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You May Use E-Verify, But You Are Still at Risk of Losing Your Workers
This article highlights how even employers who use E-Verify remain vulnerable to identity fraud and ICE enforcement due to systemic weaknesses—especially the misuse of Social Security Numbers (SSNs). Drawing on recent Wall Street Journal reporting and federal data, the piece argues that employers must be wary of relying solely on E-Verify to vet the identity of their workers.
Duplicate Social Security Numbers (SSNs) are one of the most common pathways for identity fraud to infiltrate the American workforce. This happens because of extensive Form I-9 process loopholes that includes the government program E-Verify.Even among the 1.4 million employers who use E-Verify—a federal tool designed to check employment eligibility—gaps remain. Employers rely on E-Verify to protect themselves from fraudulent hires and ICE raids triggered by Form I-9 audits.But the truth is: E-Verify is not enough.
A recent Wall Street Journal exposé (July 2025) confirms what many of us in the identity verification and compliance field have long known: E-Verify can be easily defeated, and fraudulent workers continue to bypass its checks with alarming ease. The article gathered insights from law enforcement, immigration policy experts, and labor officials, and concluded that employers must go further—leveraging tools like biometrics—to truly authenticate identity and work authorization.
Real-World Failures of E-Verify
The Journal’s story offered chilling examples of real employers who had relied on E-Verify—and still became targets of identity fraud and enforcement actions:
- Glenn Valley Foods, a meat producer in Omaha, Nebraska, had been usingE-Verify for over a decade. Yet on June 11, 2025, dozens of masked federal agents raided the plant, detaining 76 workers. Seventy of those workers wereusing stolen SSNs and fake identities.
- At another meatpacking facility with 600 employees, more than half of the workforce—previously cleared by E-Verify—submitted documents that ICE deemed suspicious.
- In 2022, the Labor Department discovered that at least 102 children were illegally employed by Fortrex. These minors cleared E-Verify by using fake documents showing they were adults. Fortrex uses E-Verify on 100% of hires butstill sees fake IDs pass regularly.
Why E-Verify Fails to Catch Fake SSNs
While I go into this issue at length in “What E-Verify Isn’tTelling You” (ZipID Blog): (https://www.zipidapp.com/blogs/what-e-verify-is-not-telling-you),the problem specific to SSNs is that while the first check E-Verify does is to run an SSN (both name and number), it does not check for duplicates of the same number associated with a different name.
Thus, “approved” in E-Verify even when identity fraud has previously occurred, such as the name and Social Security number of aU.S. citizen or permanent resident is obtained. For the purposes of E-Verify, the actual SSN ID need not be shown, just the number entered digitally in theE-Verify portal, eliminating the need to even create a fake ID. According to the WSJ, “a U.S. citizen’s name and Social Security number can be purchased for about $1 on the dark web, or as low as 10 cents in bulk.”
The Broader Scope of SSN Misuse
These are not isolated incidents. Consider the wider landscape:
- 1.3 million SSNs tied to employment fraud (GAO, 2020)
- 818,000+ SSN misuse cases (GAO 2020 quoting data from IRS, TIGTA 2018)
- 69,323 fraudulent SSNs used for COVID loans, totaling ~$5.4B (PandemicOversight, 2023)
- 75% of undocumented workers use fake SSNs for employment (CIS, 2025)
- Children’s SSNs are 51x more likely to be used in synthetic fraud (Richard Power, Carnegie Mellon CyLab, "Child Identity Theft," 2011)
What This Means for Employers
E-Verify and the Form I-9 process are necessary, but increasingly insufficient. Fraudsters know that E-Verify can't detect stolen, borrowed, or synthetic identities.
Hiring individuals using fake identities exposes companies to financial penalties, reputational damage, and operational disruption if ICE intervenes. Even worse, child labor can slip through when age verification isn’t reliable.
Biometric identity verification offers a path forward. Technologies like facial recognition, OCR, and liveness detection verify the person—not just the document.
That’s why I’ve dedicated years to building ZipID. I understood the scale of the problem early on—and while the federal government’s intent with E-Verify is well-placed, it can’t overcome the shortcomings of the sister agencies it depends on, like the Social Security Administration.
