Green Card Sponsors, Beware: DOJ Is Now Policing PERM Recruitment

If your company sponsors foreign employees for green cards, following the Department of Labor’s PERM recruitment rules is no longer enough. In 2026, the Department of Justice showed it will treat flawed PERM recruitment as citizenship-status discrimination, and the Department of Labor showed it will freeze or bar an employer’s entire PERM program while that happens.

The clearest example is Cloudera, Inc. On October 16, 2026, DOJ and DOL announced a settlement under which Cloudera agreed to stay out of the PERM program for two years, pay $600,000 in civil penalties, and fund a $1.4 million back-pay pool for U.S. workers. A few months earlier, OpenAI and its subsidiary Statsig agreed to pay $3.2 million over PERM recruitment that required applicants to apply by mail.

Neither case involved a finding of liability, and neither creates binding precedent. But together they show exactly what the government is looking for. This article explains the legal framework, what happened in each case, and the practical steps employers should take now.

Two agencies, two rulebooks

PERM employers now answer to two separate legal regimes. Passing one does not mean you pass the other.

The DOL PERM rules. For a professional position, 20 C.F.R. § 656.17(e)(1) requires a 30-day job order with the State Workforce Agency, two Sunday newspaper advertisements (one may be replaced by a professional journal ad in some cases), and three additional recruitment steps chosen from a list of ten. The employer’s own website is one optional choice on that list, under § 656.17(e)(1)(ii)(B). The regulations do not say whether resumes must come in by email, mail, or online portal.

The employer must also sign attestations under 20 C.F.R. § 656.10(c). These include that the job opportunity does not involve unlawful discrimination, including by citizenship (§ 656.10(c)(5)); that it has been and remains clearly open to any U.S. worker (§ 656.10(c)(8)); and that any U.S. workers who applied were rejected only for lawful, job-related reasons (§ 656.10(c)(9)). Under § 656.17(g)(2), a U.S. worker counts as qualified if they could learn the job within a reasonable period of on-the-job training.

The anti-discrimination statute. Separately, 8 U.S.C. § 1324b(a)(1)(B) bars employers with more than three employees from discriminating in hiring, or in recruitment or referral for a fee, because of a protected individual’s citizenship status. “Protected individuals” under § 1324b(a)(3) include U.S. citizens and nationals, refugees, asylees, and many lawful permanent residents. DOJ’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section (IER) enforces this law through administrative cases heard by the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer (OCAHO).

Penalties are assessed per person discriminated against. For a first order, the current range is $590 to $4,730 per individual, set by DOJ’s 2025 inflation adjustment at 28 C.F.R. § 85.5. DOJ announced in July 2026 that it would make no adjustment for 2026, so those amounts remain in effect. Back pay and court-ordered policy changes come on top of that.

The two inquiries really are separate. In United States v. Facebook, Inc., 14 OCAHO no. 1386b (2021), the judge denied Facebook’s motion to dismiss and allowed DOJ’s discrimination case over its PERM recruitment to move forward.

DOL’s suspension power. Under 20 C.F.R. § 656.31(b), when an employer, attorney, or agent is under investigation by DOJ or another agency for possible fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with PERM, DOL may suspend processing of its applications. The first suspension may last up to 180 days and can be extended. That suspension reaches every pending case, including employees who had nothing to do with the recruitment under investigation.

Cloudera: an email inbox that didn’t work

Cloudera’s case turned on a broken application channel and an employer that never noticed. It ended with a two-year exit from PERM.

What DOJ alleged. According to DOJ’s April 28, 2026 complaint (United States v. Cloudera, Inc., OCAHO Case No. 2026B00044), from at least March 31, 2024, through at least January 28, 2025, Cloudera posted ordinary jobs on its careers website and took applications online. For at least seven PERM-related positions paying roughly $180,000 to $294,000 a year, it did something different. Those jobs were left off the careers site, and the PERM ads told applicants to email resumes to a dedicated address.

That address was a Google Group that rejected outside email. Applicants got a bounce-back message. DOJ alleged Cloudera recorded no outside applicants through the address for about nine months and never asked why, while telling DOL it had recruited in good faith and found no qualified U.S. workers. No U.S. worker was hired for any of the seven jobs. The investigation began when one U.S. worker who got a bounce-back filed a charge. Cloudera denied acting with discriminatory intent.

DOL’s response. On May 12, 2026, DOL suspended processing of all PERM applications filed by or for Cloudera for 180 days. DOL said it would keep using its suspension authority against any employer, attorney, or agent under investigation for possible fraud or willful misrepresentation in the PERM program.

The settlement. DOJ and DOL announced the resolution on October 16, 2026. As publicly reported, its main terms are:

The debarment was negotiated rather than imposed through DOL’s formal debarment process under 20 C.F.R. § 656.31(f). That regulation allows debarment of up to three years. For employers, the lesson is the same either way: a problem in a handful of cases cost Cloudera its whole green card sponsorship program.

