The Department of Homeland Security has temporarily shut down its most prominent “parole” program, which allows unauthorized migrants to fly directly to U.S. airports, after revelations of massive fraud.
The department revealed the shutdown after a watchdog group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, released portions of an internal government report showing the extent of the fraud, including the use of Social Security numbers of dead people and the same addresses on thousands of applications.
“DHS has temporarily paused the issuance of advanced travel authorizations for new beneficiaries while it undertakes a review of supporter applications. DHS will restart application processing as quickly as possible, with appropriate safeguards,” the department said in a statement Friday.
The program applies to people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. It offers them “parole” into the United States without legal visas as long as they schedule their arrivals in advance and present an affidavit from some entity in the U.S. promising to support them.
Those affidavits are full of fraud, the watchdog said.
The same 100 IP addresses were used on more than 51,000 applications. One address in Tijuana, Mexico, was used 1,328 times.
Looking at individual sponsors, some 3,200 names were responsible for more than 100,000 applications. That works out to one sponsor each for more than 30 migrants.
Of the most common sponsors, 24 used Social Security numbers of dead people.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform called the bungles “astounding.”
The program, known in the government by the acronym CHNV, is one of several paroles established by the Biden administration. It acts as a presidentially fabricated immigration system, working around limits set by Congress.
Other programs are for Afghans, Ukrainians and migrants who schedule their arrivals at the border. President Biden has also announced a slightly different type of parole to allow illegal immigrants to avoid deportation if they have been in the U.S. for at least 10 years and are married to a U.S. citizen.
The Department of Homeland Security has justified the external parole programs as a way to ease the chaos at the border.
Republicans on Capitol Hill have long suspected that the programs were inviting fraud. They point to the high rate of application approvals within CHNV and the border program, known as CBP One App.
Anecdotal evidence of malfeasance also has been found.
Some people who came through the CHNV program were found to be living in government-run shelters, which experts said would seem to violate the point of having a sponsor.
One of those is a Haitian man charged with raping a disabled 15-year-old girl at the shelter in Rockland, Massachusetts.
Emilio Gonzalez, who ran USCIS in the Bush administration, sounded an alarm on fraud months ago and said Friday’s news was a grim confirmation of what he had feared.
“As expected, the CHNV program, while it had good intentions, is riddled with fraud and abuse,” he said. “We got what we expected, and the American public will pay the price.”
CHNV accepts roughly 1,000 arrivals a day.
From the time CHNV started in October 2022, when it was confined to Venezuelans, to this past March, nearly 500,000 people won parole through the program.
Responsibility for CHNV is split between two agencies in the Homeland Security Department. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is charged with approving the financial affidavits, and Customs and Border Protection is supposed to vet the migrants.
The financial sponsorship form can be filled out online.
It asks potential sponsors about their current sources of income and assets. The form prods sponsors to describe the resources they plan to use to help house and settle the migrants.
The Washington Times reported earlier this year that smugglers were selling financial support affidavits for $5,000 each.
Mr. Gonzalez last week found a case involving someone who paid $6,000 to a broker in Nicaragua. The applicant had no clue who the sponsor was.
The administration said paying for sponsorships was “not encouraged” but did not say it was against the rules.
USCIS did tell The Times that it was able to screen out bad applications.
“The agency carefully vets every prospective supporter through a series of fraud- and security-based screening measures before confirming a properly submitted [financial support form],” the agency said in March.
Experts say fraud is a growing problem in the U.S. immigration system.
Marriage visas, asylum petitions and victim visas have been targets of fraud in recent years. Those operations sell bogus access to the U.S. for tens of thousands of dollars.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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