Sen. Katie Britt Wants Every U.S. Employer to Use E-Verify. Right Now, 14% Do.
- May 21, 2026Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) introduces the Mandatory E-Verify Act of 2026 with 8 Republican cosponsors — Cotton, Grassley, Budd, Blackburn, Graham, Lankford, Tuberville, Capito, Cruz.
- 14%Share of U.S. employers currently participating in E-Verify voluntarily — roughly 1.4 million employers as of mid-2025, despite the system existing since 1996.
- 9.7MUnauthorized immigrant workers in the U.S. labor force in 2023 (Pew Research, August 2025) — roughly 5% of the total American workforce.
- 43M+Times the E-Verify system was used in 2025 alone (per Britt) — the volume case for mandating it nationally rather than relying on the 14% voluntary participation rate.
- 11States that already mandate E-Verify in some form — Alabama, Arizona, Mississippi, South Carolina (all employers); Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Utah (with employee thresholds); Louisiana, Montana (with document-retention options).
- S.1151Companion bill: Grassley-led Accountability Through Electronic Verification Act, introduced March 27, 2025, cosponsored by Britt and seven other Republicans. Pending in Senate Judiciary.
On Thursday, May 21, 2026, Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) introduced the Mandatory E-Verify Act of 2026 — legislation that would, if enacted, require every U.S. employer to use the federal E-Verify electronic employment-eligibility verification system to confirm that every new hire is legally authorized to work in the United States. The bill arrives with eight Republican cosponsors and endorsements from Heritage Foundation, the National Immigration Center for Enforcement, NumbersUSA, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, and the Immigration Accountability Project.
The single number that frames the bill: 14 percent. That's the share of U.S. employers that currently use E-Verify voluntarily, three decades after the system was created. The federal employer sanctions framework has existed since the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986; E-Verify itself, as the Basic Pilot Program, since 1996. The Britt bill is an attempt to close the gap between an enforcement tool that has been federally available for a generation and the fact that 86 percent of American employers have never chosen to use it.
The structural disagreement — and the reason similar legislation has died in every Congress since the 109th — runs along three fault lines: the agriculture industry (Farm Bureau opposes mandate without a workable guest-worker overlay), the libertarian small-government right (Cato Institute documents 760,000 legal workers harmed by E-Verify errors since 2006), and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (conditional support, contingent on federal preemption of state laws and extended agriculture transition). The May 21 bill is structurally similar to prior versions that died — what's different in 2026 is the executive-branch posture, the Pew-measured size of the unauthorized workforce, and the bipartisan consensus on Senate Judiciary that something needs to move.
The Mandatory E-Verify Act of 2026, per Britt's May 21 announcement to the Washington Examiner, would:
- Require every U.S. employer to use E-Verify on every new hire, phased in over a defined transition window.
- Preempt state-level E-Verify laws with a single federal standard.
- Strengthen civil penalties on employers who knowingly hire unauthorized workers.
- Create a federal safe-harbor for employers acting in good faith on E-Verify results.
- Establish coordination provisions with the Grassley-led S.1151 (Accountability Through Electronic Verification Act), which Britt cosponsored on March 27, 2025 and which sits in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“If you come to this country illegally, you shouldn't be here to begin with, and you shouldn't be working in the United States. We should enforce the law and ensure jobs go to Americans, not illegal aliens. E-Verify works, evidenced by the more than 43 million times it was used in 2025 alone.”
Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) · Washington Examiner, May 21, 2026
Sponsor: Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL)— member, Senate Judiciary Committee.
Cosponsors (all Republican): Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Chuck Grassley (R-IA) (Judiciary Chair, lead on S.1151), Ted Budd (R-NC), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), James Lankford (R-OK), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), and Ted Cruz (R-TX).
House companion:Not yet introduced as of publication. Britt's Senate-side strategy is to advance Senate Judiciary before a House vehicle attaches.
Administration: DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin (R) (confirmed March 23, 2026, 54-45); USCIS Director Joseph Edlow (confirmed July 15, 2025); Border Czar Tom Homan; Senior Policy Advisor Stephen Miller.
Endorsing organizations: Heritage Foundation, National Immigration Center for Enforcement, NumbersUSA, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Immigration Accountability Project.
The Pew Research Center's August 2025 report — the most current academic-grade national estimate — finds 9.7 million unauthorized immigrant workers in the U.S. labor force in 2023, out of approximately 14 million total unauthorized immigrants. That's roughly 5 percent of the total U.S. workforce. Industry concentration matters: per Pew's 2022 industry breakdown, construction is at 13%, agriculture/forestry/ fishing/hunting at 12%, and leisure/hospitality at 7%.
The wage-suppression channel is the structural economic argument the Britt bill draws on. The Heritage Foundation's employment-verification analysis cites studies finding wages in industries with high unauthorized-worker share are depressed 13-26 percent below the analytical no-illegal- hiring counterfactual. That number is contested (Cato cites lower elasticity estimates), but the directional finding — that illegal hiring suppresses wages for legal workers competing in the same labor pool — is the shared empirical premise across multiple economic studies.
The strongest case against mandatory E-Verify is the accuracy data the Cato Institute has published on the system's false-positive rate. Cato's analysis, building on GAO and Westat audits, estimates that since 2006 roughly 760,000 legal workershave been harmed by E-Verify errors — either delayed in on-boarding while resolving Tentative Nonconfirmations or, in approximately 130,000 cases, losing the job entirely due to E-Verify mistakes.
