Employers will need to pay closer attention to immigration paperwork to avoid potentially costly fines, said Lori Chesser, a Des Moines attorney who specializes in immigration law.

U.S. immigration officials have ratcheted up enforcement efforts through periodic “surges,” auditing businesses’ payroll and human resources records to search for evidence of unauthorized workers.

“Apparently, the Obama administration has decided that they really want to focus on employers to ensure they’re complying with the law,” Chesser said. Since announcing its new worksite enforcement strategy in April 2009, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has sent notices of inspection to more than 5,000 employers nationwide.

In Greater Des Moines, “we draw our fair share of these, and they really don’t release their parameters for these, but they seem to be looking at industries where there have been problems, such as the agriculture industry and small manufacturers,” she said. “The ones I’ve seen have been smaller companies.”

One of the key forms officials are checking is the I-9, a one-page document on which employers state that they’ve verified that each new employee is authorized to work in this country.

Once they receive notice from ICE, an employer has just three days to respond, which is why companies should prepare through advance training and internal audits, Chesser said.

Companies should “have someone look over a percentage of their I-9s just to see how they’re doing, because once people are trained, it’s a lot easier for them to spot good documents,” she said. “And it’s also easier for them to comply with the requirements, because there are a lot of technical parts that can catch people and confuse people.”

Employers should also carefully consider whether enrolling in the E-Verify system that ICE has instituted to check employees’ I-9 forms against government records makes sense for them, Chesser said. For instance, companies may not realize that they are waiving their Fourth Amendment rights protecting them from search and seizure of the workplace when they enroll. “You’re saying, ‘You can come in any time and check our documents,’ so it makes some people nervous,” she said.