Learn More
• What E-Verify Isn’t Telling You (ZipID Blog): https://www.zipidapp.com/blogs/what-e-verify-is-not-telling-you
• GAO Report: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-17-419.pdf
• IRS Inspector General: https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2019reports/201940014fr.pdf
• CIS Identity Fraud Study: https://cis.org/Report/Illegal-Immigrant-Identity-Fraud
• U.S. DOL Child Labor Report: https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20230217
If you use E-Verify, great—but it’s time to go further. ZipID can help protect your business from fake identities, failed audits, and workforce disruption. Contact us to learn more.
Janice Kephart is the Founder and CEO of ZipID and one of the most recognized public voices on national security, identity, and border policy in the United States. Former counsel to the 9/11 Commission, she authored the federal identity doctrine underlying today's I-9 compliance framework, including the biometric entry-exit mandate, REAL ID Act, and passport requirements for all travelers. She has testified before Congress 19 times on identity-related issues.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is ZipID ICE-compliant I-9 software?
Yes. ZipID satisfies all five federal electronic I-9 system requirements under 8 CFR § 274a.2 — including compliant audit trails, electronic signature protocols, and secure storage standards. It is specifically designed to meet the March 2026 ICE reclassification that elevated common errors to substantive violations.
As of January 2025, I-9 paperwork violations carry fines of $288 to $2,861 per form under 8 CFR § 274a.10(b)(2). Knowingly hiring unauthorized workers carries fines up to $28,619 per worker for repeat offenses. ICE audit rates in 2025 ran at least ten times higher than the prior year.
ZipID is pursuing certified E-Verify third-party agent status by August 2026. Currently, after the employer signs the I-9, ZipID redirects to E-Verify and automatically populates the resulting case data into the Additional Information field — preserving the complete record for audit purposes.
What is NIST and why does it matter for I-9 verification?
NIST — the National Institute of Standards and Technology — is the federal agency that sets accuracy benchmarks for biometric identity technologies. For I-9 compliance, NIST validation matters because it provides an independent government-verified measure of whether a facial recognition system is reliable enough to trust. ZipID uses NIST-tested algorithms rated at 99.998% accuracy.
ZipID's 1:1 facial recognition is rated at 99.998% accuracy using NIST-validated algorithms — fewer than 2 mismatches per 100,000 verifications. Liveness detection is built in to confirm the selfie is from a real, present person rather than a photo or deepfake.
OCR — Optical Character Recognition — reads and extracts text from government-issued IDs. ZipID uses AI-powered OCR to instantly capture a new hire's ID data and automatically populate the required Form I-9 fields, eliminating manual entry and typos. The AI layer also cross-checks extracted data for logical consistency and flags tampered, synthetic, or spoofed documents.
ZipID uses NIST-validated biometric facial recognition to match a live selfie to the photo on the new hire's government-issued ID. AI-powered OCR extracts and autofills document data. Fraud detection runs in the background checking for tampered, synthetic, or spoofed documents.
Facial authentication is entirely the employer's choice. It confirms that the new hire is who they say they are and that the ID they present matches their live self — especially valuable for remote hires, high-security roles, or industries with elevated identity fraud risk.
How long does it take to complete an I-9 with ZipID?
ZipID completes the entire Form I-9 process — including identity verification, document capture, and E-Verify redirect — in under 8 minutes, for both remote and in-person new hires.
ZipID is an I-9 compliance and identity verification platform that combines facial recognition, OCR document capture, and fraud detection to verify new hire identities and complete Form I-9 in under 8 minutes — with a legally compliant audit trail built in. It is the only I-9 platform built by the person who helped write the federal identity doctrine behind the law.
Who built ZipID?
ZipID was founded by Janice Kephart, former counsel to the 9/11 Commission and a national security identity expert with 25 years of federal and private sector experience, including designing border biometric workflows at MorphoTrak, now Idemia. Kephart authored the federal identity doctrine and biometric entry-exit recommendations underlying today's I-9 compliance framework, and has testified before Congress 19 times.