I-9 Management: Deadlines, Storage, and Penalties

Sound I-9 management comes down to a handful of deadlines, a short list of acceptable documents, and a retention rule with two dates. Every U.S. employer must complete Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, for each new hire, keep the completed forms available for government inspection, reverify work authorization when it expires, and dispose of the forms only after the required retention period ends. Getting any of those pieces wrong exposes the business to per-form penalties that start at $288 and climb quickly when unauthorized workers are involved.¹

The Deadlines That Drive Everything

Two dates control the front end of the process. The employee must complete Section 1 no later than their first day of work for pay. They can do it any time after accepting the offer, but not later than day one.² You then have three business days from that first day of work for pay to complete Section 2. A Monday start means a Thursday deadline. If the job itself runs shorter than three days, Section 2 has to be finished by the first day of work.³

In Section 1 the employee gives their legal name, address, date of birth, and citizenship or immigration status by checking one of four boxes: U.S. citizen, noncitizen national, lawful permanent resident, or noncitizen authorized to work. The Social Security number field is voluntary unless you participate in E-Verify, in which case it becomes mandatory.⁴ If a preparer or translator helps the employee, that person has to complete and sign the certification on Page 3, even when the help is informal assistance from a bilingual coworker.⁵

Examining Documents the Right Way

After Section 1 is done, the employee presents original documents that prove identity and work authorization. USCIS publishes three lists, and the employee, not the employer, decides which combination to present.⁶

List A documents prove both identity and work authorization on their own. A U.S. passport, a U.S. passport card, or a Permanent Resident Card is enough by itself.
List B documents prove identity only, such as a state driver’s license or ID card with a photo.
List C documents prove employment authorization only, such as an unrestricted Social Security card or an original sealed birth certificate.

An employee who shows one List A document is finished. An employee without a List A document must show one from List B and one from List C.⁷

Physical examination of the originals is the default rule. You look at the actual documents, decide whether they reasonably appear genuine and relate to the person in front of you, and then record the document title, issuing authority, document number, and expiration date. Photocopies are not accepted, with one exception for certified copies of birth certificates.³ You are not expected to detect sophisticated forgery. The standard is whether the document reasonably appears genuine on its face.

If a document was lost, stolen, or is being replaced, the employee can present a receipt showing they applied for a replacement. The receipt is valid for 90 days from the date of hire, and the replacement document has to appear before that window closes. The same 90-day rule covers certain other receipts, including the arrival portion of Form I-94 with a temporary I-551 stamp for a lawful permanent resident awaiting a replacement Green Card.

Do Not Steer the Employee’s Choice

Requesting specific documents is one of the most common ways well-intentioned employers create liability. If someone presents a valid unexpired List A document, you cannot then ask for List B and C documents, and vice versa. You cannot reject documents that reasonably appear genuine because you would prefer to see a passport. Asking every new hire for a passport for consistency, or asking for “more” from employees who look or sound foreign, is document abuse and carries its own penalties separate from paperwork fines.⁷

Who Can Actually Examine the Documents

You do not have to complete Section 2 personally. Any person you designate can act as an authorized representative to examine documents and sign the form for you. USCIS does not require formal training or registration, and the representative does not have to be an employee, an HR professional, or even affiliated with your company.⁸ A notary public can serve as an authorized representative, but when doing so they act in a personal capacity and should not add a notary seal to the form.

The catch is liability. You remain fully responsible for whatever the representative does. If a friend of the new hire fills out Section 2, checks a wrong box, or accepts an expired document, the penalty falls on your business. That is worth spelling out in writing before you hand the form over.

Remote Examination for E-Verify Employers

Employers enrolled in E-Verify and in good standing may use a DHS-authorized alternative procedure to examine documents remotely rather than in person.⁹ Good standing means you are enrolled with respect to every hiring site using the procedure, you actually run new hires through E-Verify at those sites, and you follow all program requirements.

Consistency matters at each site. If you offer remote examination at a location, you must offer it to every employee there. You are allowed to draw a line between fully remote workers and onsite workers, applying remote examination only to remote hires, but the distinction cannot be based on citizenship, immigration status, or national origin.

Storing the Forms So You Can Produce Them Fast

Federal regulations let you store completed I-9s on paper, on microfilm or microfiche, or electronically.¹⁰ You can mix formats. Whatever you use, the forms have to be readily available for inspection. Electronic systems must maintain a secure and permanent audit trail recording the date of access, who accessed the record, and what action was taken.

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement serves a Notice of Inspection, you have exactly three business days to produce the requested forms.¹¹ Practically, that means keeping I-9s together and searchable rather than scattered inside individual personnel files. Businesses that store I-9s alongside general HR paperwork tend to lose time hunting for them when the clock is already running.

