccination on our phones, but I don't think I've ever seen a license or any kind of ID like this on the phone. Everything seems to be hard copy with barcodes and it's scannable. Right. This seems very suspect to me, John. Okay. Okay. Well, don't don't necessarily be influenced by Rob here, but let's see what we got. Alright. So oh, it's a little bit more even. So now we're saying 38.5 say yes. Still a majority are saying no, and at this time it is no. So, the no's have have have the win here. And and the reason for that, by the way, we spoke to the government, about it, And basically, what they said is they're just not sure yet of all the different security standards that have the the variety of states that have implemented these. And so they they don't have a standard yet, and so they're not a 100% sure they want to accept it. So right now, for a driver's license, it needs to be a physical document. Alright. We got one more for you all, and this one I'm actually gonna give to you. This I'm gonna tell you, this is not acceptable. But can anyone tell me why, why it's not acceptable? I'll let you look at it for just a few seconds here. It's an Arizona driver's license. It expires in 2039. You can see some restrictions there on it. So let's, you know, just kind of take a mental note of it. And then we're ready on this one. Yeah. Zoom in on Yeah. This Something's wrong. And then when we're ready, we can, we can launch our, our poll and get our four options. Alright. So here are your options. One is that expiration date, that 2039, too far in the future. One is you may have noticed that the bearing not valid for federal purposes. Maybe that's the reason why. Maybe that photo, right? Was that photo too big, too large? I mean, I don't if you've seen an Arizona driver's license, but just, you know, let us know. Or maybe you just think, you know, that idea was fraudulent. That's a fraudulent document. This was also a real case. So, this was this was a real instance that happened just this year and we're seeing all different kinds of potential fraud in the I-nine space. You know, lot of times it's bad actors that want to get access to financial services and a variety of other things. So, it's really the Wild West out there. And it's really interesting, John, just all the different forms of identification that we've never seen before. You know, you'd mentioned Arizona license. I've never seen an Arizona license. I would not know if that was wrong or not. All right, so we have here, it looks like most people chose the second one, the ID not valid for federal purposes, But coming in a close second is the ID appears to be fraudulent. And as it turns out, that was the answer. So, actually, if we can go back to that slide really quickly, the reason it is fraudulent, if you look at it, it says not not for federal indentification, not identification. So it was actually a simple spelling mistake. And the reason I use this not not to just trick everybody here, but it's because this again was a real case and it illustrates sometimes fraudulent documents are just misspellings. Right? I mean, these are document shops are producing these, but they aren't necessarily producing them to quality. By the way, if this did say what it should say, which is not for federal identification, it is still valid for form on nine purposes. It just means you can't use it to board a plane and, and and, go into certain federal buildings, but for form on nine purposes, it is acceptable. Alright, so thank you all very much for playing along. And to summarize this section, I'll leave you with this. I love this quote because it really gets to the heart of everything that we've been talking about, right? I mean, the process of reviewing documents isn't just about what's in front of your eyes. It's about how well trained you are, how consistent your processes are, how well prepared your organization is. Because when it comes to I nines, I would say your policies, training, and your awareness is what sharpens your vision. And so as we we wrap up here, I wanna leave you with really three core strategies for strengthening your I nine documentation. So it's all about education, educating your team, keeping up to date with form I nine policies, immigration updates, making sure you understand how to spot questionable documents. Right? Especially involve of of these evolving fraud trends. Train regularly. Right? I nine education isn't a one and done process. Keep your reviewers sharp, through frequent refreshers, not just on compliance, but also just on consistency, and discrimination avoidance. And third, don't be afraid to use support. Right? For some organizations, especially those with limited internal bandwidth or just higher risk profiles, it may make sense to work with trained I nine completers or authorized representatives who specialize in this process. This is an available service that is offered in Paychex Flex. And Rob, you know, with that, maybe I'd like to hand it back over to you to share some more specifics on on this last point with our audience. Thank you, John, and once again, you for just so much tremendous information. I think everybody's going to appreciate the replay and going through again and digesting it all because it really is a complex topic and you laid it out so clearly and so cleanly. I very much appreciate you there. Let's dive into a quick moment into Paychex Flex before we get into some Q and A. For those of you who are Paychex customers and clients, Paychex Flex offers a Form I-nine task as part of the whole new hire process. There's even an option for remote form i-nine completion for a small fee available through our partnership with Equifax. So those of you who are existing Paychex clients, you already have access to all of this right within your Flex platform. Now, if you're a Paychex client with an HR business partner, we encourage you to reach out to them for support. If you're currently a Paychex client and want to learn more about how a dedicated HR VP can help address these concerns, we encourage you to click yes on the next poll. Speak with one of our paychecks experts. You can also click yes if you're a small business owner or an HR department of one who's juggling payroll, HR compliance tasks on your own and would like to explore how Paychex and Paychex Flex could provide advantages like this for your business. So this poll is going come up. Just a very quick poll, would you like to speak