Worksite Enforcement Operations: A Renewed Focus for the Second Trump Administration

I. INTRODUCTION

In 2021, the Biden Administration announced the end of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) use of workplace raids as an immigration enforcement tool. The second Trump Administration, however, has returned to utilizing raids and unannounced worksite audits as it ramps up civil and criminal enforcement actions against employers. As Tom Homan, White House Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations, recently previewed, “[w]orksite enforcement operations are going to massively expand.”¹

In line with these efforts, President Trump recently signed into law House Resolution 1, otherwise known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allocates $165 billion to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in part, for hiring over 5,000 customs officers for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and over 10,000 new ICE agents over the next four years.² In addition, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has updated its Criminal Division enforcement priorities and expanded its whistleblower program to cover reporting on corporate immigration and visa fraud violations³, while the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has announced it would allocate significantly more resources to investigate these offenses⁴. Corporate employers across the United States should act now to take steps to ensure they are prepared to respond to possible workplace enforcement actions as the Trump Administration embarks on what could be a more corporate- focused phase of immigration enforcement.

Key Takeaways

In light of the new legal landscape, corporate employers, especially those with sizeable non-citizen workforces and in industries traditionally targeted during periods of renewed immigration scrutiny, should focus on strategic planning and strengthening compliance protocols that will be protective in the event of an immigration or visa-related investigation. This includes:

• Educating employees – including supervisors, Human Resources professionals, onsite security officers, in-house attorneys, and others – about how to respond to an unannounced visit by ICE and FBI agents or other investigators at a company facility, ranging from the execution of a search warrant and arrest of employees unauthorized to work, to an investigator’s request for voluntary consent to review employment records, to interactions with other federal, state, and local authorities (g., the Department of Labor, the Internal Revenue Service, a state’s workplace safety bureau) that might indirectly lead to scrutiny about a company’s recruiting, hiring, and compliance practices related to certain groups of employees.
• Planning measures to ensure the continuity of business operations in the event a critical production facility, retail location, or third-party supplier is temporarily shut down or disrupted by a raid.
• Considering how the company will ensure compliance with the immigration laws while also balancing compliance with complying with anti-discrimination, privacy, and other laws and regulations designed to protect workers.
• Preparing for potential public and internal backlash from perceived cooperation with ICE agents, heightened government scrutiny if the company chooses not to cooperate with requests from ICE – or perhaps all these challenges at once.

Although companies may have reviewed their policies and procedures around hiring, work authorization, and Form I-9s during the first Trump Administration or more recently during President Biden’s tenure, law enforcement activity and immigration-related best practices have evolved so quickly as to have potentially rendered current compliance programs out of date.

II. POSSIBLE VIOLATIONS & THE IMPACT OF WORKSITE ENFORCEMENT OPERATIONS

Within the first few months of the new Trump Administration, ICE conducted numerous large-scale worksite enforcement operations across the country and across industries. For instance, on May 29, 2025, ICE agents raided a housing complex under construction in Tallahassee, Florida, detaining over 100 workers and arresting dozens more.⁵ Since the first week of June, ICE has targeted numerous businesses with detention operations in and around Los Angeles, from locally owned shops to national retail stores and Fortune 500 companies. Media reports have suggested that ICE activity has dramatically reduced customer engagement with those businesses.⁶ With increased federal resources being allocated to President Trump’s immigration priorities, worksite enforcement operations are likely to spread to larger companies across America in key sectors including retail, manufacturing, and healthcare.

To date, worksite enforcement operations have largely centered on companies in the agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and service/hospitality industries, though President Trump has renewed his calls for authorities to “look everywhere” to meet the White House’s goal of arresting 3,000 unauthorized immigrants per day.⁷ Businesses subject to these incidents have employees who have reported panic and confusion about what to do when ICE agents arrive; furthermore, a company’s ongoing operations have been at least temporarily disrupted, as investors and customers call with flurries of questions and ground-level employees choose to be absent from work for fear their employer will be targeted by ICE.⁸ For instance, when a Nebraska meatpacking plant was raided last month (June) and more than 70 of its 140 employees were arrested in one day, the plant struggled to reopen and produce at required capacity. With Tom Homan recently saying that the country will “see more work site enforcement than you’ve ever seen in the history of this nation,” companies across all industry sectors should take this risk seriously and evaluate their preparedness.⁹

Civil Violations:

There are a variety of potential civil issues employers may face in the immigration space. Under the Immigration Reform and Control Act, it is unlawful for employers to knowingly hire an unauthorized worker or to refer an unauthorized individual for work in exchange for a fee.¹⁰ Employers who violate the law may be subject to civil fines of $375 per worker for a first offense, up to $1,600 per worker for three or more offenses, or up to $3,000 per worker if the employer has engaged in a pattern or practice of hiring unauthorized workers.¹¹

Criminal Violations:

Employers may also be criminally liable for knowingly employing unauthorized workers or recruiting and facilitating their employment, such as by domestically transporting unauthorized workers, harboring them in employer-funded housing, or otherwise inducing their unlawful entry into the United States.¹² Violators could be subject to up to six months in prison, a $3,000 fine per worker, or both.¹³ Charges have been filed against corporate entities as well as against individual corporate officers where their actions were particularly egregious. For example, during the first Trump Administration, an employer was criminally charged after it had encouraged unauthorized immigrants to provide false documents to prove their work authorization.¹⁴ In that case, the employer pleaded guilty and paid over $95 million in criminal and civil fines.

