I-9 & E-Verify compliance
A Notice of Inspection lands as an ordinary letter and starts the clock. For construction, hospitality and food-processing employers, the fines hide in the I-9s you already have on file. See your exposure in two minutes, then fix it before it is found.
The estimate below is real and yours to keep. The full per-input breakdown and remediation checklist unlock when you enter your email.
I-9 Exposure Calculator
Two minutes. No I-9s uploaded. Runs entirely in your browser.
Hires whose documents are verified remotely — a 2026 substantive-error hotspot.
Your I-9 risk tier
This is the profile ICE targets. Treat remediation as urgent — substantive errors have no cure period.
Indicative civil-fine exposure
~$153,000
most-likely exposure
Full modeled range $16,416 to $288,961
Modeled only from the eight answers you gave and the published DHS penalty schedule ($288-$2,861 per Form I-9, 8 CFR 274a.10, effective Jan 2, 2025) — not a reading of your files, and capped so it cannot run away. Every input's contribution is itemized once you unlock the breakdown below.
Enter your email to unlock your full report
The estimate above is yours to keep. No card, no I-9s uploaded.
Who's behind WorksiteShield
WorksiteShield is built by Merrowby. We are not a law firm, and this is not legal advice.
The calculator and the audit are modeled on the sources your own attorney would cite: the DHS civil-penalty schedule (8 CFR 274a.10, effective January 2, 2025) and ICE's March 16, 2026 Form I-9 Inspection guidance. We do the mechanical audit so your counsel only spends time where legal judgment is actually required.
Answer eight questions about your workforce and I-9 process. The calculator models a realistic error range and turns it into a fine-exposure range using the current DHS penalty schedule. Nothing leaves your browser.
You bring your existing I-9s in once, paper scanned or digital. A WorksiteShield agent reconciles them against your payroll roster: missing forms, blank or late fields, expired reverifications, the substantive errors ICE now fines on sight. Every new hire is checked as it is added.
Your subscription keeps a clean, defensible file year-round: a live reverification calendar, error flags updated as ICE reclassifies them, and a standing remediation checklist. The mechanical work is handled; the genuine legal questions are flagged for your counsel.
Why this is urgent now
March 16, 2026
ICE's updated Form I-9 Inspection fact sheet moved more than ten routine mistakes, a missing date of birth, an incomplete Section 2 field, remote-verification gaps, from technical to substantive. Substantive violations are fined on sight, with no 10-day cure period.
January 2, 2025
A DHS inflation-adjustment final rule raised the civil penalty for one paperwork or substantive I-9 violation to $288-$2,861, assessed per Form I-9, so a back-catalog of small errors compounds fast (8 CFR 274a.10).
Through 2025
The rate of I-9 Notices of Inspection in 2025 was reported to be substantially higher than in previous years, with penalties levied across construction, staffing, hospitality, manufacturing and retail.
Figures per the current DHS civil penalty schedule (8 CFR 274a.10, effective Jan 2, 2025) and ICE's March 16, 2026 Form I-9 Inspection guidance. E-Verify enrollment reduces, but does not replace, the Form I-9 obligation.
A monthly subscription that keeps your whole I-9 stack audit-ready year-round, not just the day after you are served. Less than one paperwork fine ($288-$2,861 each), locked in at the founding rate before it moves to $249.
Your lawyer bills by the hour and starts after you are served. Your office manager is not a compliance specialist. This is a specialist watching the whole stack, every day.
$149 /moRegular $249/mo
Lock in $149/mo. Reserve with your email.
It captures the I-9 at onboarding, it doesn't audit the forms you already have. Your liability lives in your back-catalog: the blank fields, missing forms and expired reverifications sitting in files from past hires. WorksiteShield reconciles that existing stack against your roster, models the exposure, and hands you a fix list. That is a different job from collecting the next new hire's form.
You still should for the genuine legal calls, and WorksiteShield hands those to your counsel with a clean file. But a lawyer bills by the hour and usually starts after you've been served. The mechanical 80% (missing forms, blank dates, overdue reverifications, roster reconciliation) doesn't need a lawyer's rate. We clear that first so counsel spends time only where judgment is actually required. This is not legal advice.
A Notice of Inspection is not a raid; it's a letter, and in 2025 they landed across construction, hospitality, food processing, staffing, manufacturing and retail. Because penalties are assessed per Form I-9, a small employer with a few dozen sloppy forms can face five- or six-figure exposure. Smaller teams usually have the least process, which is exactly what an audit finds.
No. It's an indicative range built from your own answers, using the published DHS penalty schedule ($288-$2,861 per form). We show every input's contribution to the score, we cap the model so it can't run away, and we label it clearly: these are modeled priors, not a measurement of your files, and not legal advice. If your process is tight, the number says so.
E-Verify does not replace the Form I-9. You still complete and retain an I-9 for every hire, and E-Verify does nothing about the paperwork errors already in your files. It lowers knowing-hire risk, that's why the calculator gives it credit, but it is not a substitute for a correct, complete I-9 stack.
The calculator on this page uploads nothing, it runs entirely in your browser. The deeper agent audit is opt-in and scoped: you decide what it reads, it runs on your files, and it exists to produce your remediation plan, not to move your data anywhere it doesn't need to be.
Neither do we. The agent does the mechanical audit: reconciling forms to your roster, flagging blank or late fields, and tracking reverification dates. Anything that needs legal judgment is surfaced for you and your counsel, not decided by the tool. Think of it as a very fast, very thorough checklist, an accelerant for your team and your lawyer, not a replacement for either.
Reserve your founding-cohort place with your email and go first when onboarding opens. You will see the price before you subscribe.
Not sure yet? Size your exposure first.