Podcast: How manufacturers can prepare for ICE enforcement

You’ve seen the high-profile raids of U.S. manufacturing facilities by federal immigration agents. These likely are just the beginning—labor and immigration attorney Jorge Lopez tells Senior Editor Laura Putre of IndustryWeek, Smart Industry’s sister brand, in this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast.

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“I think we did a survey, and about 83% of all manufacturing respondents were concerned about immigration having an actual effect on their processes,” Lopez told Putre.

“And I think if there's one area where it's going to be focused, it’s really compliance work—whether or not the workforce may be interrupted and continue to be lawfully employed.”

Increased federal funding for Immigration Customs Enforcement agents still hasn't hit the agency and won't have a measurable impact on staffing there for months, so look for a much more prominent role for ICE that shown so far in enforcement and the news going forward.

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So, expect site visits and raids to increase in the fourth quarter of 2025 and especially in the first half of 2026, Lopez says.

He also offers advice on how to prepare your paperwork for federal investigations, what companies are (and are not) obligated to provide, and how to limit legal exposure for your manufacturing operations.

Below is an excerpt from the podcast:

LP: Are there any other visa concerns in addition to TPS, would you say?

JL: I think the visa concerns deal with the part of the workforce that may be visa-dependent—meaning there are certain employment-authorized visa statuses that allow you to work based on sponsorship by a company.

In manufacturing, we usually see that in the engineering and quality control areas. In those scenarios where there is sponsorship, there may be more restrictive review of those applications, which could create problems for employers in that area.

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LP: Are you seeing an increase in audits? And what can manufacturers do to prepare for that possibility?

JL: We have. You know, when the Trump administration first took effect in January of this year, there was a lot of talk and concern about raids. And the concept of raids—I no longer use the word raid, I use the word site visits, okay? Because really it reflects better what's going on.

And site visits basically could be one of two things. It could be an I-9 audit, which is, I think, the easy pickings and the easy way of doing enforcement activity, because it doesn't cost the government a lot of money. An I-9 raid really involves enforcement, reviews, investigations, getting a warrant issued by a federal judge. And those take time and money and effort.

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An audit, on the other hand, is you come in, you present yourselves with a three-day notice. You come back, and depending on whether you come back in three days or a little bit longer—depending on what's been negotiated with the special agent in charge of the investigation—you then deal with production of information.

So, we are seeing an increase in audits. I think one of the key things going on is that the $165 billion issued to DHS—which is one of the more heavily funded agencies now in the federal government—about a little over $150 billion is going to be exclusively related to immigration enforcement. About $30 billion is immigration enforcement, and $45 billion is going to be for detention facilities.