Free summary, then your call
ICE Form I-9 Notice of Intent to Fine Response
A Notice of Intent to Fine ends an I-9 audit with a number. You have 30 days from the date it was served to file a written request for a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge at OCAHO. If you do not, ICE issues a final order, and the regulation says plainly that there is no appeal from it.
Requesting the hearing is not the same as going to trial. It is what opens negotiation: most cases settle with ICE after the request is filed, and the ones that do not go to an ALJ who reviews the penalty from scratch. That review is where the money is. OCAHO has cut ICE's proposed fines by half and more, and it has also upheld them in full and once raised one.
What separates those outcomes is not luck. The government has to prove every aggravating factor it claims. But you have to prove the mitigating ones, and inability to pay is your burden, not theirs. The employer in Wave Green refused to produce tax returns and paid ICE's number in full. The employer in Snack Attack Deli documented its finances and paid 24 cents on the dollar, despite having backdated its I-9s.
ICE reported that Notices of Intent to Fine produced 169 final orders to pay in FY2024, totalling more than $17 million: roughly $100,000 an employer. Under 8 CFR 274a.9(f), an employer who does not request a hearing within 30 days gets a final order "from which there is no appeal".
- Free, no account, no card
- Your deadline and options in minutes
- Answers deleted after 90 days
This tool is software. It reads your answers, no one reviews them, and it generates and emails the document itself the moment payment completes.
Why the agency will not tell you what to do
The ICE auditor who calculated the fine is the opposing party. ICE no longer publishes the dollar figures in its own penalty matrix: the fact sheet was stripped of them years ago and now tells employers to go read the Federal Register. Immigration attorneys handle NIF responses at hourly rates that a restaurant or a construction firm facing a five-figure fine often cannot justify. The law is public: 8 CFR 274a.9, 28 CFR Part 68, and about two decades of OCAHO decisions explaining exactly what persuades an ALJ.
What the free summary tells you
-
Your deadline, computed
The exact date your response window closes, counted from the date on your notice, and what happens if it has already passed.
-
Your options under the published rules
Which paths the regulations actually give you, and which one your answers point to.
-
The numbers the agency will use
Computed from the same published standards the agency applies, so you walk in knowing what they know.
Related notices in the library
Sources
This tool provides general information based on published ICE guidance, 8 CFR Part 274a, 28 CFR Part 68, and OCAHO decisions. Its citations and figures were checked against official sources using AI-assisted research, most recently on 2026-09-01; no licensed immigration attorney has reviewed this content. It is not legal advice and it is not a substitute for an immigration attorney. The base fine figures ICE uses in its internal matrix are not published: the estimates here are a model built from the one cell corroborated in the case law and from ICE's last published table, and they are not ICE's numbers. Penalty reductions at OCAHO are common but never guaranteed, and OCAHO has upheld fines in full and increased at least one. If the notice alleges that you knowingly employed unauthorized workers, if there is any suggestion of a criminal referral, or if the proposed fine exceeds $50,000, retain an immigration attorney now.