DHS ends pandemic policy allowing expired I-9 documents

• Employers can no longer accept expired "List B" documents for Form I-9 completion after May 1, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced, ending a policy adopted in response to the coronavirus pandemic.



• The change applies to drivers licenses, voter registration cards and military IDs and similar forms of ID — documents that were difficult to renew during shutdowns.

• Employers also must go back and update Form I-9s that used expired documents. "If an employee presented an expired List B document between May 1, 2020, and April 30, 2022, employers are required to update their Forms I-9 by July 31, 2022," DHS said.

Federal enforcement agencies made a number of allowances in the early months of the pandemic, especially with respect to Form I-9. 

In addition to allowing expired documents, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has allowed employers to review Form I-9 documents remotely under certain circumstances. That policy remains in place and could see permanent adoption, according to both ICE and business groups. Among other stakeholders, the Society for Human Resource Management has pushed for such a change, calling it long overdue.

Attorneys at law firm Seyfarth Shaw said in a blog post they had likewise advocated "relentlessly" for DHS to keep the expired document allowance in place, to no avail. They noted particular concern with DHS’s indication that employers need only go back and update forms if the validity of an employee’s document wasn’t extended by the issuing authority: The change is particularly disappointing, they said, given the "near impossible" task of determining which states had extended the validity of documents.