ICE Raids Targeting Roofers: Why, How, & What to Do w/ Trent Cotney

ICE raids have become more and more common in the roofing industry. And roofing companies have been caught on their heels, stuck with fines in excess of six figures, also losing their crews. So today I'm joined by Trent Cotney, an industry leading attorney to guide you through the process of what you need to know, how you can get prepared and what to do if it happens to you. Trent, thank you so much for being here.

Adam, it's great to be here. Looking forward to the conversation today.

Yeah, me too. And Trent, you gave just an incredible presentation to our community RSRA on contract law. That blew my mind that you were actually recommended by one of our members that, hey, I saw Trent speak, you got to bring him in. So we connected. And then during that you mentioned these ICE raids, hence you being here. So for those that don't know who Trent Cotney is, can you give a brief background on why you have become like the go to lawyer for roofers across the nation?

Sure, absolutely. So I'm partner construction team leader at Adams and Reese, which is a national law firm. I get about 400 lawyers, so I'm also a senior fellow of the National Construction Policy Institute where I try to fight and advocate for roofers in D.C. and I serve as general counsel to NRCA, Western States, Chicago Association, Florida and about 15 others. So heavily involved in roofing coast to coast.

Yeah. So, you know, a thing or two. And by the way, this video is not sponsored. I asked Trent to be here because of the value he brought to our community in rsra. So now let's rock and roll right into our interview. Trent, you've been seeing an increase in ICE raids. Why and what's going on and why are people turning to you for them?

Yeah, absolutely. So ever since January 20th and beyond, you know, part of the hallmark of, one of the hallmarks of the Trump administration has been to close the borders and increase immigration enforcement. Part of that, obviously, are ICE raids. And we've seen a lot of contractors, in particular roofing contractors, targeted for ICE raids across the US and you know, this is not a, a blue state only thing, it's red states. I've had calls from Florida, Texas, you know, Missouri, California, you know, Chicago area, Boston, you name it. Right. And obviously I would say it hasn't changed, slowed down anything at all. If anything, I think it's increased since the one big beautiful bill allocated even more funds for, you know, ICE raids and immigration enforcement. So obviously it's a big deal and understanding kind of, you know, your rights and what you can do and what you can't do is something that I've had to talk about pretty much every single day. It is. It is a constant topic of conversation. Yeah.

So let's just start running down the list. First, why? Why? This answer may be obvious to some, but there might be something less obvious. Why is this happening more with roofing?

You know, I think there are three industries that really depend on foreign labor. That's, you know, construction, hospitality, and agriculture. And, you know, I think roofing in particular, roofers, framers, you know, exterior contractors in particular, rely on foreign labor, regardless of whether it's W2 or subs. Obviously, as W2, you know, employers are following I9 process, obtaining documentation, but that documentation often ends up being, you know, false or fabricated. And that's, you know, there are rules regarding that and what the employer has to do and should do. But I think in roofing in particular, we've seen a huge rise of sub labor. And part of that was predicated, you know, because of a lot of the things that came out of COVID You know, there. There was a significant amount of demand that happened. We had, you know, open borders, and obviously there's. There's pros and cons to that. From a construction standpoint, though, it led to an unlimited workforce. And I saw more and more roofing contractors in particular move to a construction manager model where pretty much they're just subbing out 100% of their work. And, you know, the stated statistic is that roughly 45% of the labor and roofing is illegal. I think, you know, if I'm being honest about it, I probably would anticipate that it's significantly higher than that. And again, it's not because, you know, we want to subcontract out to illegals or hire people that aren't here legally. It is just because there isn't a sufficient domestic workforce to engage in roofing and construction. Yeah.

Which is a continual problem. In fact, they just published the 2025-2028 Roofing Market Report, and one of the top constraints is a workforce both in sales but specifically in labor. So I couldn't agree more. Plus, with so many roofing contractors that are subbing out work, which I would say for the majority is the standard practice, you have such limited control and visibility to who's on that job site outside of the. The foreman and. Or the. The owner of the company of the sub that you hired. So that I couldn't agree more. Trent, what. What happens? I'd love to hit, like, what is the impact For a roofing company, if there's an ICE raid on a crew that's on one of their jobs.

