ICE ICE Baby w/ Desiree Throckmorton

Stop, collaborate, and listen — ICE ICE Baby is coming for your HR department.

Strap in, kids. On this episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, we bring on Desiree Throckmorton to explain why ICE just got a $170B bazooka and employers are suddenly sweating harder than Joel at a tramp-stamp convention.

We’re talking 10,000 fresh ICE agents, 15,000 audits, raids at Hyundai, visas priced like Super Bowl tickets, and employers who can't even find their I-9s (some are apparently stored on a manager’s old desktop, which is definitely fine and not terrifying).

Desiree breaks it down: if you don’t know where your I-9s are… ICE will. And they love surprise visits.

Tune in for tattoos, terror, and talent acquisition doom.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Joel Cheesman (00:31.762)

It's the show your mom warned you about, AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, Chad Sowash's riding shotgun as we welcome Desiree Throckmorton, senior consultant at Outsolve and former TA manager Kaiser Permanente to the show. Desiree, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous podcast.

Desiree Throckmorton (00:53.89)

Hey there. Good to see you.

Joel Cheesman (00:56.485)

Is that nervous or like just I'm disgusted that I'm on this show? Okay, okay. Well, this is where you look cool. Cause we're gonna ask you about sort of who you are, what makes you tick. Tell us about Desiree.

Chad Sowash (01:00.012)

Relax, relax Desiree, relax.

Desiree Throckmorton (01:01.886)

It just sounds like I'm really boring.

Desiree Throckmorton (01:13.678)

Oh, I'd say my kids make me tick. They are like the coolest people I know and probably because they're my kids. They keep me pretty busy. My daughter just turned 18 and fun fact, we just got matching tattoos on Sunday.

Chad Sowash (01:29.476)

Ooh, what are they? What are they and where are they? Come on, come on, give it up.

Joel Cheesman (01:29.967)

Stop, what is it and where is it?

Desiree Throckmorton (01:33.294)

Mine, so mine is actually on my ankle because I'm old and hers is on her forearm because she's young. And it's my ankle. Yeah. And it's a sun to represent my mom plus a Gaelic symbol for strength and perseverance. And it hurt, by the way.

Chad Sowash (01:40.6)

Yours is where again? Okay. That makes sense, yeah.

Joel Cheesman (01:41.734)

Yeah, where's yours?

Joel Cheesman (01:52.284)

Gaelic.

Chad Sowash (01:54.472)

I would, I mean it's a needle going into your skin. So I would assume Irish background. Okay, I'm not sure the, mean, just because you have red hair doesn't mean that, you know, just, wouldn't make that connection.

Desiree Throckmorton (01:59.884)

Yes, very much.

Desiree Throckmorton (02:04.898)

Yeah, yeah, I actually got married in Ireland.

Joel Cheesman (02:04.978)

So is she, so I have a 19 year old, she in school? Is she still in high school? Is she looking at, she in that journey?

Desiree Throckmorton (02:12.162)

Yeah, she's an old senior. She's an old senior. She's actually, I'm just going to brag for a second. She's a super duper flag football star. So she's hopefully going to play in college and maybe in the Olympics if,

Joel Cheesman (02:17.115)

Okay.

Chad Sowash (02:19.989)

We didn't do it, time out, time out. In college? Are we talking intramurals? Are we talking the possibility of actually getting some college paid for here? You got no stop it. That's amazing. That's awesome. yeah.

Joel Cheesman (02:24.294)

Really? What position?

Desiree Throckmorton (02:26.508)

Yeah. No.

Desiree Throckmorton (02:31.948)

Yeah, yeah. Look her up, Yeah. Actually, there's more programs on the East Coast than there are in California, but she wants to stay in California, which is I'm glad, but I just wish that she would venture a little bit.

Joel Cheesman (02:32.818)

California is so prog... It's gotta be California, right? This has to be a California.

Joel Cheesman (02:45.799)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (02:47.78)

It's all about the hips with flag football, cheeseman. You remember that, right?

