DOJ rolls out department‑wide CEP
The Department of Justice released its first-ever department‑wide Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self‑Disclosure Policy to standardize how corporate compliance and voluntary disclosures are handled across all divisions. Employers that sponsor foreign workers should expect heightened clarity — and possibly tougher expectations — around voluntary reporting of compliance lapses. (mondaq.com)
Part I of the CEP creates a presumption of declination if a company: (1) voluntarily self‑discloses to the appropriate DOJ component, (2) fully cooperates, (3) timely and appropriately remediates, and (4) has no aggravating circumstances such as corporate recidivism or egregious pervasiveness of the misconduct. (justice.gov) As a condition of any CEP declination the company must pay all disgorgement/forfeiture and restitution or victim‑compensation payments resulting from the misconduct, and all declinations will be made public. (justice.gov) The CEP defines a qualifying voluntary self‑disclosure to require five elements: a good‑faith disclosure to the appropriate component, misconduct not previously known to DOJ, no preexisting legal obligation to disclose, disclosure before an imminent threat of government investigation or disclosure, and disclosure reasonably promptly after discovery. (debevoise.com) Where a company fully cooperates and remediates but is ineligible for a Part I declination, DOJ will typically offer a “near‑miss” resolution: a Non‑Prosecution Agreement with a term of fewer than three years, no required independent compliance monitor, and a penalty reduction of at least 50% but not more than 75% off the low end of the U.S.S.G. fine range. (justice.gov) The CEP supersedes component‑ or U.S. Attorney’s Office–specific corporate enforcement policies (while excluding antitrust matters, which remain under the Antitrust Division), and it builds on the Criminal Division’s May 2025 revisions to create a single DOJ‑wide framework. (justice.gov) Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva framed the CEP as a transparency and uniformity initiative that “draws on decades of experience” and extends the Criminal Division’s CEP architecture that traces back to 2016 and was revised in May 2025. (justice.gov) DOJ’s broader enforcement agenda already expressly targets corporate immigration‑related misconduct (the Corporate Whistleblower Pilot was expanded in May 2025 to include federal immigration law violations), and concurrent federal data‑sharing and enforcement increases—including ICE requests for roughly 1.28 million IRS employer records—heighten the practical exposure for employers that sponsor foreign workers. (mayerbrown.com)
