Trump’s Immigration Agenda Is a Nudge for Workplace Compliance

In today’s enforcement-heavy immigration environment, proactive compliance is no longer optional or a back-office formality—it’s a business-critical priority. Compliance has become a defining feature of responsible corporate leadership in a landscape shaped by sweeping policy shifts and interagency coordination.

Employers relying on global talent must now measure the return on investment of proactive compliance against the very real costs of enforcement—fines, business disruption, and reputational fallout. Experienced attorneys can help businesses ensure that they are prepared for the enforcement storm that is upon us.

Enforcement

Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration has homed in on immigration and enforcement. Attorney General Pamela Bondi in February issued a directive instructing all US attorneys to treat immigration-related offenses, including employing, transporting, or harboring undocumented workers, as “investigative and charging priorities.”

The directive instructs prosecutors to pursue the most severe penalties available. The upshot is that prosecutors now have very limited discretion to decline criminal cases for prosecution or to negotiate previously available alternatives.

Then, in May, the Department of Justice expanded its Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program to include corporate violations of federal immigration law among the categories eligible for financial awards. Under the program, whistleblowers whose original information leads to significant forfeitures, may receive up to 30% of the recovered assets, creating the potential for multimillion-dollar payouts in large-scale immigration enforcement actions. US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has also reintroduced and encouraged members of the public to use its tip line to report suspicious criminal activity, including illegal immigration and other violations of immigration laws.

To operationalize these enforcement goals, ICE imposed arrest quotas on its field offices, tripling daily targets to approximately 75 arrests per office, or 1,500 arrests nationwide.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem escalated those expectations, demanding in a high-level meeting that ICE agents work toward 3,000 arrests per day, triple the average daily arrests mandated at the start of Trump’s term.

This aggressive enforcement approach was codified in July with the passage and signing of the massive tax and spending package, which raised immigration enforcement funding from approximately $5 billion to nearly $150 billion.

Compliance

A cost-benefit analysis reveals that preventive compliance measures not only mitigate legal exposure but also preserve business continuity and protect brand reputation.

Based on our practice, interactions with clients and other lawyers in the immigration legal community, a comprehensive I-9 audit for a company of 500 employees may cost between $10,000 and $20,000. And carefully reviewing and implementing an electronic I-9 and E-Verify system typically requires between $5,000 and $15,000 upfront, with additional annual maintenance costs to cover vetting and implementation efforts.

While these are significant investments, they pale in comparison to the potential civil fines (up to $2,861 per defective I-9, and double that if the defective I-9 relates to an undocumented worker), possible criminal exposure (massive fines, forfeitures, and disgorgement of profits), workforce shortages and operational impacts, and reputational fallout of enforcement actions.

Heightened Enforcement Risks

We’ve seen a marked increase in employers receiving notices of inspection (initiation of I-9 audits), facing worksite raids, and enduring criminal investigations. The industries most likely to be targeted are manufacturing, construction, hospitality, and retail.

With potential civil exposure and increased possibilities for criminal prosecution of company representatives, corporate forfeitures, and disgorgement of profits in extreme cases, it’s impossible to overstate the potential impact of these enforcement developments.

An enforcement action can lead to the loss of government contracts, particularly for federal contractors subject to debarment rules, along with the forced removal of a substantial percentage of a company’s workforce due to I-9 violations. These disruptions can stall operations, trigger investor concern, and attract negative media coverage. The reputational damage and business fallout alone can far exceed the value of any civil or even criminal penalty. This kind of harm can result in lost clients, diminished brand trust, and long-term challenges in recruiting talent or securing future contracts.

To achieve its stated arrest targets, ICE seems to be prioritizing industries such as farming and hospitality, which have historically relied on undocumented workers. With unprecedented funds being funneled to DHS, it seems clear that immigration-related enforcement will continue to be the administration’s investigative and charging priority.

The administration is also extending its removal efforts to legal immigrants and revoked work authorization for more than 500,000 individuals who legally entered through the CHNV parole program. The program required most employers to take the drastic action of terminating the employment of parolees from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. In a similar vein, the administration revoked Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of workers from various nationalities.

The combined focus on both documented and undocumented workers is putting employers in a difficult position. Where will employers find the people to fill positions that foreign nationals have traditionally filled in this country? And yet, if employers fail to monitor developments in the administration’s efforts to revoke the status of those who have legal status, they may find themselves unwittingly employing an undocumented workforce.

With publications in the Federal Register, and ongoing updates on government websites, employers would be hard-pressed to assert they weren’t knowingly employing undocumented workers if they allowed these individuals to remain on their payrolls.

Workforce Stability

Companies can pursue serious compliance measures and coordinate with legal counsel on how to phase out undocumented workers and onboard replacement workers through more stringent I-9 practices and procedures.

As enforcement intensifies and regulatory expectations rise, the cost of waiting is too high. Businesses that build compliance into their operations now will be better equipped to weather audits, respond to investigations, and maintain workforce stability. What was once viewed as a defensive legal necessity has become a marker of operational maturity and long-term resilience.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.

Author Information

Samantha Wolfe is partner at Holland & Hart and helps employers in hard-to-staff regions navigate complex immigration challenges.

Chris Thomas is partner at Holland & Hart and provides strategic counsel when companies and individuals face government audits or investigations of their immigration practices.

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