When the federal government shuts down, employers immediately ask the same question: is E-Verify still working? The answer has varied over the years — but recent shutdowns have shown a shift in how USCIS handles the system during funding lapses.
E-Verify is operated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agency. Because USCIS is largely fee-funded rather than appropriations-funded, the agency has more flexibility to keep services running during shutdowns than other DHS components like TSA, FEMA, or CBP.
In previous shutdowns (2018–2019), E-Verify went fully offline for weeks. But in the October 2025, January 2026, and February 2026 DHS funding lapses, E-Verify has remained operational — a significant shift that reflects the current administration's priority on maintaining workforce verification infrastructure.
Updated February 24, 2026: The U.S. is now in its second partial government shutdown in two months. DHS funding lapsed at 12:01 a.m. on February 14, 2026, after Congress failed to pass a DHS spending bill amid disputes over immigration enforcement reforms related to ICE and CBP. The shutdown is now in its 11th day, with Senate negotiations stalled.
This shutdown is limited to the Department of Homeland Security — the rest of the federal government is funded and operating normally through the end of the fiscal year. About 90% of DHS employees are classified as essential and continue working without pay, including TSA screeners, Border Patrol agents, and Coast Guard personnel. Visible impacts are already being felt: CBP suspended Global Entry processing on February 22, and DHS briefly threatened to shut down TSA PreCheck before reversing course after public backlash.
Despite all of this, E-Verify remains fully operational. Employers can continue to:
Government shutdowns have become increasingly frequent. Here's how E-Verify availability has played out in each recent funding lapse:
The trend is clear: USCIS has prioritized keeping E-Verify running through recent shutdowns. But there is no guarantee this will continue in future funding lapses, which is why every employer needs a contingency plan.
For employers in states that require E-Verify — like Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and others — government shutdowns create an additional layer of risk. These states don't just suggest E-Verify; they mandate it by law, often with their own enforcement mechanisms and penalties.
Florida is a prime example. The state has deputized its own Department of Law Enforcement to carry out E-Verify compliance audits, meaning enforcement doesn't depend entirely on federal resources. Even during a federal shutdown, state-level auditors can still review whether employers met their E-Verify obligations — and "the system was down" only works as a defense if you can document exactly when cases were delayed and why.
If your company operates in a mandatory E-Verify state, you need more than a general awareness that shutdowns happen. You need a documented process that proves you attempted to submit cases on time, queued them during any outage, and cleared the backlog as soon as service resumed. Without that paper trail, you're exposed at both the federal and state level.
When E-Verify goes down — or even when employers just lose track during the chaos of a shutdown — the biggest compliance gap we see is the backlog of unsubmitted cases.
Here's how it typically plays out: an employer hires people during the outage, completes their I-9 forms on paper or in their HR system, but never creates the E-Verify case. When the system comes back online, those cases slip through the cracks — especially if the employer is manually copying I-9 data into E-Verify, or if their HR platform doesn't have an automated submission process.
The result is a compliance gap that may not surface until an audit, at which point it's too late to fix. Auditors can see exactly when an E-Verify case was submitted relative to the hire date, and a cluster of late submissions after a shutdown is a red flag — even if the initial delay was legitimate.
Employers who rely on paper I-9s, manual E-Verify entry, or basic HR platforms without automated case submission are the most vulnerable to this problem. The shutdown itself isn't the risk — it's what happens (or doesn't happen) in the days and weeks after.
Even when E-Verify stays online — as it has through recent shutdowns — every employer should have a plan in case it goes down. If E-Verify becomes unavailable, here's what's required:
This is the most important takeaway: your I-9 responsibilities are unchanged during any shutdown. Regardless of whether E-Verify is online or offline, employers must:
Companies that rely solely on E-Verify as their compliance process — without strong I-9 fundamentals — are the ones most exposed during outages.
The backlog problem described above is exactly what our platform is designed to eliminate. For i9 Intelligence customers, government shutdowns require zero manual intervention.
During the October 2025 shutdown, when E-Verify went down and came back online, every queued case on our platform processed automatically — no delays, no errors, no manual re-entry. Our customers didn't have to lift a finger. That's not a theoretical capability; it's what actually happened.
Here's how it works:
Compare that to employers doing manual E-Verify entry, copying data from paper I-9s, or relying on HR platforms that don't know how to handle an outage. When shutdowns are happening every few months, the difference between automated and manual E-Verify management is the difference between a clean audit and a compliance gap.
As of February 24, 2026, E-Verify is operational despite the partial DHS government shutdown that began on February 14. Check e-verify.gov for the latest status.
Yes. Form I-9 requirements are not affected by government shutdowns. All deadlines for Section 1 and Section 2 remain in effect.
If E-Verify is unavailable, document the reason for the delay. USCIS has historically provided additional business days after service resumes to submit delayed cases. You may not take adverse action against an employee because of a pending or delayed E-Verify case.
Most shutdowns last a few days to a few weeks. The longest was 35 days (December 2018 – January 2019). The current February 2026 DHS shutdown is in its 11th day with no resolution expected this week.
Congress funded most of the federal government through the end of the fiscal year but could not reach agreement on DHS funding due to disputes over immigration enforcement policy. DHS — which oversees USCIS, ICE, CBP, TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard — is the only department affected by the current lapse.
With three federal funding lapses in five months, government shutdowns are no longer rare events — they're a recurring compliance risk. The best time to build a shutdown-proof I-9 process is before the next one hits, not during it.
i9 Intelligence automates your entire I-9 and E-Verify workflow so your team never has to wonder what to do when the government shuts down. Explore our platform or book a demo to see how it works.
Questions? Call us at (713) 668-6200 (Mon–Fri, 8am–5pm CT) or email support@i-9intelligence.com.
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