How Long to Keep Each Form

The retention rule has two dates and one comparison. Keep a completed I-9 for three years after the date of hire, or one year after the date employment ends, whichever is later.¹² A short-tenured employee is typically driven by the three-year date. A long-tenured employee is driven by the one-year-after-termination date.

Once both dates have passed, dispose of the form securely through shredding or permanent digital deletion. Keeping I-9s longer than required only gives auditors more paperwork to review.

Mergers and Acquisitions

If you acquire or merge with another business and keep its employees, you can either treat them as new hires and complete fresh I-9s, or treat them as continuing employees and retain the prior employer’s forms. Keeping the old forms means inheriting any errors on them, so a review-and-correct pass with each employee before an audit ever arrives is worth the time. If you generate new forms, use the effective date of the acquisition as the hire date in Section 2.¹³

Reverification When Authorization Expires

Employees whose work authorization has an expiration date must be reverified before that date. Reverification is done through Supplement B, formerly known as Section 3. U.S. citizens and noncitizen nationals are never reverified. Lawful permanent residents who presented a Permanent Resident Card in Section 2 are not reverified either, even if the card itself shows an expiration date.¹⁴

For everyone else, you examine a new document showing continued authorization and record the details in Supplement B. Build a tracking system that flags expirations well ahead of time. If an employee cannot produce documentation of continued authorization by the expiration date, employment must end. There is no grace period, and continuing to employ someone you know is unauthorized moves you into the highest penalty tier.

Name Changes

When a current employee legally changes their name through marriage, divorce, or court order, you do not create a new I-9. USCIS recommends updating the name fields in Supplement B and signing and dating the attestation block. You should not demand a marriage certificate or court order, though the employee may share one voluntarily.

Fixing Mistakes Without Making Them Worse

To correct an error, draw a single line through the incorrect information, write the correct information nearby, then initial and date the change. No correction fluid, no erasing. White-out on an I-9 is one of the fastest ways to draw an auditor’s attention, even when the underlying fix was innocent.¹⁵

Only the employee (or their original preparer or translator) can correct Section 1. Only the employer or authorized representative can correct Section 2 and Supplement B. If a completion date was left blank, enter the current date and initial it rather than backdating. In electronic systems, every correction has to appear in the audit trail.

If a form has multiple or substantial errors, such as an entire blank section or acceptance of an invalid document, you can redo the section on a new form and attach it to the original along with a written explanation of what was wrong and why the new form was created. When you find an error after the employee has already left, attach a signed and dated statement describing the problem and noting that the employee is no longer available to make corrections.¹⁶

What Violations Cost

I-9 penalties split into two categories: paperwork violations, and violations tied to actually hiring or continuing to employ unauthorized workers. The figures below reflect the inflation adjustment effective January 2025.¹

Paperwork violations, meaning failure to properly complete, retain, or make forms available for inspection, run $288 to $2,861 per form. Where the amount lands within that range depends on business size, good faith effort, seriousness of the violation, and whether the worker turned out to be unauthorized.¹⁷

Penalties for knowingly hiring or continuing to employ unauthorized workers escalate sharply:

First offense: $716 to $5,724 per unauthorized worker.
Second offense: $5,724 to $14,308 per unauthorized worker.
Third or subsequent offense: $8,586 to $28,619 per unauthorized worker.

Those are per-worker figures. Ten unauthorized workers on a third offense approaches $286,000 in civil penalties, and the government can pursue criminal charges when it can show a pattern or practice of violations. Running periodic internal audits and correcting problems before an inspector finds them is the most reliable way to keep those numbers hypothetical.

1
Federal Register. Civil Monetary Penalty Adjustments for Inflation
2
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Completing Section 1, Employee Information and Attestation
3
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Completing Section 2, Employer Review and Attestation
4
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Form I-9 Instructions
5
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Form I-9 – Employment Eligibility Verification
6
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Form I-9 Acceptable Documents
7
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 13.0 Acceptable Documents for Verifying Employment Authorization and Identity
8
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 2.0 Who Must Complete Form I-9
9
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Remote Examination of Documents (Optional Alternative Procedure to Physical Document Examination)
10
eCFR. 8 CFR 274a.2 – Verification of Identity and Employment Authorization
11
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Form I-9 Inspection Under Immigration and Nationality Act 274A
12
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 10.0 Retaining Form I-9
13
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Mergers and Acquisitions
14
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Completing Supplement B, Reverification and Rehires
15
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Correcting Errors or Missing Information on Form I-9
16
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Guidance for Employers Conducting Internal Employment Eligibility Verification Form I-9 Audits
17
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 11.8 Penalties for Prohibited Practices