Labor and Justice Departments Settle With Cloudera: Two-Year PERM Debarment and $1.4 Million Back-Pay Fund Over Discrimination Against U.S. Workers
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Department of Labor announced on October 16 a coordinated enforcement resolution with Cloudera Inc., a Santa Clara, California-based data management company, following allegations that the company discriminated against qualified U.S. workers during recruitment conducted under the Permanent Labor Certification (PERM) program.
As part of the resolution, Cloudera will be barred from participating in the PERM program for two years, one of the most significant sanctions available for DOL to protect the integrity of the employment-based immigration system and safeguard opportunities for U.S. workers. The debarment follows DOL's earlier suspension of Cloudera's PERM processing, and the department said it reflects DOL's commitment to aggressively enforcing labor certification requirements when employers fail to provide U.S. workers a fair opportunity to compete for jobs.
The settlement also resolves a lawsuit DOJ filed in April of this year, alleging that Cloudera violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) by discriminating against U.S. workers when recruiting and hiring for seven positions under the PERM process. Under the settlement with the Justice Department, Cloudera will establish a back-pay fund of $1.4 million to compensate qualified U.S. workers who tried to apply for the jobs at issue but were not given fair consideration, and will pay $600,000 in civil penalties to the United States.
In addition to the two-year debarment, Cloudera will be subject to compliance obligations, including enhanced monitoring, revised PERM compliance procedures, and reporting requirements intended to prevent future violations. "There are no exceptions: the Justice Department will hold accountable employers who discriminate against U.S. workers," said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division, adding that the substantial settlement, in partnership with DOL, sends a strong signal to employers that the federal government will work together to ensure employers treat U.S. workers fairly.
The PERM program allows employers to sponsor foreign nationals for permanent residence only after demonstrating that qualified U.S. workers were provided a genuine opportunity to apply and that no qualified, willing, and available U.S. workers could be found. DOJ said the case is the fourteenth settlement since it relaunched its Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative in 2025 to enforce the INA's prohibition on citizenship-status discrimination.
The enforcement is not isolated: the Justice Department previously reached similar settlements with Meta (2021) and Apple (2023), and OpenAI settled for $3.2 million in August 2026; the Labor Department last week also froze PERM processing for companies including Microsoft and Adobe.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 美国劳工部总部弗朗西斯·珀金斯大楼夜景 Photo: U.S. Department of Labor, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
