California Employers Must Walk ICE Tightrope

As we predicted in a recent blog post which you can find here, federal ICE agents are targeting California employers and making California workplaces battle zones for federal immigration raids. According to today’s story in the New York Times, employers throughout California are reporting more surprise ICE audits. This comes a week after ICE raids occurred in Oakland and the surrounding Bay Area. This means that California employers should review their employment files for proper hiring documents, including I-9 forms for all employees.

But of course nothing is ever that simple. This is California, after all.  So while California employers are busy worrying about complying with federal immigration laws, they also have to comply with a competing state law that prohibits employers from cooperating with ICE and volunteering employee information. That’s the legal tightrope all California employers must walk now that Governor Brown signed the “Immigrant Workers Protection Act,” which we blogged about here.

You can read today’s New York Times article here.