Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

18. Department of Labor and Related Agencies · Minor

Follow OIG recommendations on visa fraud investigations and debarments

Not started

613 18. Department of Labor and Related Agencies

“To protect the American workforce from unscrupulous immigration lawyers, employers, and labor brokers, the department must follow the recommendations of the OIG and institute more robust investigations for suspected visa fraud and speedier debarments for those found guilty.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    The Department has not followed the Inspector General's recommendations on visa fraud investigation and debarment. The OIG's semiannual report of 2026-05-29 still lists its Foreign Labor Certification findings as open — the February 2025 audit "ETA Can Improve Its Management of the H-2A Program" carries three unresolved recommendations — and the OIG is still asking Congress, as a legislative recommendation, for the statutory authority to verify labor condition application data and to open H-1B investigations without an aggrieved-party complaint, which is the core of what the Quote wants the Department to be able to do. The debarment half was measured on 2026-09-06 against OFLC's own list, which is now readable: the Program Debarments document generated 2026-08-07 carries 49 current H-2A debarments, 49 current H-2B debarments and 2 Permanent Labor Certification debarments, with start dates running from 2019 to 2026 and roughly half beginning inside the window. It shows a live debarment program and it cannot show speed: it lists only debarments still in force, so its year counts are censored by expiry, and it records the start and end of each debarment but not the date of the underlying finding, which is the interval "speedier debarments" would have to be measured over. No published record carries that interval.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • oig.dol.gov answers 200 to a browser User-Agent, so the semiannual report is readable Primary evidence even though dol.gov itself is a wall. The relevant passages are the Foreign Labor Certification program section (page 31), the legislative recommendation “Provide Authority to Ensure the Integrity of the H-1B Program” (page 43) and the appendix of unresolved recommendations (pages 69-71).
  • Read 2026-09-06 (read-queue ticket 07). dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/program-debarments opens on the full-headers rung and serves a PDF (7 pages, created 2026-08-07) rather than a page: the Wage and Hour H-1B debarment link, then the PERM, H-2A and H-2B debarment tables with entity, entity type, location, start and end of debarment, violation and CFR citation. Expired debarments sit behind a separate “Expired H-2A Debarments, FY 2014-current” link. It is recorded in the note rather than as Evidence because it evidences a state of the list, not the Department adopting the OIG’s recommendations, which is what the Quote asks for.
  • The path the earlier pass tried, dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/compliance/debarments, does not exist; dol.gov answers an Akamai denial for such paths, which is why it read as a wall.
  • The OIG’s investigative work continues — the report records a February 2026 guilty plea in an H-1B/EB-2 visa fraud conspiracy — but continuing casework is not the Department adopting the OIG’s recommendations, which is what the Quote asks for.
Action
other
Object
DOL visa fraud investigations and debarments
ID
1691