ICE keeps up the heat on employers: Are your I-9s and documentation in order?

• Position: In The News ...

Your organization's odds of facing government scrutiny of its immigration paperwork quadrupled in 2018, and new statistics show that this threatening trend continued (and actually increased) in 2019.

In fiscal year 2019, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement opened 6,812 new investigations into employers for immigration violations, including everything from hiring illegal workers to errors on their I-9 Forms. That's a slight increase from 2018, but a whopping 400% jump from 2017 (see chart).

Despite this enforcement spike, the number of employers (managers, execs, HR directors) arrested for hiring illegal immigrants has actually declined each year since 2016.

That may change. According to The Wall Street Journal, ICE deputy director Matthew Allen said last month that the agency hopes to "arrest many more...