ICE Form I-9 Audit: What to Do When Your Company Receives a Notice of Inspection

When ICE serves a Notice of Inspection, your company has at least three business days to produce its Forms I-9 and the supporting records the notice lists, usually payroll, a list of current and former employees, and basic business documents. Use every one of those days. Call counsel the day the notice arrives, pull every I-9 the retention rule requires, match the forms against payroll, and produce exactly what was asked for, organized and on time. Do not backdate or quietly rewrite forms, and do not re-verify or fire workers on suspicion. After its review, ICE sends a result: a compliance letter, a list of technical failures you get at least 10 business days to correct, a Warning Notice, a Notice of Suspect Documents, or a Notice of Intent to Fine. Paperwork fines currently run $288 to $2,861 per form, and knowingly employing an unauthorized worker starts at $716 per worker for a first offense.

What a Notice of Inspection is

A Notice of Inspection (NOI) is the formal start of an administrative I-9 audit by Homeland Security Investigations, the part of ICE that handles worksite enforcement. It is a civil process, not a raid. The regulation at 8 CFR 274a.2(b)(2)(ii) gives every employer at least three business days’ notice before an inspection of its I-9s. The same paragraph says no subpoena or warrant is required, and that any refusal or delay in presenting the forms is a violation of the retention rules.

The notice names the records ICE wants, the period they cover, and where and when to deliver them. Forms may be produced as paper originals, in electronic form, or as paper copies of electronic forms. If your I-9s are kept elsewhere, such as with a payroll vendor, you must tell the officer where and arrange the inspection. The three business days run from service; weekends and federal holidays do not count.

What ICE asks you to produce

ICE’s Form I-9 inspection fact sheet says that beyond the forms themselves, investigators generally request supporting records. The list in your own notice controls, but expect some combination of:

• Forms I-9 for current employees and for former employees still inside the retention period, with any attached document copies and reverifications.
• Payroll records for the period the notice covers. ICE uses them to check that every person paid has a form.
• A list of active and terminated employees, usually with hire and termination dates.
• Articles of incorporation and business licenses, which establish who the employer is.
• Quarterly wage or tax reports in some notices, which serve the same cross-check as payroll.

The retention rule decides which forms are in scope: three years after the date of hire or one year after employment ends, whichever is later. Forms for current employees are always in scope. Forms past their retention date are not required, and producing them only enlarges the record under review.

The first three business days, step by step

• Hour one: call counsel and log the service. Record who received the notice, when, and from which agent, and calendar the production date. For a large or multi-site workforce, your lawyer can ask for more time; the answer is discretionary, so ask early.
• Day one: freeze the records. Tell HR, payroll, and site managers in writing that no one changes, discards, or redoes any I-9 or personnel record. Suspend any scheduled purge.
• Days one and two: build the inventory. Match every name on payroll and the employee list to an I-9. Note missing forms, forms for people who never appear on payroll, and forms past retention.
• Day two: review under privilege. Counsel reviews the forms and classifies each error, so you know your exposure before ICE does. Errors are documented, not erased.
• Days two and three: prepare the production. Copy and number every page, keep an identical set, and write a cover letter listing what is produced. Produce exactly what the notice asks for, in the format it asks for.
• Day three: deliver on time. Counsel becomes the contact for follow-up questions, so supervisors are not drawn into informal interviews.
• Throughout: treat every employee the same. The Justice Department’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section, in its worksite audit best practices, advises telling employees the company is subject to an ICE audit and handling all workers alike, regardless of national origin or citizenship status.

What not to do after the notice arrives

Much of the damage in an inspection comes from the employer’s own reaction. The same Justice Department guidance lists the mistakes to avoid:

• Do not re-verify the workforce. Asking everyone, or only some groups, for new documents because of the notice can violate the anti-discrimination rules. Do not ask for more documents than ICE requires, and do not single out workers by national origin or citizenship status.
• Do not fire or suspend on suspicion. Give any worker whose record is questioned written notice and a reasonable opportunity to present valid documents before any employment decision.
• Do not limit the documents a worker may present. The worker chooses from the Lists of Acceptable Documents on the form.
• Do not volunteer records the notice does not request. Route every question from the agents through counsel.
• Do not miss the clock. A late production, or an ignored correction period, turns fixable problems into fines.

How ICE sorts errors: technical, substantive, and knowing

ICE reads each form for three kinds of problems. Technical or procedural failures are mistakes in how a form was filled out, such as a blank field or an entry in the wrong place, where verification still happened. Substantive failures go to whether verification happened at all: no form, a Section 2 never completed, documents never examined. Knowing violations mean the employer hired or kept a worker it knew was not authorized.

