Form I-9 auditsare seeing a big upsurge in activity, with ICE quadrupling I-9audits under the Trump administration from 2017 to 2018. (Photo:Shutterstock)

Investigations at the worksite, audits of Forms I-9 and arrests of employees on immigration issues skyrocketed in fiscal year2018 compared to the previous year, according to the Society for Human ResourceManagement.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, SHRMreports, indicate that worksite investigations were up by more than300 percent, and I-9 audits and charges filed were at 10-yearhighs.

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In FY 2017, ICE opened 1,691 worksite investigations, but in FY2018 that jumped to 6,848 investigations by September 30. Inaddition, the number of I-9 audits initiated rose from FY 2017's1,360 to 5,981 in FY 2018. More than 2,300 people were arrested atwork in FY 2018, more than seven times the number in the yearbefore.

Workplace arrests, according to Alex Nowrasteh, a seniorimmigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington,D.C., are classified into two categories: criminal, which includessuch violations as identity fraud, and administrative, whichincludes civil violations of the Immigration and Nationality Actlike being in the country without authorization.

FY 2018's ICE arrests break down as follows: 779 criminal and1,525 administrative worksite-related. For FY 2017, the numberswere 139 criminal and 172 administrative.

“The number of arrests peaked in 2008 at 6,287 after severalsteady years of increases, but then declined during [Barack]Obama's presidency with a single blip in 2011,”Nowrasteh told SHRM. “As a share of all ICEadministrative arrests, those conducted at worksites are up about10.7 times over 2016, the last year of the Obama administration,and 8.8-fold since 2017.”

While criminal indictments and convictions were pretty close tothe same for both years—with 72 managers indicted in FY 2018,compared with 71 the year before, and 49 managers convictedcompared with 55 in FY 2017—numbers are expected to climb due tocurrent ongoing investigations, according to ICE.

Form I-9 audits are seeing a big upsurge in activity, with ICEquadrupling I-9 audits under the Trump administration from 2017 to2018; it sent out 88 percent of the 5,981 notices of inspectionduring two periods: January 29 through March 30 and July 16–20.

Then there are the financial penalties. Employers were orderedto pay $10.2 million in civil penalties in FY 2018 for employingunauthorized workers that's up from $7.8 million in FY 2017.Businesses were ordered to pay another $10.2 million in judicialfines, forfeitures and restitutions in FY 2018, although that'sdown from $96.7 million the year before.

The 2017 figure is so large thanks to a record $95 millionjudgment against a tree-trimming company for knowingly hiringunauthorized workers, and the investigation in that case was begunduring the Obama administration.

Employers should know there's more to come. According to DerekBenner, executive associate director of ICE's Homeland SecurityInvestigations, the agency is hiring 60 more auditors and intendsto conduct more direct outreach to employers, adopt new technologyto speed up audits and create a centralized auditing center tostreamline the entire process.

Not everybody is happy about it, either. The report cites TamarJacoby, president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a national federation ofsmall-business owners, saying that the increase in worksiteenforcement punishes employers having a tough time finding enoughworkers to meet demand. Jacoby called for reforms to guest-workerprograms to make it easier for U.S. businesses to maintain theirworkforces.

Read more: 

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• 2 keys to Social Security solvency: immigration andproductivity