Desiree Throckmorton (02:49.718)

Yeah, she's pretty amazing. She's actually on the boys team too. So she's the backup quarterback for the tackle football team. So she's playing on Thursday for that team and I can't wait for that to be over.

Chad Sowash (02:55.652)

She's backup quarterback for the tackle full padded, full contact quarterback. Quarterback. Wow. That's amazing. That's does she play baseball? That's amazing. That's amazing.

Desiree Throckmorton (03:02.54)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She does more of these podcasts than I do.

Joel Cheesman (03:13.498)

Wow. Well, I'm trying to convince mine to get matching tramp stamps, but so far he's not going for that.

Desiree Throckmorton (03:19.308)

Yeah, I think you should do that.

Chad Sowash (03:19.652)

That's only because Cheeseman already has one and he wants others to have the same one.

Desiree Throckmorton (03:24.27)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (03:26.716)

Come on now, don't be naughty. Don't be naughty.

Desiree Throckmorton (03:28.256)

That's a dad.

Chad Sowash (03:31.14)

no, let's get Desiree moving on why we're actually here. Cause you do have, I don't want to call it a sexy topic. is a topic that is, cause ice is not sexy right now. It is all over the place. So you would think that it is because every news outlet in the world, in the world, when I was in Europe, we were seeing videos of ice.

Desiree Throckmorton (03:42.68)

So pressing.

Desiree Throckmorton (03:46.627)

Right,

Chad Sowash (03:56.748)

all over the country. mean, this is something that the whole world is watching. This is something that is literally unprecedented. That's never happened like this in the US before, because obviously we have social media and we have many different ways to catch on video and things of that nature. Other than obviously the Japanese internment camps that we had during World War II, right? Going back in history where we have done some of these things before. there's some...

Joel Cheesman (04:11.58)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (04:24.356)

very interesting stats that you have shared with us. I'd like you to kind of go through those and start telling kind of like around why is this happening and why is it so important for employers to really pay attention right now.

Desiree Throckmorton (04:40.94)

Yeah, gosh, I just don't even know where to start besides maybe the big, beautiful bill, you know, granted $170 billion to ICE. I mean, that's an insane amount of money when you think about, you know, the deficit. I mean, that alone, you know, 30 million of it will go to hiring ICE agents, you know. So I think to your question of what should employers be worried about those 10,000 ICE agents that they're hiring that are going to be in part, you know,

Chad Sowash (04:55.204)

Mm.

Desiree Throckmorton (05:09.356)

looking at compliance and enforcement for organizations to see are you in compliance? Do you have unauthorized employees at your workplace? And so I think that's biggest concern.

Chad Sowash (05:24.43)

So this isn't just agents who are going in and what we're seeing on TV, who are getting outrun by, you know, kids on bicycles in Chicago. These are actual enforcement agents from the standpoint of auditors. Okay. Okay. So, so talk about, because we don't see that, right? So, so talk a little bit about that. And is that, is there a connection between that and also the raids that are happening at manufacturing companies and things of that nature?

Desiree Throckmorton (05:29.026)

Right, right. Yeah, yeah.

Desiree Throckmorton (05:38.122)

Absolutely. It's, it's. Yeah.

Desiree Throckmorton (05:53.133)

Yeah, exactly. think that in, I mean, just kind of like in his first term, you know, he started off with doing a lot more, you know, work for workplace reviews, compliance investigations, COVID hit and really derailed his plan. And now he's kind of, you know, guns away, isn't going again. And so the, the beginning of his focus has been on, you know, those arrests and, you know, targeted enforcement, whereas

Chad Sowash (06:04.45)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Desiree Throckmorton (06:21.934)

Moving forward, think they're going to get organized for more of a concerted effort towards compliance enforcement inside organizations, inside the workplaces, through the, you know, notice of inspections and that process. So I think with the hiring of these agents, that's going to be the 2026 focus.

