Federal immigration enforcement does not impact every industry equally. In Part 2 of our 4-part series, we examine how regulatory agencies strategically target industry sectors characterized by high turnover, seasonal hiring, subcontracting, and decentralized workforces. From job-site enforcement in construction to operational halts in food manufacturing and evolving risks in healthcare, understanding your sector's distinct profile is critical to building a defensible compliance strategy.
Download the full report below: I-9 Enforcement and Workforce Compliance: The New Reality for Employers.
Deeper Dive into the Most Impacted Industries
Although all employers face heightened compliance obligations in the current environment, enforcement activity has not been evenly distributed. Federal agencies have concentrated resources on industries that have tended to rely on immigrant workers and are characterized by labor shortages, high employee turnover, seasonal workforce fluctuations, extensive subcontracting arrangements, and historically elevated rates of unauthorized alien employment.
The result has been a disproportionate compliance burden for businesses in the following sectors:
For employers in these industries, immigration compliance has become intertwined with workforce planning, operational continuity, and financial performance. Following is a review of each identified sector.
Agriculture: Persistent Vulnerability and Escalating Scrutiny
Agriculture has long occupied a unique position within the U.S. labor market. The industry's dependence on seasonal labor, combined with chronic workforce shortages, has historically made agricultural employers particularly vulnerable to immigration-related disruptions. That vulnerability intensified significantly early in 2025.
Federal enforcement agencies continued prioritizing agricultural operations for I-9 inspections, particularly focusing on workers whose employment authorization documents required reverification. At the same time, changes affecting humanitarian parole programs and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations created new uncertainty regarding workforce eligibility.
For many growers, the challenge extends beyond compliance to labor availability itself, which has become a strategic concern. Termination of humanitarian programs affecting workers from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela removed employment authorization for thousands of individuals who had previously been legally eligible to work. Simultaneously, ongoing litigation surrounding TPS programs created uncertainty regarding workers from several countries heavily represented within agricultural labor pools.
Compliance responsibilities have also become more complicated. Agricultural employers frequently rely on labor contractors, shared employment arrangements, and geographically dispersed workforces. Determining responsibility for Form I-9 completion, reverification, and document retention can become significantly more complex than in traditional employment settings. The reality is that many agricultural employers are relying on a labor broker who acts as its agent and sits in Mexico. The agriculture employer inherits any mistakes or uncorrected errors that the recruiter commits on its behalf. Because of the reputation of these companies regarding forced labor, confiscation of passports, and other heinous practices, they have been a ripe target for US government enforcement.
Smaller agricultural employers face additional challenges because many lack dedicated HR departments and sophisticated compliance systems.
For these organizations, a single audit can expose years of accumulated documentation deficiencies.
Construction: Enforcement Moves Directly to the Job Site
The construction industry experienced some of the most visible enforcement activity during the first year of the administration's enforcement campaign. Large-scale job site investigations, such as the one in Tallahassee, FL on May 29, 2025 resulted in the arrest of 100 workers. This, and several other high-profile enforcement actions highlighted the risks facing contractors, subcontractors, and labor brokers.
At the same time, state-level E-Verify mandates expanded compliance obligations for employers operating in certain jurisdictions. The industry's extensive reliance on subcontracting relationships presents unique challenges.
As enforcement activity increases, liability concerns increasingly extend throughout the contracting chain. Project delays have become a common consequence of enforcement actions. When work authorization concerns arise mid-project, employers may be forced to conduct emergency workforce reviews, replace personnel, or suspend portions of operations while compliance issues are resolved.
Worker mobility further complicates compliance efforts. Employees frequently move between projects, employers, and geographic locations, creating increased opportunities for documentation errors and reverification failures.
Hospitality: High Turnover Meets Heightened Enforcement
Few industries illustrate the intersection of workforce volatility and compliance risk more clearly than hospitality. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, restaurants, hotels, resorts, casinos, and entertainment venues routinely experience turnover rates above the national average. Each new hire generates a new Form I-9 obligation, creating thousands of compliance “events” annually for large operators.
The industry's staffing model inherently increases risk exposure. Seasonal hiring, part-time employment arrangements, and geographically dispersed operations make consistency difficult to achieve. Franchise organizations face additional challenges because hiring practices often vary considerably between locations. Federal enforcement actions during the past year demonstrated that hospitality remains a priority sector.
The operational consequences of enforcement activity can extend far beyond monetary penalties. Publicized ICE investigations can create significant reputational risk in addition to legal and operational consequences. For example, the May 2025 ICE raid at San Diego's Buona Forchetta restaurant generated national television coverage, millions of social media views, public demonstrations, and extensive community response. Similar enforcement actions affecting restaurants in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles received widespread media attention, illustrating how employment verification investigations can quickly become PR problems for businesses. The damage can be particularly significant in customer-facing industries where public perception directly influences revenue.