OpenAI and Statsig: a working process that was harder to use

The OpenAI matter matters because nothing was broken. DOJ’s objection was that PERM applicants faced a harder path than everyone else.

On August 4, 2026, DOJ announced a $3.2 million settlement with OpenAI OpCo, LLC and its subsidiary Statsig, Inc. According to DOJ, for fewer than ten PERM positions the companies left the jobs off their external careers site and required paper applications by mail, while accepting electronic applications for other openings. DOJ’s press release also faulted late-night radio ads. Radio is a permitted PERM recruitment step under 20 C.F.R. § 656.17(e)(1)(ii)(J), so the criticism was about timing, not the medium. OpenAI denied the allegations and admitted no liability.

Under the three-year agreement, the companies pay a $1.2 million civil penalty and fund a $2 million back-pay pool. They must post PERM jobs on their public careers sites, accept online applications the same way as for other jobs, revise their recruitment policies, train staff, and report to DOJ. DOJ described it as the thirteenth settlement since it relaunched its Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative in 2025.

The takeaway: IER does not need to show that U.S. workers were blocked. Extra friction that applies only to PERM jobs can be enough.

The pattern behind the cases

Every major PERM discrimination case so far has the same core fact: PERM jobs were recruited differently from the employer’s normal jobs, in a way that made them harder to find or apply for.

The enforcement climate has also sharpened. DOJ relaunched its Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative in 2025, and its press releases now say it will seek the maximum civil penalty for each violation. DOL has paired DOJ cases with PERM suspensions. Cloudera’s complaint even opened by citing Proclamation 10973, the September 2025 H-1B entry restriction (90 Fed. Reg. 46,027), to frame PERM enforcement as part of broader policy on foreign workers.

What employers should do now

The safest PERM program looks, to an applicant, like any other job opening at your company. These steps get you there.

1. Recruit PERM jobs the way you recruit every other job. If your other openings go on your careers site with online applications, put PERM openings there too, with the same application button. Give each PERM position a unique requisition number or posting ID that is searchable.
2. Avoid PERM-only application channels. Mail-only, email-only, or special-inbox instructions are exactly what DOJ has challenged. If you have a real business reason for a different channel, write it down when you decide, and make sure the applicant experience is just as easy.
3. Test every application route from outside your network. Before the first ad runs and periodically during recruitment, test each email address, link, portal, and mailbox permission as an outsider would. Keep a record of each test, and retest after any IT or vendor change.
4. Treat zero applicants as a warning sign. One niche job with no applicants may be normal. Several well-paid roles with no applicants is a reason to stop and investigate before filing.
5. Capture every applicant in one place. Applications from your careers site, the state job bank, email, mail, or vendors should all land in your applicant tracking system, linked to the right requisition.
6. Apply the PERM qualification standard. Under 20 C.F.R. § 656.17(g)(2), a U.S. worker who could learn the job within a reasonable period of on-the-job training is qualified. Record the specific, lawful, job-related reason for each rejection at the time you make it.
7. Reconcile before you sign. Before finalizing the recruitment report and ETA Form 9089, compare your applicant counts against every intake channel. Your attestations under § 656.10(c) should match what actually happened.
8. Keep your records. 20 C.F.R. § 656.10(f) requires keeping the application and supporting documents for five years from filing. Keep routing logs and test results as well.
9. Train everyone who touches PERM. That includes recruiters, HR staff, outside advertising agencies, and other vendors. Both 2026 settlements required anti-discrimination training, and Cloudera’s expressly extends to its recruiters, contractors, and agents.
10. Coordinate immigration and employment counsel. Screening questions, work-authorization questions, and state-law issues all need review from both sides. A problem found in an internal audit is far cheaper than one found by IER.

The bottom line

DOL compliance is now the minimum, not the finish line. IER will look at how your PERM recruitment works in practice: whether U.S. workers can find the job, apply as easily as for any other opening, and get a fair review. A gap in that process can lead to penalties, back pay, years of oversight, and a freeze or ban on every green card case your company sponsors.

The fix is not complicated, but it takes coordination between immigration counsel, HR, recruiting, and IT before recruitment begins. Reviewing your process now costs far less than defending it after a charge is filed.

Legal disclaimer

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Immigration and employment laws, regulations, and agency enforcement priorities change frequently, and the outcome of any matter depends on its specific facts. The settlements discussed above are not findings of liability and do not create binding legal precedent. Do not act or refrain from acting based on this article without first consulting a qualified attorney about your particular situation. This article may be considered attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.  For a free phone consultation with Attorney Thomas Lee, please call (213) 251-5533