Joel Cheesman (06:43.474)

Dez around, we talk a lot about the industry. Let's I nine and back. Like this isn't a huge issue, technically, typically for us. So for a lot of our listeners that don't even know what I nine is and what sort of the lay of the land is, maybe some examples of what's going on. Uh, just take a little bit of step back and give us a lay of the land of what this law is and why it's sort of becoming important today.

Desiree Throckmorton (07:07.82)

Yeah, that's a great place to start. What the heck are we even talking about here as it relates to an employer? It's a form that everybody fills out when they start a new job. It's this one page form that says, are you? What's your citizenship or immigration status? And then you assign and attest to the information being accurate. And then the employer has to validate your identity and work authorization through documents that would prove it. So you're a citizen, I would have a US passport, for example.

Chad Sowash (07:22.436)

Mm-hmm.

Desiree Throckmorton (07:37.263)

And it's oftentimes a PDF form that employers fill out. Maybe the hiring manager reviews the documents and winks and says, yeah, I saw your documents. Maybe you're work authorized. Maybe you're not. Maybe I don't really know what I'm doing. And it turns out maybe that person doesn't have work authorization in the United States. that knowingly hiring can be criminal convictions associated with those behaviors. So I think a lot of employers don't realize the impact of

Joel Cheesman (07:49.938)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (07:51.14)

Mm-hmm.

Desiree Throckmorton (08:06.222)

those decisions that are being made just by virtue of the fact that until 2023, this had to be done in person, right? So you would come in in person, you'd show your documents, they compare your picture to you being presented in their office to say, is this the same person? Well, in 2023, they said, now you can do it virtually through sort of a video chat, just like this, to look at the documents, look at you, does this seem like the same person? And so because of that, it's now, you

giving some flexibility and getting that done, especially for the remote workplaces. A lot of people don't have HR in every building. I mean, that's a pretty unusual thing these days because there's not really a necessity for it.

Joel Cheesman (08:48.752)

And is this an old law? it new? Is it all businesses or small businesses exempt?

Chad Sowash (08:49.134)

So.

Desiree Throckmorton (08:52.066)

Very old. Yeah, very old, back to 1980s. mean, this this goes back to 1980s. And you know, your question of like, why does this even matter? Well, employers have to keep track of this for every current employee in the US. And so if they're not organized, exactly, it doesn't matter.

Joel Cheesman (08:58.588)

Okay.

Joel Cheesman (09:07.058)

No matter the size of the employer, under 50, you're affected by this. Give me an example of what's happening. Are ICE raids happening in a slaughterhouse? Show me your documents and they're putting the employer under a microscope. Paint a picture for me with what's going on on the ground.

Desiree Throckmorton (09:12.248)

Bon voyage.

Desiree Throckmorton (09:26.062)

Yeah, I would say it's a combination of things. know, the ICE raids are more like concerted efforts and investigations that are, know, the ICE is essentially targeting an organization because they have some reason to believe they have unauthorized workers. Let's say they picked up someone and found out they were unauthorized and asked, where do they work? Are there other people that maybe work there that, you know, could also be unauthorized? So that could, you know, create that sort of interest for ICE to go in and

essentially target them. So that's sort of the ICE raid side of things. But then there is the aspect of, like we said, just the compliance enforcement through the notice of inspection process, where they maybe are going to just go through and do the compliance evaluation, see how you're doing, and they would basically give you three days to provide your I-9s for a certain number of people. There's not really a

targeted number where people ask all the time, like, how many people are they going to need I-9s for? It's like, well, it really just depends. It could be for the whole location. They could say, give me 100 of people who are current employees and some who are terminated employees. It's not always the same. So it's different avenues based on what they want to enforce, whether, like I said, it's a particular individual they're looking to obtain or if they're just kind of doing a check of compliance to see how you're doing because there's a

pretty high monetary fine if they find out you're not doing it right. There's a case out of Colorado where they were doing it wrong and it's $8 million in fines as a result of just not doing it right and having unauthorized workers.

Joel Cheesman (11:00.634)

Whoa.