Organizations that implement standardized onboarding procedures, centralized compliance oversight, and regular internal audits are significantly better positioned to manage both regulatory and reputational risk related to federal (and state) employment regulations.
Manufacturing and Food Processing: Operational Disruption at Scale
Manufacturing and food processing organizations face a unique combination of workforce concentration, operational dependency, and enforcement exposure.
Unlike many industries where staffing disruptions can be managed gradually, manufacturing facilities often depend on large numbers of workers operating within highly coordinated production environments. Workforce interruptions can therefore create immediate operational consequences.
Recent enforcement actions have demonstrated the potential scale of disruption. Large worksite investigations, such as one conducted in June of 2025 at the Glenn Valley Foods plant in Omaha, NE, have resulted in worker detentions, substantial proposed penalties, and prolonged operational delays. Separately, in September 2025, Homeland Security conducted what officials described as the largest single-site enforcement operation in the agency's history, detaining 475 workers during a raid at Hyundai's electric-vehicle manufacturing and battery complex in Ellabell, Georgia.
In several instances, employers faced both regulatory enforcement and significant public scrutiny. For these types of businesses, a major enforcement action can affect production schedules, customer commitments, and investor confidence simultaneously.
Staffing Agencies: Compliance Responsibility Without Direct Control
It is unlikely any industry faces a more complex employment compliance challenge than staffing. These firms are repeatedly identified by immigration law firms as being at elevated enforcement risk based on actual ICE activity and penalty patterns.
Specifically, the firm of Holland & Hart LLP writes that ICE's revised enforcement approach substantially increases employer exposure and emphasizes that employers with large workforces and significant I-9 volume face materially greater inspection risk and financial exposure.
Staffing agencies operate at the intersection of multiple employers, multiple worksites, and rapidly changing workforce populations. Workers may be hired, reassigned, terminated, and rehired repeatedly over relatively short periods. These dynamics create significant compliance complexity. Determining when a new Form I-9 is required, managing reverification obligations, and maintaining accurate records across numerous client environments requires sophisticated systems and disciplined processes.
It is generally true that staffing firms employ more sophisticated Form I-9 compliance programs than many individual employers because they routinely process high volumes of new hires across multiple client locations. Their due diligence typically includes centralized onboarding, standardized verification procedures, electronic I-9 systems, E-Verify integration, automated reverification tracking, recurring recruiter training, internal audits, and dedicated compliance personnel. And there is significant guidance provided by service organizations such as Experian and the American Staffing Association. These controls are designed to reduce paperwork errors and improve audit readiness. Nevertheless, staffing firms remain among the employers most exposed to Form I-9 enforcement because their high-volume hiring, decentralized operations, and compressed onboarding timelines create significant compliance challenges despite these enhanced safeguards.
Healthcare: An Emerging Enforcement Priority
While healthcare was not historically viewed as a primary immigration enforcement target for federal agencies, that perception began to change in 2025. Persistent healthcare labor shortages have compelled providers to intensify recruitment efforts across a broad range of occupations, including registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, nursing assistants, long-term care staff, home health workers, and other specialized clinical roles. US Health and Human Services healthcare workforce projections continue to forecast significant shortages across many of these occupations, while long-term care and home-health providers report ongoing difficulty attracting and retaining qualified personnel.
Many care-related organizations rely heavily on workers holding temporary employment authorization, making I-9 and other employment status reverification management increasingly important. Hospitals, clinics, nursing facilities, and healthcare staffing agencies often employ workers across multiple locations and organizational structures. Ensuring consistent compliance practices throughout these environments requires significant coordination.
In early 2025, DHS initiated efforts to end or shorten TPS designations for multiple countries including Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua among others. In 2026, the Supreme Court issued emergency rulings allowing the administration to proceed with termination of TPS protections for certain groups while litigation continued. These rulings significantly increased uncertainty for both employees and employers because work authorization could expire with relatively little notice following court action.
Given continuing workforce shortages throughout the sector, healthcare employers can expect to face increasing regulatory attention in the coming years.
Key Takeaways
While immigration enforcement affects all employers, the evidence demonstrates that enforcement activity is concentrated within industries that rely heavily on immigrants for seasonal labor, high-volume hiring, subcontracted workforces, and employees with temporary work authorization.
Organizations operating in agriculture, construction, hospitality, manufacturing, food processing, staffing, and healthcare face disproportionate operational and financial risk. Industry-specific workforce strategies are now essential components of compliance planning.
Protecting a high-risk workforce requires moving beyond standard onboarding to address sector-specific vulnerabilities across every hiring location. In Part 3, we will break down the specific federal policy directives, legislative actions, and regulatory shifts driving this enforcement surge—including the March 2026 reclassification of Form I-9 errors.
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