Yeah, and, you know, unfortunately, we've been front lines on this. So, you know, it. I can tell you that obviously it has an immediate impact because you're losing labor. You know, if it happens to be your W2 workforce, then you have significant exposure, right? I mean, if you, if it can, if ICE can demonstrate that you knowingly hired someone or employed someone that you knew was illegal, then the employer may have, you know, criminal liability. And that's one of the things that I want our listeners to understand is it's not just about saying, okay, well, ICE is here. I'm going to lose some workers. It's about making sure that as an employer, you understand what your rights are. And here's the. Here's the key thing that I think a lot of people miss is that they think, okay, I'm subbing out everything. I don't maintain i9s on subs, nor should you. You shouldn't ask for, you know, i9s from subcontractors because you can run into a discrimination claim and they think they're safe because they're 1099 ing all their labor. Well, one of the things I've, I've seen, you know, DHS and, and ICE engage in is, you know, looking at your subcontractor and saying, okay, well, this sub. Where's your gear? Right. He's got your branded logo on there. He's riding around in your trucks. He only works for you, doesn't work for anybody else. He doesn't market, he doesn't advertise. He's really your employee. You're just not paying him correctly. So guess what. You know, you have significant exposure because you haven't maintained nine nines on any of these. And I'm calling my buddies over at the IRS because you haven't made payroll tax on any of these guys in the last, you know, 15 years. So that is what that is. The bigger risk is the risk of misclassification because you could easily. It could easily turn into not my issue to, oh, yeah, it is, definitely.

So what advice would you have for a roofing company to get their ducks in a row and be prepared from all angles, whether it's legally, proactively, etc.

Yeah. So obviously, big topic. I'm actually speaking on this topic at ire. It's on the last day of ire, I've got a seminar session and I just spoke on it at the Western States Expo. There are two main enforcement mechanisms that ICE uses. One is ICE raids, where they physically go to your job site or your home office. They have a warrant and they go in and they. They look to detain people or they look to, you know, obtain documents, whatever it might be. And the second One is an i9 audit, where they will go through, they will ask for you to produce your i9s. You got three days from the date that you receive a notice of inspection to tender over your i9s. And they will review that to see what's going on. So what I'm going to do is cover kind of each of them, right. So on a nice raid standpoint, there are, like I said, I'm seeing two primary things. I'm seeing job site and I'm seeing home office, and if they are on a job site. So typical residential job, if you're doing a single family residence. You know, there is a big difference between what is considered a private area and a public area as it relates to ICE raids. So typically, ICE will roll up, and it's scary. They roll up. They look like they're straight out of Call of Duty. You know, they're all geared up and pours in hand. You know, it's intimidating. And it's really important that your QC people, you know, your quality control supervisors, whoever you have, they have, you know, wallet size, here's cards that say, this is what I should do. You have to remain calm and you have. And know, and assert your rights. So let's go through the public, private, you know, dichotomy there. If, if I roll up on a job site, typically the roof is considered a private area because the public can't gain access to it. But if I'm on a sidewalk, that's clearly public, Right? So then the question becomes, is a yard, a homeowner's yard, public or private? Well, it's a little bit of a question mark, right. I had this debate with. Well, I was giving a seminar. Somebody said, well, what if the homeowner gives access? Yeah, I mean, technically, it's their. Their property. They could give access, they could give consent to it. But the reason why this is important is that to access private property. So let's say that area was fenced off, or let's say there were signage that says restricted access authorized users on, you know, authorized personnel only or private property. ICE needs a judicial warrant in order to access that private area. Okay. You know, if I'm at a home office and I can walk into your lobby, then that's public access. Anybody ICE can go in there and, you know, they may have an administrative warrant. It's not signed by a judge, but they're not going to have. They don't need a judicial warrant. They can do whatever they want to in that lobby. But to get back to the warehouse, you know that where you have a locked door, it's a key card door, or it says restricted access. They would need a judicial warrant, right? So the first thing that your supervisor should do is they should ask to look at a copy of the warrant, take a photo of the warrant, see, does the addresses match up? Is this the correct address? Who are they asking for? Did a judge sign it? Or is this Department of Homeland Security? Right. So you'll see an administrative warrant, which looks much different than a judicial warrant. It's important that you get that photo and you understand, apples to apples, what's going on there. Why is that important? Because if they have a judicial warrant, they can access private areas. They can go on the roof, they can go into your warehouse. They can do all that, provided that the addresses match up. Okay, let's say I'm ICE and I roll up to your home office, and I'm in your lobby, right? And I say, I need you to, you know, I'm here to grab these three people. You know, here's my warrant. You look at the warrant, and it's administrative warrant. It's not signed by a judge. Okay? You go back and you grab those three people back from the private area and bring them up to the public area. At that point, you have consented to that, and they can grab those people, right? If you object and you say, look, you don't have a judicial warrant, you can't come back here, I can say, okay, I'm gonna go back there anyway. Okay, what should you do and what should you not do? Okay, you should clearly object. And what I always say to do is blame it on your lawyer. Don't ever take the blame yourself. Nobody likes lawyers. So just say, look, you know, respect. You want to. Want to cooperate with you. But my under, you know, my lawyer has said that unless you have a judicial warrant, you can't access this area. So I'm objecting, right? And I always follow what I call the fight club rule. Did you see that movie, Adam, the Fight Club? Yeah. So the fight club rule is basically, you know, there's a scene in that. That movie where the main character beats himself up in front of, you know, his boss, and he ends up getting paid 60 grand as a result and he said, okay, my boss beat me up. And you know, that's, that's why I'm entitled to this money. Had there been a witness there, that never would have happened. So it's important that you have somebody that overhears you making that objection. Okay? You need to do that because that could preserve your ability and defend of that. And it could also assist your employees if they're getting rounded up or your subs. Right. But what do you not do? Okay, don't touch ice. Don't stand in the way of ice. Don't run. Okay? Don't tell your crew to run. Don't interfere with their investigation. Object, you know, be calm, cool and collected. But no one asserts your rights. If you do any of those other things, you could end up in federal prison. Right. And everything I'm telling you is based on real world experiences. It's not just me being a scary lawyer. It's me trying to help our listeners understand this is, this is the playbook. So signage is critical. Like, clearly you can't fence off a home. Right. If you do, the homeowner is going to yell at you. Right?