Chad Sowash (11:03.554)

Yeah, well, mean that.

Joel Cheesman (11:03.996)

Sorry, $8 million. Is that what? $8 million? Wow.

Chad Sowash (11:08.196)

Yeah, depending on the size of the company, that could be a swift kick, right? Yeah. So if you can help kind of like make a connection, if you can, it'd be great. So we saw that at the Hyundai plant in Georgia, there were 300, I think, detained South Koreans. And for the listeners, just in case you've never bought a Hyundai or anything, it's a South Korean car.

Desiree Throckmorton (11:11.886)

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Desiree Throckmorton (11:24.642)

Okay.

Almost 500. Yeah, yeah.

Desiree Throckmorton (11:36.206)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (11:37.316)

They were actually coming over. How did or did or do you know if I-9s actually triggered that rate or not? Because it seemed like the company in itself were literally bringing employees over to be able to set up manufacturing here in the US because they wanted to go from 30 % of the cars that Hyundai sells in the...

actually manufactured in the US today, they wanted that to go to 70%. So they wanted to like increase. So they had to bring workers over who had the knowledge and so on and so forth. So was this an I-9 kind of scenario? What actually triggered something like this to happen?

Desiree Throckmorton (12:15.692)

You know, I don't think it was an I-9 audit that necessarily triggered it. But I do know that a lot of the folks that they picked up were contractors. So maybe not even employees of Hyundai. They were, like you said, brought in. And most are not many of them had visas, but they're just the wrong kind of visas. And I think that's kind of the challenge that employers have is that a visa is not a visa. It's like you may have a travel visa, but you may not have a work visa.

Chad Sowash (12:19.662)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (12:43.318)

Right.

Desiree Throckmorton (12:43.822)

And that brings us to like the H1B visas where, you know, they're jacking the price from, $2,000 $5,000 to $100,000 to sponsor someone from an H1B visa. So these folks may may not have been sort of eligible for the H1B visa, but you know, it's a lottery system. There's only 85,000 of those. You those are not as, you're not going to have hundreds of people on an H1B visa in the same place, I would imagine.

Chad Sowash (12:54.946)

Yes.

Chad Sowash (13:10.87)

Right, right, right. this, I mean, that in itself feels like a money grab. Literally going from, it two grand to a hundred thousand, and that's for the first six years. And for the most part, that's gonna be, you know, on the back of the company. do, yeah, yeah, the employer. So do you feel like this is going to pretty much, you know, bring that program, which is the genius visa, by the way, listeners.

Desiree Throckmorton (13:15.938)

Yeah. yeah.

Desiree Throckmorton (13:21.998)

Yeah.

Desiree Throckmorton (13:28.726)

Yeah, the employer pays that.

Desiree Throckmorton (13:39.084)

Yeah. Yeah.

Chad Sowash (13:39.608)

The H1B is called the Genius Listener. We're trying to bring geniuses from around the world to the US, which we've always done and it's always worked incredibly well for us. Do you think that's gonna stamp out that program for the most part?

Desiree Throckmorton (13:52.455)

I would absolutely imagine it may be really hard to justify a hundred thousand dollar fee on top of someone who makes probably more than a hundred thousand dollars. I mean, I think that's the whole purpose behind it is to derail it, which is really sad because there's a lot of economic value to those programs. I lot of the research has shown that there's more patents, more startups that have longer, know, longevity that are associated with these H1B programs. So it's really kind of sad that that's being derailed.

Chad Sowash (13:59.79)

Yes. Yeah.

Chad Sowash (14:07.854)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (14:16.132)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (14:21.628)

So Desiree, I want to push back a little bit on that. And if you remember Trump's inauguration, the front row was pretty much billionaires row of the mag seven and the biggest tech companies on the planet. I would argue that they can afford the a thousand dollars. And in fact, it probably gives them an advantage that smaller companies don't have. It gives them maybe a retention tool to keep those people around. Would you agree with that or would you, sort of push back on that?

Desiree Throckmorton (14:31.8)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (14:36.452)

they can.

