On September 19, 2025, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced the launch of Project Firewall, an “enforcement initiative” aimed at enforcing the existing rules of the H-1B program. In their announcement of the initiative, DOL say they plan to “safeguard the rights, wages, and job opportunities of highly skilled American workers by ensuring employers prioritize qualified Americans when hiring workers and holding employers accountable if they abuse the H-1B visa process.”  

The H-1B program is a nonimmigrant (i.e., temporary) visa program that visa allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in “specialty occupations,” which in practice means a position that requires a college degree or higher. There are close to 600,000 total H-1B workers in the United States, making it the U.S.’s largest visa program. Roughly two-thirds of H-1B workers fill jobs in computer-related and information technology occupations, with the rest working other professional jobs as accountants, doctors, university professors and many others. 

The press release specifies that DOL will work “to protect American jobs” by partnering with other federal agencies on H-1B enforcement. The agencies involved at DOL include the recently-established Office of Immigration Policy, the Employment and Training Administration (ETA), and the Wage and Hour Division (in a lead role). The agencies that will partner with DOL are the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). 

The penalties listed that DOL is considering for H-1B law violators include “the collection of back wages owed to affected workers, the assessment of civil money penalties, and/or debarment from future use of the H-1B program for a prescribed period of time.” 

Impact: One notable and novel aspect of Project Firewall is that DOL announced that it would begin to use the authority the DOL Secretary has in the H-1B statute to personally certify H-1B investigations if reasonable cause exists that an H-1B employer is violating the law. This then permits the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) to conduct an investigation. Before the Project Firewall announcement, WHD would only investigate cases that derived from a complaint by a worker. But since employers control the visa status of H-1B workers, the workers are understandably afraid to complain. A complaint from a worker on a temporary work visa can lead to retaliation that ends up in deportation for the worker, or leaving them unemployed and without the ability to earn the money they expected to earn by coming to the United States. This could, depending on the implementation circumstances, be a positive example of strategic enforcement, where WHD targets employers who have well-documented histories or suspicions of labor violations and worker abuse. EPI and other worker advocates have also long advocated for debarring employers who mistreat their workers from being permitted to participate in the H-1B program.  

However, it’s notable that the press release and comments from DOL Secretary Chavez-DeRemer have not mentioned Project Firewall protecting the rights of the actual migrant workers employed through the H-1B program. Instead, they have mainly focused on cracking down on the program to protect American workers. As EPI research has pointed out, H-1B workers are often vastly underpaid and have been the victims of widespread wage theft, but it appears DOL may not consider or be responsive to the workplace challenges and violations faced by H-1B workers.   

WHD and ETA were already responsible for administering different aspects of the H-1B program. However, Project Firewall does also start new coordination on H-1B visas between DOL and other federal agencies, like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which is also adopting a new approach on “national origin” discrimination against native-born American workers.