Christopher Ryan, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer
This editorial represents business guidance and does not constitute legal advice. Please consult appropriate legal counsel regarding your specific compliance practices.
On Tuesday, April 29th, I hosted a fireside chat on Form I-9 Compliance with Lia Elliott, an expert attorney and co-founder of Staffing GC, and Sushma Tripathi, the Chief Product Officer of Avionté.
I expected a lively conversation, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the alarming real-life case examples that came up during our discussion. Lia spoke about how devastating an ICE raid can be to a staffing agency, and she shared what to expect during a raid, how to prepare, and how to mitigate business risk. Sushma described all the things that could go wrong with paper-based record keeping. At the time, I wondered if perhaps we were being too alarmist. That was Tuesday.
On Wednesday, April 30th, I read the following headline:
”Colorado janitorial companies fined by ICE for hiring at least 143 unauthorized workers.”
What Lia Elliott described on Tuesday was a headline on Wednesday. If I could give out “I told you so” awards, Lia would be receiving a trophy.
The crux of the story in Colorado is that three separate janitorial service companies were fined a total of over $8 million for hiring unauthorized workers and for irregularities in record keeping. For a low-margin contract service business, $8 million isn’t just a lot of money, it’s a business killer. But even a firm with sufficient cash to manage the penalties will likely be crushed by service disruptions, angry customers, and the prospect of becoming a business pariah.
Given the severity of the penalties, it might seem surprising that no criminal charges were filed, but criminal prosecution isn’t needed to drive compliance. Regulations pertaining to I-9 record keeping are clear, and I-9 audit results are binary. Each individual Form I-9 is either compliant or non-compliant and subject to penalty. It’s also hard to argue good faith when your records are messy and inconsistent. Paper records are an instant red flag because they are easily lost or altered, and employers often forget to expunge them when they expire. Having fragmented staffing platforms can be equally bad because there are invariably discrepancies across each system of record.
From an enforcement perspective, why bother with a costly criminal investigation when you can take a messy box of papers or a digital printout of missing records and present it to an Administrative Judge? It’s like a treasure hunt. Each incorrect Form I-9 can be assessed for a separate penalty of up to $2,861 in 2025. How many missing, altered, or incorrect I-9 documents would you need to get to $8 million? I’ll let readers do their own math.
So here is the takeaway.
If you run a staffing agency, you should be preparing for an Immigration Enforcement action as if it could happen tomorrow morning. That’s the level of urgency you need to bring to protect your business.
Be sure to read my previous editorial on this topic, Staffing is the New Front Line for Immigration Enforcement.
Christopher Ryan
Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer at Avionté
Christopher Ryan leads the Strategy and Marketing functions for Avionté. He brings more than three decades of consulting, thought leadership, and corporate experience in Human Capital Management. He has also written and spoken extensively about part-time and temporary workers, employee retention, gender pay equity, emerging trends in compensation, U.S. labor shortages, and the economic impact of the Affordable Care Act.