Desiree Throckmorton (14:40.536)

Yeah. Yeah.

Desiree Throckmorton (14:49.494)

I would think that what it does is exactly that. It basically gives an advantage to the bigger pocketbook that can actually afford to shell out that money. And I think that other companies that would benefit from it, know, healthcare, mean, healthcare is obviously hurting at this point, so they're not going to be able to pay for those visas.

Joel Cheesman (14:57.938)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (15:10.84)

Yeah, yeah. Well, not to mention, and let's go back, not all geniuses come in for, you know, one of the biggest, the biggest companies in the world, right? They want to work for different types of companies. Some of the bio med research companies, which might not have, you know, big budgets or what have you. So where are we losing? Yeah. Will the, will the, the, the big fang companies, will they went out? Of course. And it's great from an anti-competitive standpoint.

Desiree Throckmorton (15:20.27)

Yeah.

Desiree Throckmorton (15:31.778)

Right.

Desiree Throckmorton (15:40.045)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (15:40.724)

but it really hurts, I think in the totality of talent, not to mention these individuals. live in a town here where Cummins International Engine Company is headquartered and we get tons or we did get tons of H1B visas. are incredibly in where I'm in. I'm in the literally South Central Indiana, but it is so diverse in this little town because of those individuals.

Desiree Throckmorton (15:51.928)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (16:09.128)

and it just enriches the entire community. So that's something that literally we could prospectively lose. Cummins isn't a small company, although, paying a hundred grand per all of these H1B visas and their, and their genius engineers that are coming over, is definitely not a good thing.

Joel Cheesman (16:28.178)

Do you hear some of that on the ground chat? I know you're friends with a of them, a lot of the internationals that are there in Columbus. Is this an issue with them about the H1Bs or not a topic?

Chad Sowash (16:37.22)

I know it's definitely a topic I've talked to some of my friends and they just think, well, we'll literally just have to do without. We're going to have to do without, which is unfortunate because, and let me be clear, you usually get H1B visa holder, again, a genius, and you're pay him, the median is around $100,000, right? Here in the US,

Joel Cheesman (16:40.005)

Okay.

Joel Cheesman (16:49.287)

Wow.

Chad Sowash (17:05.934)

to get that same kind of talent, you're at least gonna pay twice, right? So first and foremost, you're getting a reduced cost, number one, which is one of the reasons why you do it, but it's also a part of what has always made America great, which is the melting pot, right? The diversity, being able to bring people from all over the world with different ideas, different ways of doing things, and unfortunately, that's being tamped out. mean, little towns will feel it.

Joel Cheesman (17:23.185)

Mm-hmm.

Desiree Throckmorton (17:23.352)

Good luck.

Joel Cheesman (17:30.684)

Yeah, Desiree, there are no instances of raids on H1B visas, right? This is still mostly an I-9 agriculture warehouse stuff. It hasn't reached into the H1B visas yet. Do you expect it to?

Desiree Throckmorton (17:43.501)

Yeah. Yeah. Manufacturing. Yeah. I think that it would be more of the... That would probably trigger more of the compliance investigation than it would a raid, right? Usually they're like, we're coming in, we're coming to get you. We've already figured out someone who is there, who is likely not eligible to work in United States, whereas these programs, the visa tracking, the TPS, the temporary protected statuses.

Those things I think are where they're going to most likely kind of decide where they're going to go. Who are they going to issue those notices to?

Chad Sowash (18:21.646)

What's the difference between going in and finding 300 versus three, right? And I think it's the way that you do a raid or at least you try to get into a raid scenario, much like in the agriculture or in these manufacturing facilities where they know they're going to get big groups or at least they feel like they're going to get big groups. And with regard to the H1B side of the house. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (18:42.758)

What's the quote? The quote is insane, right? It's like a million a year or something. Yeah. So yes.