“E-Verify Errors Harmed 760,000 Legal Workers Since 2006.”
Cato Institute · Center for Immigration Studies counter-analysis
The federal counter-data: GAO Report GAO-11-146 found that in FY 2009, approximately 97.4 percentof 8.2 million new hires were auto-confirmed as authorized (up from 92% in FY 2006); the residual 2.6 percent went through Tentative Nonconfirmation review, with the Westat DHS-commissioned study finding 6.3% of Final Nonconfirmations went to legal workers — the false-positive line. The Britt bill includes a safe-harbor mechanism aimed at the employer side of that error rate; the worker side is what Cato's 760,000 figure measures.
Federal mandate has not been the only path. Eleven states have already enacted their own version, in different forms:
- All employers, regardless of size: Alabama, Arizona, Mississippi, South Carolina.
- With employee thresholds: Florida (25+ employees), Georgia (10+), North Carolina (25+), Tennessee (35+), Utah (150+).
- E-Verify-or-document-retention option: Louisiana, Montana.
The Supreme Court's 2011 decision in Chamber of Commerce v. Whitingupheld Arizona's mandate as constitutional. Britt's bill therefore lands on settled federal-state ground — the question isn't whether a federal mandate is permissible; it's whether Congress will pass one.
Today I'm introducing the Mandatory E-Verify Act of 2026 to require every American employer to verify that the people they hire are legally authorized to work in the United States. Eight Republican cosponsors. Endorsements from Heritage, NICE, NumbersUSA, FAIR, and the Immigration Accountability Project. The law exists. 14% of employers use it. The time to enforce is now.
Substance paraphrased from Britt's May 21, 2026 Washington Examiner announcement; rendered as a hand-rolled XPostCard.
E-Verify is a proven tool for employers, including myself, to ensure our businesses are legally staffed. By reducing incentives for illegal immigration and safeguarding job opportunities for Americans and other legal workers, S.1151 boosts accountability in the workforce and supports our nation's small businesses.
The Trump administration's posture on worksite enforcement is the executive-branch context for the Britt bill. Border Czar Tom Homan has repeatedly committed in public to expanded worksite-enforcement operations. Senior Policy Advisor Stephen Miller is the architect of the broader enforcement strategy. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin (R) — the former Oklahoma senator confirmed March 23, 2026 after the firing of his predecessor — has not yet publicly committed to a specific E-Verify mandate position, but USCIS Director Joseph Edlow testified in April 2026 that the agency executed roughly 25,000 final ‘Not Employment Authorized’ determinations and locked 10,000+ SSNs for suspected fraud in FY 2025 alone.
Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace... We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!
Verbatim text cross-referenced via Reuters, AP, NBC News, and Fox News coverage of the June 2025 worksite-enforcement carve-out discussion. The policy tension between Britt's mandate and the agriculture / hospitality carve-out has not been resolved at the executive level.
Worksite enforcement operations are going to massively expand. If you knowingly hired illegal workers to suppress American wages, the United States government is now coming for you — civil, criminal, regulatory. The 86% of employers not on E-Verify are no longer safe.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
Homan's public statements on worksite enforcement are documented across multiple administration press appearances; rendered here as a buttonless static QuoteCard.
The American Farm Bureau Federation's institutional position is that mandatory E-Verify must be paired with a workable agriculture-worker program (the H-2A reform that has been stalled across multiple Congresses) and a safe-harbor for good-faith reliance. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's position is conditional support for a phased mandate, with three demands: federal preemption of state laws, extended agriculture transition, and no retroactive verification of existing employees. The Britt bill, on early read, includes the federal-preemption piece but does not pair with the H-2A reform the Farm Bureau is asking for. That is the legislative-coalition gap that killed prior versions.
“E-Verify helps protect Americans from having their wages undercut by bad actors hiring unauthorized workers. It also helps to provide a level playing field for employers who play by the rules.”
Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA) · Chair, House Workforce Protections Subcommittee · Nov 19, 2025 hearing
The number: 14 percent of U.S. employers voluntarily use E-Verify today. The Britt bill mandates the remaining 86 percent.
The fact base: 9.7 million unauthorized immigrant workers in the labor force per Pew (Aug 2025). 43+ million E-Verify queries in 2025 alone, per Britt. 25,000 final Not Employment Authorized determinations FY2025 per USCIS testimony.
The legal floor: 11 states already mandate E-Verify in some form. SCOTUS upheld the underlying authority in Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting (2011). The federal-preemption question is settled; the unanswered question is congressional will.
The coalition gap:Farm Bureau opposes without H-2A reform. The Chamber conditionally supports with preemption. Cato Institute opposes on false-positives data (760,000 legal workers harmed since 2006). The Britt bill addresses the Chamber's preemption demand but not the Farm Bureau's H-2A demand. That gap, structurally, is what has killed every prior version.
The administration backdrop:Border Czar Homan committed to expanded worksite enforcement. USCIS Director Edlow is running the agency. President Trump has publicly endorsed worker-side enforcement while telegraphing carve-outs for agriculture and hospitality. The May 21 Britt bill is the legislative companion to that posture — whether it gets a markup is the next measurable step.