Public Opinion & Business Impact:

Companies should also prepare for the potential public relations and business impacts that may flow from how they handle immigration and visa-related interactions with the government. For example, the Los Angeles Dodgers found themselves in an unwelcome spotlight after ICE agents asked permission to park their vehicles at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.¹⁵ Eyewitnesses had followed ICE vehicles to the stadium after the agents had conducted a raid on a nearby retail store. After seeing ICE vehicles at the stadium, news quickly spread across social media alleging that the Los Angeles Dodgers were cooperating with ICE. Dozens of protestors arrived at the stadium, with other protesters arriving even after ICE agents had left. The day’s events disrupted the stadium’s operations, though the evening’s baseball game was played as scheduled. Following the protests, the Los Angeles Dodgers released a statement stating they had denied ICE’s request for access to their parking lots, though ICE refuted the claim as “false.”¹⁶ But a public relations incident had already erupted, well before the facts and details of what transpired could be uncovered and disseminated.

Future Uncertainty:

Further, companies should consider the potential future implications of their current actions. Companies will need to balance their immigration and worksite compliance efforts with avoiding actual or perceived discriminatory hiring and employment practices based on race, national origin, or immigration status (e.g., asylees, lawful permanent residents). Decisions a company makes now to mitigate government enforcement risk may lead to increased attention from the private plaintiffs’ bar and exposure to individual and class action discrimination claims. In addition, corporate conduct that occurs during the Trump Administration might be viewed differently if reviewed by DOJ’s Civil Rights Division in a future administration with different policy priorities.

III. WHAT EMPLOYERS CAN EXPECT

In President Trump’s first term, ICE pursued broadscale worksite enforcement operations as a method of mitigating illegal entry into the United States and ensuring compliance on the part of employers. Worksite investigations skyrocketed: ICE saw an increase in newly opened worksite investigations from 1,700 (Fiscal Year 2017) to over 6,800 one year later (Fiscal Year 2018).¹⁷ During the first few months of the second Trump Administration, messaging from political leadership is already being operationalized by ICE, FBI, and other investigators nationwide, perhaps more rapidly than even the pace of enforcement activity that unfolded during President Trump’s first term. While President Trump has occasionally commented in a manner that could be interpreted to signal sympathy for businesses reliant on non-citizen labor, the majority of the President’s statements and the observable efforts of relevant federal agencies appear consistent with his oft-expressed goal of carrying out “the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”¹⁸ Over the next few years, employers should exercise caution before interpreting an occasional “quiet period” in company- focused immigration enforcement as evidence that broader resourcing and support from the Administration will wane.

¹Ben Smith, Trump will target US employers in next phase of immigration crackdown, Homan says, Semafor (June 12, 2025, 11:20 AM), https://www.semafor.com/article/06/12/2025/trump-will-target-us-employers-in-next-phase-of-immigration-crackdown-homan-says.

²Justin Doubleday, DHS prepares for unprecedented spending surge under ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’, Federal News Network (July 7, 2025, 7:20pm) https://federalnewsnetwork.com/budget/2025/07/dhs-prepares-for-unprecedented-spending-surge-under-big-beautiful-bill/.

³Matthew Galeotti, Focus, Fairness, and Efficiency in the Fight Against White-Collar Crime, Department of Justice (May 12, 2025), https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1400141/dl?inline.

⁴Sarah Lynch, FBI ordered to prioritize immigration, as DOJ scales back white collar cases, Reuters (last updated May 13, 2025), https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-ordered-prioritize-immigration-cases-over-white-collar-crime-people-familiar-2025-05-12/.

⁵Elena Barrera, ’Crazy’: How Florida’s largest ICE raid unfolded at a Tallahassee construction site, Tallahassee Democrat (May 30, 2025, 10:25 AM), https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/local/2025/05/29/tallahassee-ice-raid-desantis-hails-major-bust-in-florida/83926033007/.

⁶Nathan Solis, Hannah Fry, and Ruben Vives, What Businesses are the feds targeting during L.A. immigration sweeps? Here’s what we know, (June 10, 2025, 8:40 AM), https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-10/ice-sweep-targets-what-we-know.

⁷Gabe Gutierrez & Suzanne Gamboa, Trump reverses brief reprieve for immigrants he said are ‘good, long time workers’, NBC News (June 17, 2025, 11:57 AM), https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/trump-backtracks-ice-arrests-farmers-hotel-workers-rcna213469.

⁸Paul Wiseman, ICE raids and their uncertainty scare off workers and baffle businesses, Associated Press (June 19, 2025, 1:59 PM), https://apnews.com/article/trump-immigration-ice-raids-undocumented-workers-aa451dc90dda76004fdc5636b21bde97.

⁹Lydia DePillis & Ernesto Londoño, Trump Targets Workplaces as Immigration Crackdown Widens, New York Times (June 10, 2025), https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/us/trump-immigration-raids-workplaces.html.

¹⁰8 U.S.C. § 1324a(a)(1).

¹¹8 C.F.R. § 270.3(b).

¹²8 U.S.C. § 1324a(f).

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¹⁴See United States v. Asplundh Tree Experts, No. 2:17-cr-00492-JP (E.D. Pa. Sept. 28, 2017).

¹⁵Natasha Chen, et al., The Dodgers say ICE tried to enter its stadium grounds. The federal agency calls the report ‘false’: Here’s what we know, CNN (June 20, 2025) https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/20/us/dodger-stadium-ice-los-angeles.

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¹⁷U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement, HSI FY18 Achievements Worksite Enforcement (last accessed June 26, 2025), https://www.ice.gov/features/HSI- 2018.

¹⁸Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), Truth Social (June 15, 2025, 8:43 PM), https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114690267066155731.