Desiree Throckmorton (18:46.19)

Yeah, deporting a million a year. Yeah. And then there's already 1.3 million immigrants who have just kind of like gone missing, who are just sort of silently disappearing on their own because they obviously see as much as you and I see that, you know, it's pretty scary out there if maybe you're going to be targeted. Yeah, exactly.

Chad Sowash (19:05.624)

So it's self deportation type of a thing. Gotcha. So we, we actually, we, we've had a few discussions with, Dr. Zee Hernandez out of, Wharton and, he has talked about how, mean, we, we just don't have enough work visas, especially for, for, you know, the, migrant migrant work visas. mean, don't have really any, so it's been a problem for a very long time, but

Joel Cheesman (19:07.569)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (19:35.044)

The system liked that problem because employers could use the scare tactic, pay people less, right? And it worked out for the entire country because those didn't work out for the immigrants as well, but it worked out for the country because those individuals, uh, just last year paid close to $100 billion in taxes. one, right?

And those individuals who do not use services, right? They don't use social services. Going to the social security and whatnot, which they are never going to see themselves. Not to mention they buy stuff in our communities. The taxes that are local taxes too, not just federal taxes, but local taxes that pay for streets being paved and education and so on and so forth. How do we and do employers understand the prospect

of how this could prospectively impact infrastructure as well. Do you hear that at all?

Desiree Throckmorton (20:38.732)

Yeah, I think that the people that I talked to about this are definitely scrambling about just the operational impact of this. Who are the people that work for us that are maybe here on the TPS for Venezuela? Who is the population? I think that's the challenge, kind of going back to like, what does this mean for an employer? They have a hard time even figuring out who is going to be impacted by these programmatic changes by the administration. So it's difficult for them to even just figure out what's the operational impact gonna be.

I was reading something that said that like over 40 % of home health aides are immigrants. like if you think about that's a lot, right? Those are people taking care of people who can't take care of themselves, right? And so if you're talking about 40 % of those people are immigrants, that's a pretty big number. And I was thinking about living here in California, we're huge agricultural state, you know, one of the biggest economies in the world. And you talk about, you know, maybe we won't have people to help.

Joel Cheesman (21:16.196)

I believe it.

Chad Sowash (21:17.141)

Yes.

Desiree Throckmorton (21:36.76)

process the food that's being grown here. What's the impact of that economically? think it's pretty staggering.

Chad Sowash (21:44.206)

So real quick back to what Joel was talking about on the raids, not to mention the audits. How many audits are they setting up for number one? Because we kind of feel like those are leading to the raids in the first place. So how many audits are they actually doing?

Joel Cheesman (21:44.306)

But according to

Desiree Throckmorton (22:01.39)

I mean, it sounds like, excuse me, about 15,000 is what they're targeting. And I know that they're going to be doing more next year. And in the past, like before COVID, it was about 6,400 that they had done. Years before, it's like 3,000. It's not very many. And then it's just like creeping up. And like I said, COVID really derailed their plans originally as they ramped up towards going down the enforcement path. It takes time to get organized before they can do.

Chad Sowash (22:07.352)

per year? Okay.

Chad Sowash (22:18.884)

Mm-hmm.

Desiree Throckmorton (22:29.582)

the notice of inspections, whereas I feel like they're spending a lot of time and energy on the raids and that sort of enforcement side of things. Yeah, exactly. They're getting organized. mean, they got the big old budget. So I think that's step in the direction towards then getting the agents, like I said, 10,000 agents are going to be hired to do various things. But part of it will be those investigations.

Chad Sowash (22:37.796)

It's a ready fire aim scenario right now. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (22:44.582)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (22:56.018)

Yeah. Desiree, there are probably a lot of employers out there listening to this. Maybe they're flat-footed. Maybe they're acting a little maliciously under the radar. What sort of tips do you give them to sort of get back on track? Is this just a paperwork issue? Is there something deeper here? Like talk to the people that sort of know this is an issue and we haven't really talked about it. We've put it under the rug. This is a serious issue. How should they sort of make sure that they're covered?