The statute builds in a defense for the first group. Under 8 U.S.C. 1324a(b)(6), an employer that made a good-faith attempt to comply is treated as compliant despite a technical or procedural failure. The defense is lost if ICE explains the failure, gives you at least 10 business days to correct it, and you do not, and it does not protect an employer engaged in a pattern or practice of violations. Uncorrected technical failures become substantive and can be fined, which is why the correction window is the most important deadline after production.

The notices ICE can send after its review

I-9 penalty amounts in force now

Civil fines are set by statute and raised for inflation by DHS rule. The amounts below are in 8 CFR 274a.10 as updated by the January 2, 2025 adjustment, which applies to penalties assessed after that date for violations that occurred after November 2, 2015. The only later DHS inflation rule, published December 29, 2025, corrected Coast Guard and TSA figures and left these unchanged. DHS can publish a new adjustment at any time, so confirm the figure before relying on it.

A per-form fine applies to every defective form, even when every worker was authorized. ICE also warns that knowing violations can lead to criminal prosecution and debarment from government contracting.

How ICE calculates a fine

ICE describes a two-stage method. It starts with a base fine per violation, set by the percentage of forms with violations and by whether this is a first, second, or third-or-later offense. It then adjusts the base for the five factors the regulation lists:

• The size of the employer’s business.
• The employer’s good faith.
• The seriousness of the violations.
• Whether the individuals involved were unauthorized to work.
• The employer’s history of previous violations.

Each factor can raise the base by 5%, lower it by 5%, or leave it unchanged, and the total adjustment is capped at 25% either way. Good faith is the factor you can build before any notice: a documented internal audit, written procedures, trained Section 2 completers, and prompt correction when ICE flags errors.

A Notice of Intent to Fine is a proposal, not a judgment. Within 30 calendar days of receiving it, you may request a hearing before an administrative law judge at the Justice Department’s Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer. Miss that window and ICE issues a final order with no appeal. A timely request keeps negotiation open before ICE files a complaint, and that is where the violation count and the factor analysis get argued.

Run your own audit before ICE does

Almost everything an inspection finds could have been found and fixed earlier. ICE and the Justice Department published joint guidance for internal I-9 audits, and USCIS points employers to it on its self-audit page. The core rules:

• Review every form, or a sample chosen by neutral criteria, never by national origin or citizenship.
• Tell employees in writing that an audit is happening, its scope, and whether it responds to a government directive.
• Section 1 errors are corrected by the employee; Section 2 errors by the employer. Line through, correct, initial, date, and attach a note. Never erase, use correction fluid, or backdate.
• Judge documents by the form edition in effect when the I-9 was completed, and never ask for specific documents.
• Give workers a reasonable time to resolve a problem before any employment decision.

An audit does not immunize a company, but it shrinks the error count and creates the good-faith record the penalty factors reward. Our I-9 compliance guide for Texas employers walks through an audit project stage by stage.

A note for Texas employers

Texas Government Code chapter 673 requires state agencies, including public universities, to use E-Verify for new employees. That chapter does not reach private companies, though a federal contract clause can require a private employer to enroll. E-Verify never replaces Form I-9: an E-Verify employer still keeps an I-9 for every hire, and ICE can inspect them.

What to look for in I-9 counsel

If you recently took over your company’s immigration program, the useful question is not which firm is "best" but which one can do this work. Ask whether it responds the same business day a notice arrives, runs the privileged review and the production itself, quotes a flat fee for an inspection response and for an audit, and also handles your sponsorship cases so the advice does not conflict. Our guide to choosing a corporate immigration firm covers the wider decision, and our guide to switching firms mid-case explains how to move open matters.

How Atlas Immigration Law helps

We represent employers from the day a Notice of Inspection arrives: we read the notice, secure the records, run the privileged review, assemble and deliver the production, handle the correction period, and negotiate or contest a Notice of Intent to Fine. For employers who want to be ready first, we run internal I-9 audits and rebuild the process behind them. The work runs on a flat fee agreed in writing and billed at milestones, with a dedicated paralegal reachable by call, email, or text, same-business-day responses, and attorney Jordan Weinberg reviewing every filing. Employers follow each case in the Atlas Vision client portal. Atlas is based in Dallas and represents employers in all 50 states; see our I-9 compliance services, our business immigration practice, or everything we do for employers, or request a free consultation.

This guide is part of our business immigration services — the service page covers eligibility, fees, and how we handle these cases.

Jordan S. Weinberg, Esq.

Founder & Managing Attorney, Atlas Immigration Law

Member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and the Dallas Bar Association. Licensed to practice in Texas; fluent in English and Spanish.

Legally reviewed by a licensed immigration attorney

This guide is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Immigration law and procedures change, and how they apply depends on your specific facts — consult a licensed immigration attorney about your situation.