Staffing is the New Front Line for Immigration Enforcement—Is Your Agency Ready?

A Message from Avionté’s 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.

I am neither a lawyer nor a politician, so I won’t offer legal advice or political opinions. But after four decades working in Human Capital and Staffing, I do have significant perspective around regulatory and technological change in the workplace—including when to block out industry noise and hype, and when to pay close attention to an emerging trend.

Here is a headline from the New York Times on April 8, 2025, that merits close attention from everyone in the staffing industry: “I.R.S. Agrees to Share Migrants’ Tax Information with ICE.“

The details surrounding this new agreement are still unfolding, but in short: ICE will now use IRS data to find fugitive immigrants at their workplaces. This marks a clear shift in enforcement strategy with broader implications:

• The federal government is making the workplace a central focus for immigration enforcement.
• Technology will allow regulators to rapidly pinpoint undocumented workers along with the employers who hired them
• The highly publicized ICE raids that recently occurred may be only a small prelude to a massive scaling of enforcement efforts.
• Staffing Agencies are a natural target: Our industry serves a unique function in the labor supply chain as an entry for new workers.

This also explains why I-9 compliance for contingent workers is now a top enforcement priority. If you operate a staffing agency today—or rely heavily on contingent labor—you are now under a regulatory microscope.

Because the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) is now almost forty years old, it’s easy to fall into complacency regarding this law. That would be a mistake. While the requirements for Form I-9 record-keeping are well understood, they have never been enforced with rigor and consistency across multiple administrations. We believe that is about to change. Going forward, you should expect a zero-tolerance, zero-exception approach to enforcement.

What’s different in 2025 compared to every year since 1986?

• Political Will: There is bipartisan consensus that we cannot secure our borders or achieve immigration reform without first enforcing existing laws.
• Agency Data Sharing: Traditional silos are disappearing. IRS, SSA, and DHS are cross-referencing their databases, making it easier to flag irregularities and misappropriated SS numbers on a large scale.
• New Technology: Real ID, facial recognition, and AI will make it substantially harder for employees to commit identity fraud or employers to ignore it.
• Shifting Legal Theory: With up to 75% of undocumented workers using stolen or false credentials, the government may use perjury as a legal basis to trace them via tax and SSA records—right to the workplace.

What this Means for Staffing Agencies

If you are staffing agency, or an employer who uses a substantial number of temporary workers, you should be taking action now:

• Expect heavy use of automation and digitization to enforce the law. ICE will use digital tools to precisely identify non-compliance. No firm is too small. No industry is off limits.
• Ensure that your agency practices strict compliance. You will be held accountable for non-compliant record-keeping, with liability for fines and penalties regardless of good faith effort.
• Plan ahead to be audited on short notice. ICE can audit with three days’ notice. One agency we spoke with recently lived through an ICE audit. The audit itself identified only 9 small errors, but the agency team endured a 48-hour fire drill to prepare for it.
• Eliminate paper and digitize your records. Paper I-9 records are highly prone to errors. One study conducted by an Avionté’s business partner showed that 76% of paper I-9s have at least one error. During an audit, you want a complete, defensible digital record of your employment and onboarding practices.
• Leave Nothing to Chance: Regulators will look for timestamps, documented processes, and proof that every step was followed correctly. Even well-intentioned agencies are at risk. A missing signature, an expired verification, or a single unchecked box can escalate a simple audit to something more serious.
• Use E-Verify. Required in multiple states and often mandated by large employers in agency contracts, E-Verify dramatically enhances the compliance posture for both staffing agencies and employers.

As a staffing agency, you’re on the front line. Every party in the hiring chain carries liability—and the cost of getting this wrong can be devastating.

Next week, our Chief Product Officer, Sushma Tripathi, will share a detailed blog post outlining how Avionté is helping agencies boost their compliance posture.

On April 29, we’ll host a comprehensive compliance webinar to showcase how Avionté’s Onboarding Solution streamlines and digitizes the entire Form I-9 process. All Avionté customers are encouraged to attend.

At Avionté, our commitment extends beyond software—we’re dedicated to ensuring your business thrives in all aspects: growth, productivity, engagement, and compliance.

Mark your calendar for April 29th. Your business’s future may depend on it.