Desiree Throckmorton (23:26.584)

I think the easiest and the silliest is just to get organized. I I think most employers don't even know what is their process, what are the rules around the process. And so it's very easy to get in trouble and do it wrong. Like I said, the earlier example of maybe that hiring manager or operations supervisors reviewing the documents and meeting the employee to assess whether they have work authorization, maybe that's not the right type of work for that.

Chad Sowash (23:36.043)

Mm-hmm.

Desiree Throckmorton (23:53.933)

that person because there's maybe a conflict of interest in that process. So maybe looking at your process for, know, are you following the rules and the laws? Because there's lots of steps you have to follow to do it right. Very easy to do it wrong, which is why they audit based on accuracy in some parts of it. So you do get a percentage of the fines based on how many, the percentage of errors that you have that are uncorrected technical violations or substantive violations.

Chad Sowash (24:06.788)

Mm.

Desiree Throckmorton (24:23.902)

As the percentage ticks up, so does your fine. So I would say, make sure you understand your process. Are you doing it correctly? And make sure you're organized. I think a lot of people just don't even know where their I-9s are. Some of them are in filing cabinets. Some of them are on the manager's desktop that maybe has been decommissioned, who knows. So I think that's the biggest thing is, do you even know where they are? It's like, do you know where your children are? Same thing.

Chad Sowash (24:37.188)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (24:48.748)

It's 10 o'clock. It's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your children are? On the other side of this enforcement discussion, because there are two sides of this coin, one is the OSCCP being defanged. VEVRA 503, there are a bunch of employers that are out there now. They're like, holy shit, we've done this for how long? We've gathered this data. We've really focused on it.

Joel Cheesman (24:48.882)

Always goes back to Gen X, doesn't it? It's 10 p.m. Do you know where you're chilling?

Chad Sowash (25:17.764)

Especially, I mean, you know, federal contractors, the biggest companies in the world. And now they're being thrown this I-9 pivot, right? What do you say to them when they're saying, okay, we need to redirect resources, so we're going to stop worrying about this because the OFCCP really just doesn't exist anymore. No enforcement whatsoever. You know, you got probably somebody at the fax machine, who the hell knows. But over on the ice side of the house, right?

That's a different discussion, I9. So what do you say to those companies?

Desiree Throckmorton (25:49.133)

Yeah, it's funny because I have been working in affirmative action and the OFCCP world for over 20 years, and I probably said OFCCP more than I said my name. And now it's dead. It's like I have to grieve. But I think it is a sad day to feel as though that's going to be pushed to the side. I don't think it's dead forever. I think it hopefully will be redesigned somehow in a way that maybe makes more sense. I have a lot of opinions about that.

I would say that that is the nature of the C-suite in an organization. It's to know what do you have to be able to keep up with. And right now it's not OCCP, but you have to know that some fashion of that's going to come back. But your real focus in that C-suite positioning as it relates to employment is going to be, you prepared for an ICE inspection or an ICE raid? What is your footprint? What's your vulnerability?

So I would say that's probably how any organization thinks. What are risks? What are the things that we have to be prepared for? And a lot of that is driven by the administration.

Joel Cheesman (27:01.564)

Desiree Throckmorton everybody She's the senior consultant at out solve Desiree for our listeners who want to learn more about you maybe learn more about I9 regulations. Where do you send?

Chad Sowash (27:05.924)

It's a little slow on that one.

Desiree Throckmorton (27:16.184)

I'm at outsolve.com. Yeah. Or you can call me or LinkedIn, all the things, just not Twitter. I'm not on Twitter. yeah. I do have Twitter kind of, but yeah, no, TikTok.

Chad Sowash (27:18.436)

That's easy. Call, call, call, all the things. Or TikTok. She doesn't have a TikTok either, kids, so.

Joel Cheesman (27:20.026)

Easy enough.

Joel Cheesman (27:27.014)

That's gang, better stop collaborating. Listen, because ice ice baby could be coming for you. That's another one in the can. Chad, we out.

Chad Sowash (27:37.592)

We out!