Right.

But what you can do is you can put up some signage. Right. So you can put up, you know, on the. If the trucks are facing the street, if I can see it from the street, there's some suggestion that's restricted access. Right, Restricted access. Construction site. Makes sense. And you want to do that for liability purposes anyway. Right. You don't want some kid playing around on your ladders or something. Yeah. So you can easily do that. You know, same with your home office. Lock the doors, put the signs up, you know, all that kind of stuff that helps dictate what is private versus public. And that's important. We've had at least three warrants, judicial warrants that did not have the correct address. So that can be a basis for throwing out all the evidence that occurs after that. Okay, talk a little bit about i9 audits. You know, if they are a W2 employee, as part of their hiring paperwork, you've got to fill out an i9. Right. You fill out a W4, you get all the other information that you need, and you got to fill out an i9. And there's certain documentation that they've got to produce to show that they're legally capable of working here. Right. You have the capability of going through and taking a look at your i9s and auditing them. And I recommend anybody that's listening to this go audit your i9s. Right? We audit all the time. Sometimes if you're working on big box stores like Targets or Walmarts or grocery stores, they require third party audits to make sure that you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. So if you, you know, if you see a box that hadn't been checked or t that hadn't been crossed, you're entitled to correct most mistakes. Right. You don't wide it out. You don't falsify information. Simply, you know, cross it out, initial it. And then I often attach a memo to the i9 explaining what happened. I got asked this question the other day, Adam. I got a guy, ordinary, 25 years, I just happened to not have an i9 on them. How do I deal with this? I said, well, it is a violation, but what you don't want to do is you don't want to back date an i9, right? Fill out an i9 and fill it out appropriately as of today's date and attach a memo as to why the other one was lost, destroyed, you know, whatever. And it doesn't mean you're not going to get hit with something. No. But there may be some leniency because at least you try to document it. You're entitled to make all those corrections up to the point of getting a notice of inspection. Once you get that noi, you could be fine per, you know, i9 violation. It could be as low as 200 change or as high as, you know, 5,000 and change, depending on gravity and whether or not there's, you know, that knowing element.

And is that per person or an aggregate fine per i9?

Yeah, if you've got 200 mistakes, you know, we've had i9 audits that have resulted in almost 100 employees having to be fired and fines in excess of six figures. So it can accumulate. And here's one other thing that I want people to understand is typically you're gonna get a notice of inspection. Here's how you're gonna get it, okay? Competitor, angry employee, former angry employee. And here's the way that I see it the most, okay? An ICE raid will occur. They'll wrap up your sub, and then what they'll do is they'll send a notice of inspection on you because they figure out if you're sloppy with subs, you're sloppy internally. They're looking to nav you, Right? So it's important. Some advice is lawyer up immediately. Don't pretend you can handle this, because you can't, okay? They're not your buddy, you know, They've got a job to do. You need to put your best foot forward. So make sure that you lawyer up regardless of what happens, because there's a lot of risk.

