For agriculture businesses, navigating worker verification can be tricky. And after preparing an operation and crews for a raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE), the next step is to do an internal audit of all employee forms, says Jocelyn Campanaro, partner of Fisher & Phillips, who specializes in immigration.
“That’s different than the raids where they come in with the warrants,” Campanaro says. “This is where you get a document, and you have three days to provide your IDs. Doing that internal audit is really important. This will really help reduce risks of a raid, and it will also help reduce a fine or civil and criminal liability if they’re audited.”
Questions to ask include:
- Do we have documents for everybody?
- Do we have I-9s for everyone?
- Do we have proper documentation?
- Are our practices good, or do we need more training?
- Do we need to look at Green Cards or documents more closely?
A misconception, Campanaro says, is that many employers think just because an employee supplied documents, the employer is in the clear. But these internal audits mean taking a very close look at the documents employees supplied. Look for things that might be “off.”
“If the font is really out of line, if the picture is crooked,” she says. “If it looks fake on its face, and you look at it twice, those are things that are red flags.”
And this, Campanaro says, might also mean that employees taking those documents might need further training to better prevent risk and liability in the future.
“It’s also possible, during an audit that you find that there are folks who have fake documents that you can look at them, and they for whatever reason, they’re something that doesn’t look reasonably real, it could result in having to terminate people from employment if they can’t provide something else to show they are authorized,” she says.
And this is a crucial point in an internal audit — to terminate employees with suspect documents or potentially face an ICE raid.
“The best step in a proactive approach is to do an audit, have outside, independent auditors do it like attorneys or law firms, or do it internally, do training, make sure you’re doing things as good as possible, so that if you are audited, your liability is as low as possible, and you have a good faith effort shown that you’re really trying to do this the right way,” she says.
Campanaro says employers must screen all documents to ensure there’s no reason to believe they’re not legitimate. And then if an employer did its due diligence, then the company has fulfilled its responsibility.
“People often think, ‘Well, I have documents.’ That’s great. That’s the first step,” she says. “The second step is to look in and see if there is an area where you’re susceptible, or maybe things aren’t as good as you think, and that’s where some employers can get into bigger issues.”
Other things employers can do are use E-Verify and stay up to date on the latest information. Fisher & Phillips has some resources on its website to help. Campanaro says Fisher & Phillips also offers internal audit training, but above all, she says the real key to preparing is communication.
“Communicating with your workforce, letting them know what’s going on, or what you’re doing, just making sure everybody knows their rights under the Constitution, but making sure that anything that you’re providing to employees, you’re providing to all employees,” she says.
