What to Do If ICE Conducts a Workplace Audit

Read This First

In the first seven months of 2025, ICE conducted at least 40 worksite enforcement actions, producing more than 1,100 arrests ^[6]. If you run a profitable shop with a full crew, you are not too small or too clean to land on that list. In March 2026, ICE quietly reclassified a batch of Form I-9 errors that used to be correctable as substantive violations subject to monetary penalties ^[3]. Fines already run from $288 to $2,861 per form ^[9]. The audit itself is not the risk. Your paperwork on the day it arrives is.

The Three Days You Get, and What They're For

An I-9 audit almost always starts with a written Notice of Inspection, and it gives you at least three business days to produce your Form I-9s before the inspection begins ^[1][2][4]. That window is the entire point. It is your time to pull every current employee's I-9, plus former employees you are still required to keep on file, and check them against what ICE will check them against.

Retention is where owners get sloppy. You must keep an I-9 for every current employee, and for former employees you must hold it for three years from the first day of employment or one year from the date employment ended, whichever is longer ^[1][5]. A guy you laid off eighteen months ago can still generate a fine. Refusing or stalling the inspection is itself a violation ^[2], and the three-day notice can disappear entirely if ICE arrives with a subpoena or warrant instead ^[2]. Plan around the notice, but do not count on it.

The Line Between a Fixable Error and a Fine

Here is what the March 2026 change actually did to you. Technical violations found in an audit can still be corrected within 10 business days ^[5]. Substantive violations do not get the 10-business-day correction window technical violations get: failing to complete the I-9, accepting fraudulent documents, failing to properly verify documents ^[5]. The 2026 guidance moved a number of errors that used to sit on the correctable side of that line over to the substantive side ^[3].

The trap most owners walk into: keeping photocopies of a worker's passport or work authorization card and assuming that covers a blank field. ICE's guidance is explicit that retaining copies of identity or work authorization documents does not cure missing or incomplete information on the Form I-9 ^[3]. The form has to be right on its own. Copies do not backfill it.

Do not backdate, rewrite, or fill in a missing field on an I-9 after a Notice of Inspection arrives. If your own audit turns up an error, correct it through the proper procedure and document the correction. Altering a record to look complete after the fact is its own violation.

Public Areas vs. Nonpublic Areas

An audit is paperwork. A raid is people showing up, and the rules there are different. ICE agents may enter the public areas of your business without permission. Nonpublic areas, your yard, your shop floor, your back office, require your consent or a valid judicial warrant ^[8]. An administrative warrant issued on Form I-200 or I-205 does not grant that access ^[8].

Know what a real judicial warrant looks like before you are reading one under pressure. It must be signed by a US district or state court judge, name the location to be searched and the persons or items to be seized, and be executed within 14 days of being issued ^[8][10]. You do not have to consent to agents entering nonpublic areas without a judicial warrant ^[5].

What to Do

Run your own I-9 audit now, before any Notice of Inspection arrives, on a normal Tuesday, not the week one lands. Pull every current employee's form and every retained former employee's form, and confirm each field is complete rather than assuming a filed copy fixed it ^[3]. Remember that new hires must complete their portion by the end of their first day and you must finish yours within three business days of their start date ^[6], so build that into onboarding instead of catching it in the audit. Certain construction and agriculture operations, plus infrastructure sectors like energy and transportation, have been flagged as early targets ^[7], so if you work there, treat this as sooner rather than later. Designate one person to receive a Notice of Inspection and to know the public-versus-nonpublic line cold. And if a Notice of Intent to Fine is served, request a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge within 30 days of receipt, because that clock does not wait ^[4].

Bottom Line

The employers who survive an audit clean did the work before the notice arrived. Fix your I-9s on your own schedule, or ICE will fix your penalty on theirs.

Sources

1. ICE: Form I-9 Inspection under Immigration and Nationality Act 274A
2. USCIS: I-9 Central, Inspections
3. Holland & Knight: ICE expands Form I-9 substantive violations for employers
4. Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer: What an employer should do if ICE issues a Notice of Inspection
5. New York City SHRM: Employers' rights during Form I-9 audits and worksite enforcement investigations
6. Bradley: Your employer's guide to ICE compliance and navigating worksite enforcement
7. Foley & Lardner: Vigorous immigration law enforcement, I-9 inspections and site visits
8. Morgan Lewis: ICE enforcement actions, understanding employers' rights and obligations
9. Paycom: Form I-9 audit checklist, how to conduct an I-9 audit in 2026
10. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(e)(2)(A) | Cornell Legal Information Institute