While Alabama politicians have backed President Donald Trump’s campaign to arrest and deport thousands of immigrants, an AL.com review found that the state is not enforcing penalties against employers who have hired those immigrants.
In 2011 Alabama made national news by passing one of the strictest immigration laws in the country, HB56. It criminalized employers and landlords who hired or served unauthorized immigrants and made schools check students’ status. Even giving the wrong person a car ride became a crime.
Immigrant families left the state and farmers reported crops going bad without workers to harvest them.
An AL.com review found no evidence state officials are tracking or going after Alabama employers who fail to follow the law today.
Alabama’s Attorney General Steve Marshall did not respond to multiple requests for comment from AL.com.
“It doesn’t really impose the penalties that you think it would have,” said Wendy Madden, an attorney who has closely followed the law.
Alabama lawmakers say they support harsher immigration policy. Gov. Kay Ivey, when told Marshall had not responded to AL.com’s inquiries about state enforcement, said she backs the president.
“Criminal illegals are simply not welcome in Alabama,” Gina Maiola, a spokeswoman for Ivey, told AL.com. “Governor Ivey will continue ensuring Alabama is doing all we can to support President Trump in his mission to Make America Safe Again.”
What does the law do?
The 2011 sponsor, Rep. Micky Hammon, R-Decatur, said at the time that HB56 “attacks every aspect of an illegal alien’s life.”
The law was challenged in a years’ long court battle. Most provisions were struck down.
But some of the law survived.
Alabama employers must enroll in the federal E-verify system to make sure workers are eligible. Alabama is one of a handful of states in the country that requires this. Federally, E-Verify, the country’s system to track employment of foreign workers, is voluntary.
Hammon said in 2013 that the most important part of the law was preserved with Alabama’s E-Verify requirement.
“I think the meat of the bill is still intact,” Hammon said.
In 2025, about 73,208 of Alabama employers are enrolled in E-Verify.
As federal agents raid an increasing number of businesses to arrest workers, little is publicly known in Alabama about what is happening to the employers who hire them.
The Alabama Attorney General’s office has the power to terminate a state contract or revoke a business license for employers who don’t comply as a penalty under the law. Yet there is no evidence it has ever enforced the law.
AL.com repeatedly asked Marshall’s office if it had revoked a business license or penalized an employer for not vetting workers through E-Verify.
Among states that require employers to enroll in E-Verify, a 2017 study by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington, D.C., found mixed results.
States like Alabama, Mississippi, Arizona and others that mandate employers to enroll in the program had relatively low compliance rates. In 2017, only 62% of Alabama employers had complied.
Freddy Rubio, an immigration attorney, said part of HB56 required the state to track employer compliance and give an annual update to the state legislature about the various parts of the law. That requirement is still on the books.
“To my knowledge, not one single report has been given to the legislature as to how many employers have been prosecuted under that database,” he said, adding he is curious to know how many affidavits the state has collected from employers.
“Where are those kept?”
An estimated 2,000 people have been arrested and sent into deportation proceedings from Alabama this year.
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