Federal Agencies Raid Washington Beverage Company, Arresting 17

Four federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Investigation Unit and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), raided a Washington state food products manufacturer, arresting 17, including 16 allegedly undocumented immigrants.

A video on Facebook shared by immigration attorney and adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, Luis Cortes-Romero, showed what appeared to be federal agents removing nine men and seven women from Eagle Beverage Products in Kent. The handcuffed detainees were loaded into a white, unmarked bus. It is unclear if the 17th person arrested was an undocumented migrant or an employee of the company.

Through a statement, an ICE spokesperson told Seattle-area PBS station KUOW that the “arrested workers ‘had fraudulently represented their immigration status and submitted fraudulent documents and/or information to seek employment.’” The statement added that officers executed a federal search warrant as part of a broader “criminal investigation into the unlawful employment of aliens.”

Because the Trump administration is facing multiple lawsuits over its immigration practices, including illegal detentions and deportations, raids by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Investigations are under intense scrutiny. Tuesday’s raid at Eagle Beverage Products was a rare enforcement action, but in this single case, it appears the government dotted all the “i’s” and crossed all the “t’s.”

Raids for Form I-9 fraud are rare, and convictions are even rarer

Formal Form I-9 inspections by ICE are rare, raids are rarer, and arrests of employers are almost unprecedented.

An April 15 report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), authored by Daniel Costa, revealed that the number of I-9 inspections carried out by ICE has fluctuated through four administrations. The Obama administration steadily increased the number of inspections through 2013, peaking at 3,127, before falling to around 1,250 a year.

During the first Trump administration, ICE carried out 1,360 inspections in 2017, before surging to 6,456 in 2019. No inspections were conducted in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and a temporary policy loosening I-9 verification requirements was implemented the same year. That program didn’t end until July 31, 2023.

The only year the Biden administration was not impacted by the pandemic and eased ICE policies was 2024. According to the EPI, only 264 inspections were carried out, in part because the administration prioritized “labor exploitation.”

Even at the 2019 peak, the number of annual inspections was tiny, with 17.77 million companies in the U.S., according to the NAICS.

The IRS, DHS, and U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) provide very little information about criminal enforcement against employers. The most recent data is from April 2018 to March 2019, during the period of heightened enforcement by the Trump administration. A study from the University of Syracuse using Freedom of Information requests and data compiled from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) found that only 11 people and no employers were criminally prosecuted for I-9 fraud or related charges. A search of federal records found that no one was sentenced to jail time.

e-Verify is an online portal that enables employers to gain an additional layer of verification that the documents provided by a worker are authentic. The U.S. government e-Verify portal shows that Eagle Beverage Products (dba as Eagle Beverage & Accessory Prod.) opted into the program on December 14, 2015, and opted out on June 12, 2024. A second record shows the company opted into eVerify on March 1, 2010, and opted out on January 1, 2017. The overlap in dates may have been caused by the company changing its Application Tracking Systems (ATS) or introducing a new online employee onboarding software system with e-Verify integration.

It is important to note that none of the federal agencies involved in yesterday’s raid has provided specific information about the alleged employment eligibility fraud, and Eagle Beverage Products has not released a formal statement.

A Brief History of Form I-9 and e-Verify

Anyone who has held a job in the U.S. in the last 40 years has completed Form I-9. Introduced in November 1986 as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act, the law requires all companies to verify the legal status of their workers by reviewing and holding copies of documents that provide proof of eligibility.

Over the last 39 years, Form I-9 and the list of acceptable documents have changed little. Workers can provide a single document from List A, such as a U.S. Passport, Passport Card, or Permanent Resident Alien Card. Or, they can provide one document each from List B and List C, such as a Social Security card, certified birth certificate, driver’s license, military ID, or Native American tribal document. Employers are required to make copies of the provided documents and keep them with the signed Form I-9.

A problem that arose after the new law was implemented was that companies had no way to verify whether the provided documents were authentic. Some undocumented migrants provide fake or stolen identity information, while some employers willingly use forged documents to circumvent the law.

In November 1997, a program called Basic Pilot was rolled out in five states to provide an additional layer of electronic verification. In 2007, that program became known as e-Verify.

e-Verify is a government portal where employers upload the information provided by the employee. The document numbers and expiration dates are verified as authentic, and the employer is shown a photo of the person, typically using their driver’s license picture, based on the information provided. The employer is required to verify that the photo in the database matches their new employee.

When e-Verify cannot authenticate a document, and a manual government review by the Social Security Administration or the Department of Homeland Security can’t resolve the problem, it is called a Tentative Nonconfirmation. The employer has ten working days to notify the employee, and then the employee has ten working days to tell their new employer if they intend to fix the issue. Then, they have eight more working days to resolve the problem with their documentation. During that time, they are still eligible to work.

There are many reasons that e-Verify could flag a person who is legally eligible to work in the U.S. with a Tentative Nonconfirmation. However, if the issue is not resolved, the employer is required to fire the worker.

For some workers, I-9 verification isn’t a one-and-done process. Employees who are legally working by holding visas or work permits must have their information reverified before the documents expire.

The biggest problem created by the Immigration Reform and Control Act is that enforcement action almost exclusively targets the undocumented worker and not the employers who hire them. For large employers, the biggest risk after a raid is fines and increased scrutiny by ICE, which isn’t enough of a barrier to resolve the root cause.

Full Disclosure: The author of this story was the Director of Product Marketing at TalentWise, an employee screening and new employee onboarding solutions company originally based in Bothell, Washington. The company offered its customers an integrated e-Verify solution. In January 2016, TalentWise was acquired by SterlingBackcheck (now SterlingONE).

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