U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has updated its Form I-9 inspection guidance for the second time this year, in an August 31, 2026 revision of its inspection fact sheet, the law firm Seyfarth Shaw LLP reported in an October 8 legal update. Form I-9 is the employment-eligibility form every U.S. employer must complete for every worker.
Source: Seyfarth Shaw LLP
The most notable change is a new Notice of Expired or Rescinded Immigration Status and/or Employment Authorization, which ICE may issue when an employee loses work authorisation after an audit has begun. Seyfarth said ICE states that the notice does not, by itself, allege employer wrongdoing, but it signals continued focus on work-authorisation issues that arise during audits.
What changed earlier this year still applies
The August update does not change the stricter framework announced earlier this year, under which a number of common deficiencies were reclassified from technical, correctable errors to substantive violations that can be fined immediately. Those include missing dates of birth, missing A-numbers or USCIS numbers where required, missing employee signature dates, incomplete preparer or translator information, incomplete Section 2 document information, missing first-day-of-employment information, improper remote verification, and weak electronic I-9 audit trails, Seyfarth said.
Immigration law firm NPZ & B Law Group, in a separate analysis, said the reclassification took effect with ICE's March 16, 2026 fact-sheet update and that substantive fines for 2026 run from $288 to $2,861 per form, with each deficiency on a form counting separately.
Source: NPZ & B Law Group / VisaServe
How fines and hearings now work
ICE also clarified its penalty method: violation percentages are calculated separately for paperwork violations and uncorrected technical errors, on the one hand, and for knowingly hiring or continuing to employ unauthorised workers, on the other — addressing concerns about a possible double penalty, Seyfarth said. Procedurally, requests for a hearing before the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer must now be received by ICE within 30 days of a Notice of Intent to Fine, rather than merely made within that period, and ICE directed that fines be issued in certain situations instead of warning notices, according to a Mondaq summary of the same update.
Source: Mondaq / Seyfarth Shaw
For Punjabi and other diaspora employers in the United States — including restaurants, farms, construction firms and trucking companies that employ many immigrant workers — the practical message from the law firms is the same: review Forms I-9 proactively, fix the electronic system's audit trail, and do not wait for an ICE inspection to find missing dates, signatures or document details, because many of those errors can no longer be corrected penalty-free after an inspection begins. This report is general information from published legal updates, not legal advice for any specific business.