Trent Cotney, Partner, Adams & Reese, LLP and FRSA General Counsel - March 2026
Immigration compliance in roofing is often viewed narrowly, limited to completing I-9 Forms for direct employees and preparing for the possibility of an ICE audit. While those obligations remain essential, they no longer capture the full scope of immigration-related risk facing roofing contractors. Increasingly, liability exposure is being driven by what regulators
believe contractors should have known about the labor supporting their projects, even when that labor is supplied through subcontractors or third-party crews.
Federal immigration law allows enforcement agencies to pursue employers not only for actual knowledge of unauthorized employment but also for constructive knowledge. Constructive knowledge exists when an employer, based on the totality of the circumstances, should have known that unauthorized workers were being used. This standard often overlaps
with what regulators describe as willful blindness, where an employer avoids asking questions or ignores warning signs in order to maintain plausible deniability. In the roofing industry, where work is frequently performed by sub-labor crews, the risk of crossing this line is greater than many contractors realize.
Roofing presents unique enforcement challenges because of its reliance on short-term projects, rapid labor scaling during storm response and repeated use of the same crews across multiple jobs. Regulators evaluating these arrangements look past contractual labels and focus instead on functional realities. They examine who controls scheduling, who directs
the work, who supplies tools and safety equipment and who has the authority to remove workers from a site. When those indicators point toward meaningful control by the contractor, immigration exposure may follow, even in the absence of direct hiring.
Enforcement agencies also pay close attention to patterns that suggest constructive knowledge. These can include subcontractors that exist solely to supply labor, inconsistent or incomplete business documentation, crews that rotate names but remain operationally identical or continued use of a labor source after warnings, audits or credible concerns have been raised. No single factor is determinative for misclassification of labor but taken together they can support a finding that a contractor should have known unauthorized employment was occurring.
One of the most persistent misconceptions in roofing is that classifying workers or crews as independent contractors eliminates immigration risk. Immigration enforcement does not follow tax classifications or state labor labels. Instead, agencies assess how the work is actually performed. A contractor can comply with 1099 requirements and still face immigration
liability if the facts demonstrate reliance on unauthorized labor through sub-labor crews.
Risk mitigation does not require contractors to verify the immigration status of subcontractor employees, which is prohibited under federal law. It does, however, require intentional compliance structures. These include vetting subcontractors as legitimate businesses rather than labor-only providers, using written agreements that clearly assign responsibility for hiring and verification, avoiding payment practices that obscure workforce identity and establishing internal protocols for addressing immigration-related concerns when they arise. Training supervisors and project managers on what they can and cannot ask and what they should not ignore, is also critical. Of course, in the State of Florida, even subcontractors must have a roofing license.
The direction of immigration enforcement in construction is shifting away from isolated paperwork errors and toward broader assessments of conduct and patterns. For roofing contractors, this means immigration compliance is no longer solely an HR issue. It is a contracting issue, a risk management issue and, increasingly, a business continuity issue. Contractors who understand and adapt to this shift will be far better positioned to withstand scrutiny, while those who rely on outdated assumptions about subcontracting insulation may find themselves exposed in ways they did not anticipate.
The information contained in this article is for general educational information only. This information does not constitute legal advice, is not intended to constitute legal advice, nor should it be relied upon as legal advice for your specific factual pattern or situation. Trent Cotney is a Partner and Construction Team Leader at the law firm of Adams & Reese, LLP and
FRSA General Counsel. You can reach him at 866-303-5868 or email trent.cotney@arlaw.com.