The Briefing
- White House Border Czar Tom Homan announced Sunday that a major new worksite enforcement plan has cleared Homeland Security Investigations and is expected to land on DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin's desk within days, according to reporting published October 19, 2026.
- The strategy calls for private contractors to conduct large-scale I-9 audits and refer both administrative and criminal red flags to federal investigators — shifting the enforcement target from workers to the businesses that hire them.
- Penalties for employers caught knowingly hiring unauthorized workers can reach $28,619 per violation; separate paperwork fines for substantive I-9 form errors range from $288 to $2,861 per form, according to current ICE civil monetary penalty schedules.
- The plan's fate rests with a DHS secretary who has publicly signaled a preference for targeted individual arrests over broad worksite sweeps, creating an unresolved tension at the top of the department.
A far-reaching new worksite enforcement strategy that could expose thousands of American businesses to federal audits, criminal investigations, and fines as high as $28,619 per violation has cleared its first internal review — and could reach Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin's desk within the coming week.
That moment will force a public reckoning inside the Trump administration: an enforcement-first faction pushing criminal accountability for employers versus a cabinet secretary who has publicly prioritized targeted arrests over broad workplace sweeps since taking office in March.
The Plan: Contractors, Bulk Audits, and Criminal Referrals
Rather than relying on armed Homeland Security Investigations agents to conduct employment records reviews, the proposal calls for hiring private contractors to perform I-9 audits at a scale the existing agent workforce cannot match. The contractor model would allow the government to flag potential violations across thousands of employers simultaneously before routing administrative and criminal referrals to HSI special agents for follow-up.
Border Czar Homan told Fox News on Sunday that he had personally reviewed the draft plan after requesting that HSI develop the proposal: "I know the worksite enforcement plan just cleared last week out of HSI because I asked for the plan." He added that he expects Secretary Mullin to receive it within days.
The updated strategy adds a significant layer beyond prior enforcement models: federal authorities intend to pursue criminal prosecution of businesses that knowingly employ unauthorized workers, not merely levy administrative fines. The plan also places special emphasis on identity fraud, targeting workers who use counterfeit documents to steal Social Security numbers, with prosecution as the stated objective.
Homan was direct about the dual aim of the effort: "It's not just about arresting aliens. It's about holding employers accountable so they don't try employing illegal aliens."
Inside Homan's Vision for Mass I-9 Inspections
The contractor-based audit model was first outlined by Homan in a July 15, 2026 interview with the Center for Immigration Studies, where he described a centralized operation capable of processing employer records in bulk. Under the proposal, contractors would flag both administrative deficiencies and criminal indicators before forwarding those cases to HSI, freeing agents to focus on investigations and enforcement operations rather than paperwork reviews.
The plan specifically coordinates enforcement across multiple federal agencies — the IRS, the Department of Labor, the Social Security Administration, and the Department of Justice — meaning that a routine I-9 review could quickly expand into a payroll audit, a wage-and-hour investigation, or a criminal referral. Employment attorneys tracking the policy rollout since early 2026 say no standard compliance posture was designed to absorb that kind of compounding exposure.
Businesses working through staffing agencies or subcontractors face elevated risk under this model, since contractor agreements do not shield a company from liability if it was on notice that its labor pipeline included workers without valid employment authorization.
The Mullin Variable: A Secretary With a Different Playbook
The plan's path forward depends on a department head who has, at least publicly, been moving in a different direction.
In an October 2026 interview with Breitbart, Secretary Mullin said DHS has become "very focused on targeting individuals, instead of doing job site raids, Home Depot raids — which are okay, but you don't know who you are gathering all the time." Mullin did not frame the shift as an outright ban on worksite operations but described a change in priority toward individuals who carry final removal orders, concentrating resources on people with confirmed records rather than broad sweeps that net an unpredictable mix of individuals.
That posture has drawn sharp criticism from immigration hardliners. Under Mullin, DHS officials met at agency headquarters with the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, a business lobby representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and major trade associations that depend on immigrant labor. The engagement was the first of its kind since Trump's return to the White House and generated backlash from conservative commentators who saw it as a concession to industry interests.
Mullin further inflamed that criticism when he responded publicly to reports of ICE activity in southwest Kansas, clarifying on social media that enforcement operations in the region were targeted actions against individuals with final removal orders — not worksite operations. The statement was widely read as distancing the department from employer-focused enforcement.
Homan's public announcement Sunday represents a direct effort to shift that calculus ahead of the November 3 midterm elections, in which immigration enforcement has emerged as a central campaign issue.
Political Calculus: Business Sectors Watching Closely
The political stakes extend well beyond enforcement policy. President Trump has previously signaled concern about economic disruption in agriculture, construction, meatpacking, hospitality, and restaurants — sectors that depend heavily on immigrant labor and whose donor networks within the Republican Party make aggressive enforcement politically sensitive. DHS has already opened a guest-worker visa program to the dairy industry under Mullin, a signal of the administration's ambivalence.
ICE's revised enforcement approach — detailed in a March 2026 update to the agency's I-9 inspection guidelines that reclassified several previously correctable form errors as immediately fineable — signals that the compliance environment is already tightening regardless of whether the Homan plan receives approval. Employers who once corrected minor deficiencies during an audit window no longer have that option for a growing list of violations.
What Employers Should Do Now
The data infrastructure supporting a mass-audit campaign is already in place. A memorandum of understanding signed April 7, 2025 between DHS and the IRS gives ICE access to individual taxpayer identity and location data for people under criminal investigation — enabling agents to cross-reference enforcement targets against IRS records and locate workers whose documents may be fraudulent. The MOU covers identity data, not employer records or financial details in full, but it creates a pathway for employment investigations to trigger broader scrutiny.
Separately, ProPublica reported in March 2026 that DHS had discussed seeking access to the Federal Parent Locator Service, a system maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services that includes the National Directory of New Hires — a database containing employment details on virtually every working adult in the country. Both DHS and HHS later denied that a formal request had been submitted, and legal analysts noted the access would likely face court challenges. The episode nonetheless illustrated how broadly federal agencies are exploring data-sharing arrangements to support worksite enforcement.
Businesses in agriculture, meatpacking, construction, and hospitality should treat the period before a formal plan announcement as a window for proactive I-9 compliance review. Given the multi-agency coordination described in immigration attorneys' analyses of Homan's July proposal, a single audit could simultaneously open exposure under labor law, tax law, and criminal statutes — a compounding risk that standard I-9 compliance programs were never designed to address on their own.
The decision on whether to authorize that risk for American employers now rests with Secretary Mullin.
© {{Year}} Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.