with a Paychex professional about getting dedicated HR compliance support to help your business navigate these changes? Or alternatively, are you interested in getting a platform that has this kind of functionality built right in? As we saw, it's complicated, there's a lot going on, but the entire documentation process, John, and having to be able to produce it within three days, and I don't know how many companies can find records like that in three days and produce them instantly. So if don't have this kind of support, I would highly, highly recommend that. So with that, let's get to some Q and A and we had a ton of questions come in, John. I know we're not going be able to get to all of them. Some of them are very specific. There were some general ones and there was in particular multiple people had asked this and there was a couple flavors of it. One was what are the chances that a small company can get audited by ICE And another one was what is our chance to find a fully remote company going to get audited by ICE? You know and I know you've had your example triggers the audit. Are there other things? Guess, just as a small company fly under the radar? You know, it's very interesting and I have gotten this question quite a bit. What I would say is that the chances are actually higher than average that the small organization gets impacted. And the reason I say that is because we have noticed this year in particular that audits have been disproportionately affecting small businesses. Part of that has to do with, by the way, the fact that it's just simply easier for the government to audit a small business because there are fewer I n i's. Right? And at the end of the day, they have to look through all these documents. And so in many instances, it makes sense for them to go after the small organization. And ICE, you know, obviously knows that. In terms of what, you know, can potentially trigger an audit, you know, I think it can be, you know, many things, right? It can be that anonymous tip like we saw in the sample case. It can be a referral from another government agency. It can be because you're in a sensitive or high risk industry. And I would put, by the way, fully remote as a potential for that because, again, the government is concerned about whether or not that process was being done correctly, whether or not they were actually meeting with the employee, reviewing documents, and and going through all the required steps. So, you know, again, it it really is a lot of different possibilities. We've seen a little bit of each of those this year. That's really interesting because it almost is converse to what I would have thought, but yeah, your explanation makes complete and total sense there. This is from Felicia, and this is, should we keep a copy of the documents that employees show us? I've heard mixed things. Yes. And and for good reason. So the general rule is that keeping copies of those documents, you know, passport, social security card, whatever the document is an optional thing. However, I would say that many employers have been choosing to to keep them because in the event of an audit, it actually enables you to correct certain mistakes or omissions on the form based on the copy. Right? And so I think that's very helpful. There's also situations for organizations that are using E Verify, for example, where you're already required, to keep certain document copies. If you're using the what they refer to as the alternative procedure for remotely examining documents, you have to keep all copies. And so sometimes employers are like, oh my God, it's so hard to figure out what, you know, so let me just do it all across the board. Right? So that we do see that a lot, but I would say that there are also some organizations, you know, that maybe they're concerned about making copies consistently, you know, maybe they feel like the copies would increase their risk. So, you know, I would say that there are pros and cons, and generally it is best to just, you know, discuss that internally and figure out, you know, which side you end up on. You when you bring a thought to my mind, John, when you were talking about internal audits, do I incur a risk if I try to make corrections? If I go through my audits and I find that maybe my ducks aren't in a row, am I exposing myself there? So I would say generally the answer to that is no. And the reason for that is because ultimately you're responsible regardless of whether or not you knew or did not know for any of the so called paperwork violations. So, you know, by looking at those ahead of time, you're giving yourself an opportunity to correct them. You're giving yourself an opportunity to correct them before the government shows up, which again demonstrates that good faith. So generally speaking, I would say there there aren't any downsides. You know, the one thing to to consider and remember, is that there is this thing such as called constructive knowledge of of whether or not somebody is authorized to work in this country. And so if you start digging in and doing a self audit and you discover that, oh, maybe this person's not authorized to work, that does increase your risk if you don't do anything about it. Right? And so that's why, you know, there is a little bit of a balance, but generally for administrative purposes, I-nine self audits can help your cause. That's great, John. Thank you. And we're up against time now, But everyone, thank you so much for all your questions. As I said, we'll do some follow-up. It'll help us produce some more information and resources for you. Before we wrap up today, just do want to say thank you again, John. Really practical guidance on these very timely issues that business owners and HR leaders are eager to understand and address. And you can follow John here for more expertise. As I mentioned, we'll be sending out a recording of this event for you all to get into. You can download a copy of the deck and really dig into it with all this great information. So thank you again for joining us today for ICE Rates and I-nine Audits, How to Protect Your Business from Costly Mistakes. As a reminder, download a copy of the presentation and if you can spare a few moments as we close, we'd love your feedback. We have a brief survey that'll pop up and your responses really help us improve future resources like this to support your business. Thanks again, Thank you, John, and have a great day. Thanks all.