I-9 Compliance: What's Changed and What Employers Need to Get Right

I’ve been managing employment compliance at Kelly for 18 years, and in that time, I’ve overseen more federal audits than I can count. Most of the issues we find trace back to the same blind spot: the Form I-9 looks simple. It’s two pages. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) manual explaining how to complete it correctly runs 74. Most compliance problems live somewhere in that gap.

And most I-9 errors are preventable. The federal government is primarily focused on employers who knowingly get it wrong and keep going, not those making honest mistakes and working to fix them. But enforcement attention is at an elevated level right now, and employers who have taken the time to develop a clean process tend to move through audits with a lot less disruption.

Here's how to build that foundation.

Why I-9 compliance is getting more attention right now

I-9 requirements have been on the books since 1986, but how aggressively they’re enforced tends to shift with the federal administration. Under the current administration, immigration compliance is a clear priority. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) audit volumes increased at least 10x in 2025 compared to 2024, and all signs point to that pace continuing.

When employers receive a Notice of Inspection from ICE, they typically have three business days to produce I-9 records. That timeline leaves little room for organizations that haven’t kept their documentation current. The employers who move through these situations with the least disruption are the ones who had already built a clean process before anyone came looking.

It's also worth noting that the form itself has been updated. The current edition, dated January 20, 2025, includes minor language changes to E-Verify and document descriptions. Employers using older electronic systems should confirm they've updated to reflect the correct May 2027 expiration date.

Common I-9 mistakes and how to avoid them

The I-9 compliance errors I see most often are the result of a process that nobody has looked at closely in a while. They’re easy mistakes to make. The form has two sections with distinct rules, deadlines, and failure points. Here's where each one tends to break down.

Section 1: Employee information

Section 1 is completed by the employee and covers personal information: name, date of birth, Social Security number, address, and immigration status. The most common mistakes here are typos, like a transposed digit in a Social Security number or date of birth. These seem minor, but they create downstream problems, particularly with E-Verify, which cross-checks that information against federal records.

Name changes are another consistent source of errors. If an employee legally updates their name with the Department of Motor Vehicles but doesn’t update it with the Social Security Administration — or with United States Custom and Immigration Services (USCIS)/Department of Homeland Security (DHS) if they hold a passport or for other immigration statuses (permanent resident, Alien Authorized to work) — the information won’t match across departments. People often don’t realize they need to update all of those records, not just one.

Section 2: Employer verification and the three-day rule

Section 2 must be completed within three business days of an employee’s first day of work. That deadline is non-negotiable under federal rules, and missing it is one of the most common compliance failures I see across employers. An employer can also have more strict rules related to this 3-day rule.

Section 2 can be completed by the employer or by an authorized representative. Since COVID, an authorized representative can be a neighbor, a family member, a co-worker; essentially any adult over 18 who is authorized to work in the United States. That flexibility is useful, particularly for distributed workforces. But it does mean you’re often relying on people who have never completed an I-9 before. Whether it's the employer or authorized representative, Section 2 must be completed in-person/face to face with the employee. The most common error in Section 2 is the authorized representative entering their own document information instead of the employee’s. They might enter their documentation for List A or B and C (e.g. using their own passport or license information ,) It sounds like an obvious mistake, but it happens all the time.

The person signing Section 2 is meant to be attesting that they reviewed the employee’s original documentation Entering incorrect information or not reviewing the original (there are some exceptions for receipts) is equivalent to attesting to something untrue on a federal form, which means the mistake is elevated from a paperwork error to a falsification issue.

If possible, before an authorized representative completes Section 2, walk them through exactly what the form is asking for. A quick five-minute orientation can prevent the most common errors. It’s also worth it to consider a workforce solutions partner that builds document verification into the hiring process.

How remote hiring changes the equation

USCIS implemented virtual I-9 completion on August 1, 2023. Under this option — formally called the Optional Alternative Procedure to Physical Document Examination — employers can complete Section 2 via video call instead of meeting in person.

There's one prerequisite: you must be enrolled in E-Verify and in good standing. If you are, the process is more manageable than most employers expect.

Before the video call, the employee sends copies of their work authorization documents to the person completing Section 2. During the call, the employee’s camera must be on. The employee then shows the physical document on camera so the reviewer can compare it to the copy they received in advance and confirm they match. It’s the same logic as an in-person review, just adapted for a remote setting.

