E-Verify was supposed to make it easy for companies to follow immigration law. Now even the feds say it can't be trusted [View all]

Source: CNN US

PUBLISHED Aug 27, 2025, 7:18 AM ET


When the police department of a small Maine resort town was told that one of its reserve officers was working in the US illegally, the Department of Homeland Security made sure the case was splashed on front pages. “The fact that a police department would hire an illegal alien and unlawfully issue him a firearm while on duty would be comical if it weren’t so tragic,” an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said in a statement.

ICE accused the department of “knowingly breaking the very law they are charged with enforcing,” but the city said the flaw was with the federal verification program that it used to confirm that Jon Luke Evans – who has since agreed to voluntarily leave the country after barely a month on the job – was permitted to work. “We will continue to rely on the I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification form and the E-Verify database to confirm employment eligibility,” Old Orchard Beach Police Chief Elise Chard said at the time. But the Trump administration said a green light from E-Verify was not enough.

“The Old Orchard Beach Police Department’s reckless reliance on E-Verify to justify arming an illegal alien, Jon Luke Evans violates federal law, and does not absolve them of their failure to conduct basic background checks to verify legal status,” said Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.

The statement from the federal government agency responsible for E-Verify saying it is “reckless” to rely on its own system brought new attention to the program’s weaknesses, even as the Trump administration makes removing undocumented workers from the country one of the top priorities in its aggressive, ongoing immigration crackdown.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/27/us/e-verify-immigration-law