Yeah, Trent, that's incredibly helpful. And what's wild to me is how many people in general feel like they're on, like, it'll happen to anyone but me. But when you talk about a disgruntled employee, a disgruntled former employee and. Or a competitor, I don't know, one roofing company that can't say or that would be able to say. I don't have any of those on my list because they do. In even the greatest of companies, there's someone that worked for you that felt wronged or was frustrated in some capacity. You can't please everybody, and. And it's nuts. Do you ever see homeowners calling these in?

Yes, absolutely. Angry neighbors.

Yeah.

Yeah, that. That will happen. And I want to give you, you know, your last example. I'm going to give you two real world examples. Obviously, I can't kiss and tell, so I won't, you know, name names. But here's a couple of examples, okay? Disgruntled employee says, yeah, we were sitting in the shop before we had to go out of the job, and we were all talking about how Jose was illegal. And the owner was right there. He heard us say that, so he knew he was illegal, okay? And then all of a sudden, the owner's having to defend against a potential criminal complaint for knowingly hiring someone that's illegal. Here's another one. This is a common tactic, okay? Crew member gets arrested for dui, okay? State police is working with ICE and says, look, we ran you. We know you're here illegally. We might go easy on you if you give us all the names of the people that you're working with that you know, that are illegal, and then that forms the basis of a judicial warrant that is used to round up dozens of potential crew members. So it's. It is absolutely a real world thing, and it doesn't matter where you are. I've seen it in pretty much every single state at this point, and it's only going to continue. Yeah.

Trent, thank you. And for those that are. That are hearing this and saying, hey, I want to be prepared, or maybe they're looking for an attorney to support them in other ways. You came in and presented to the RSRA community an absolute. The showstopper of a presentation on contract law. And no, I mean it. I'm not just saying that. And for the Record. This is not sponsored. I asked Trent to be here because the value that Trent, that you provided to our community, your ability to navigate contract law for a roofer has surpassed absolutely anyone or anything I've seen, from general construction lawyers to business lawyers. Because the level of specificity and what's funny is during the time you're sharing in our community, you mentioned a couple things. One, the fee to hand load if they don't want you on the driveway. So they have an option so that way you're not held with liability. Like wish I had that one and the other one for anything and I forget the exact language, but essentially anything that we might hit that's run improperly under the roof decking, and I don't know, most people have been doing this for long enough, they've hit something under there, whether it's a gas line, cooling line, water, whatever. So the reason I wanted to share that is one, as a thank you. Two, I've been doing this a while. I learned a boatload. But I also know that one of the most common questions, who do I turn to as an attorney? Can you just share for a minute? Because I love to connect good people with good people. What type of law you practice and when someone should reach out. Because my guess is you probably get more inquiries of the I need this done yesterday cause I just got noticed as opposed to having you in their back pocket and ready to go in case something happens.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I'm kind of blessed and fortunate. I grew up in the industry. My grandfather was a roofing contractor and in Jacksonville, Florida. And my family, you know, we owned a lumberyard and a small supply house in Jacksonville and I kind of grew up around that. For the last three decades I've represented the industry. So I serve as general counsel for the Florida Association, Western States, the Utah association of Southern California. But I'm also national general counsel, NRCA's general counsel. So as part of that, it really puts me in a great spot because I hear what all the issues are. I could, you know, I like to consider myself a blue collar attorney in that I'm constantly my ears to the ground. I came from that and I try to provide real world advice that's useful. So by trade, I'm a board certified construction lawyer in the state of Florida. I'm licensed in eight other places. Right, eight other states. But our firm has almost 400 lawyers and we do anything and everything that roofing contractor needs. I think last time I checked, we represented about 3,000 roofing contractors. And, you know, 91, 92 of the top 100. So immigration, OSHA, defense, employment law, mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property, obviously disputes, and, you know, anything, everything that a roofing contractor would need. That's what I do. And I do it because I'm passionate about it. I love this industry, you know, and I'll be honest with you, Adam, it's the only reason I'm still a lawyer is because I love educating. I love this industry. And you will see me on the road if you're at any expo, you know, any major regional or national expo, more than likely I am there. So I encourage anybody that's listening, come up, say hi, I'd love to talk to you, and happy to answer any questions you got.

Yeah. Awesome. And Trent, what would be the best way for folks to get in touch with you?

Sure thing. It's. Email me trent.cotneyarlaw.com or anywhere social at Trent Cottony.

Awesome. Trent, thank you so much for being here.

Yeah, my pleasure. Hope we can do it again sometime.

Yeah, we will.