If a document appears altered, or the photo doesn’t reasonably match the person on camera, the employer cannot accept it. At that point, the employee needs to provide a different document entirely, not a second version of the same document type. So, if the employee showed a driver’s license first, they can try a passport instead.

For staffing agencies like Kelly, where employees may work in locations where neither the agency nor the client has a physical presence, the virtual option has been a practical solution to a complicated logistical challenge.

Record retention: what to keep, for how long, and what raises red flags

The retention rule for Form I-9 follows a consistent formula: keep each form for three years from the date of hire, or one year from the date of termination, whichever is later. But since the math varies by employee, it can be a bit of a headache in practice.

Here are a couple of examples:

• An employee hired January 1, 2020 and terminated July 1, 2020: that I-9 must be retained until January 1, 2023, to satisfy the three-year-from-hire requirement.
  
  
• An employee hired January 1, 2020 and terminated January 1, 2025: that I-9 must be kept until January 1, 2026, to satisfy the one-year-from-termination requirement.
  

One thing employers don't always consider: keeping I-9s longer than legally required creates its own risk. Outdated records sitting in your files during an audit are additional documents for inspectors to review, which means additional opportunities to find errors that wouldn't otherwise be in scope. Keep a schedule, and purge records accordingly.

For employers using paper I-9s, storage matters too: forms must be kept in a locked, secured location, separate from other personnel files and accessible only to designated individuals.

There are a few documentation patterns that tend to raise red flags during inspections:

• Multiple I-9s on file for the same employee
• Retaining copies of Section 2 documentation for some employees but not others
• Messy corrections on paper forms. When corrections are difficult to read, the government can’t clearly see what was wrong and how it was fixed. That ambiguity rarely works in an employer’s favor.

Most of these patterns are easy to correct once you've found them. What’s important is finding and fixing them before an audit.

What noncompliance can cost

The consequences for I-9 violations scale with severity and intent. At the lower end, paperwork violations like a missing signature or a late Section 2 completion run from $288 to $2,861 per form. Knowingly employing an unauthorized worker carries fines from $716 to $28,619 per worker, and those figures increase with each subsequent offense.

There are two consequences beyond fines you should be aware of:

• Criminal charges are possible when the government determines violations were intentional rather than accidental.
• Homeland Security can revoke an employer's E-Verify access entirely.

That second one tends to surprise people. For organizations in states that require E-Verify, or that hold government contracts, losing access can effectively shut down hiring. And depending on the size of the operation, that can threaten the business itself.

How to self-audit and why it works in your favor

Internal audits have a bit of a reputation as an exercise in creating problems for yourself. In my experience, they're one of the best precautions you can take. The goal is to find issues before a federal inspector does, correct them, and document that you did.

That paper trail is what matters most during an external inspection. Employers who can show a record of self-audits, corrective action, and ongoing training move through audits with considerably less disruption, and often avoid enforcement action altogether.

When something does come up, involve HR or legal before taking corrective action. Some errors can be corrected with a simple annotation on the form; others require more careful handling.

How technology helps and where it still falls short

A good I-9 vendor tool reduces compliance exposure significantly. At Kelly, we’ve used electronic I-9 systems since around 2007, and the difference compared to paper-based processes is substantial. The right tool will do a few things:

• Verify that all required fields are completed before the form can be submitted
• Integrate directly with E-Verify
• Manage retention and purging on schedule
• Send automatic alerts when work authorizations are approaching expiration

What technology can’t do yet is catch human error in the data itself. If someone enters the wrong Social Security number or transposes a digit in a document number, the system will accept it because it has no way of knowing what the correct information should be. Even with solid tech, you should still have a human review the data.

Getting your I-9 process right before you need to

I-9 compliance doesn't have to be overwhelming. The form has been around since 1986, the rules are well-documented, and the government has given employers plenty of resources to get it right. Administrations change and enforcement priorities shift, but the underlying requirements stay consistent.

The employers who fare best during audits are the ones who were already paying attention: running internal reviews, training their teams, and keeping their documentation current. That kind of proactive approach reduces risk and frees up your organization to focus on what it actually does best.

At Kelly, I-9 compliance is something my team manages every day, at scale, across thousands of placements, backed by centralized payroll and compliance services built to handle exactly this kind of complexity so the organizations we work with don't have to. When ICE issues a Notice of Inspection, our clients aren't scrambling to reconstruct documentation or retrain staff in three days. That work is already done. If you want a workforce partner with that foundation already in place, reach out.