A U.S. program that allows migrants to apply for asylum from their home countries and has been suspended due to potential massive fraud could be reinstated by the Biden administration this week, though thousands of questionable applications still need to be reviewed, two sources told NBC News.
The The Biden administration Last month, the Department of Homeland Security announced that an 18-month program that allows Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to apply for legal entry and temporary work permits in the United States would be “temporarily suspended” while the Department of Homeland Security “reviewed the proposal.” applications.”
These supporters, also called sponsors, are people living in the United States legally who guarantee that they can provide financial support to migrants who want to live in the United States.
However, an internal DHS report reviewed by NBC News found that almost 101,000 applications to sponsor migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Ukraine were made by 3,218 serial sponsors. The report, prepared by US Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of DHS, does not say how many of those applicants entered the United States. The report was first released by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an anti-immigration advocacy group.
The report’s authors found thousands of potential sponsors using the same street addresses, Internet Protocol addresses or phone numbers. For example, almost 600 applications were flagged because they all used the same commercial warehouse address in Orlando, Florida. The authors also found reuse of the same Social Security numbers, including numbers belonging to dead people.
Small number of sponsors for large groups of people have raised concerns about potential human trafficking It is not known whether DHS has reviewed these cases of potential human trafficking for immigration programs in the past, the sources said.
A US government official told NBC News that when the program resumes, applications for sponsors will be manually screened in small batches with improved procedures for screening. And any sponsor believed to be involved in fraud will be referred for further investigation.
A source familiar with the decision said the administration is eager to restore the program as soon as possible because it is believed to have prevented migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela from illegally crossing the border.
An internally released report in May prompted DHS to suspend travel authorization for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua who had applied under the program.
Sources familiar with the review of the roughly 101,000 sponsor applications said USCIS’s Office of Fraud Detection and Homeland Security reviewed more than two-thirds of the suspicious applications last week, leaving about 30,000 applications to review, most of which likely won’t be completed until the program is restored. .
So far, six sponsor applications have been turned over to investigators, a division of Homeland Security Investigations. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Sources familiar with the review were appointed by an agreement between USCIS and ICE to investigate potential criminal immigration fraud.
More than 2.6 million migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela have applied for entry through a program known as CHNV and a similar program for Ukrainians, according to an internal report.
As of July, more than 530,000 migrants have been authorized to travel to the United States under the CHNV. Data from DHS. It is unclear from the report how many of these successful applicants were brought to the United States with the help of 3,200 “serial sponsors.” It’s also unclear whether the 101,000 applications marked for review are from people who are now in the United States, people whose applications have been denied, or a mix. The number of migrants applying for the program for Ukrainians has not been specified.
Migrants applying for CHNV apply online from one of four countries and list identification information for both themselves and sponsors who agree to support them in the United States. Sponsors are asked to include Alien Registration numbers and/or Social Security numbers that the government can verify, according to the application form seen by NBC News. Migrants can fly to the United States after receiving permission
Within weeks of CHNV starting in January 2023, concerns were raised In an Associated Press article about online ads from potential sponsors, they will be willing to sell their services as sponsors to migrants in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. It is not known whether there are any sponsors selling their services.
In a statement, a DHS spokeswoman said the agency has not identified issues of concern with the screening and vetting of immigrants themselves.
“DHS has review mechanisms in place to detect and prevent fraud and abuse in our immigration processes. DHS takes abuse of its processes very seriously. When fraud is detected, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will investigate and prosecute relevant cases in immigration court and refer criminal charges to the Department of Justice,” he said.
Red flags were raised
The internal fraud detection unit at USCIS began an “additional trend analysis” on April 17 to check for any red flags in the program.
Less than a month later, the division produced a report reviewed by NBC News that found a troubling set of indicators that thousands of applications were potentially fraudulent.
The report doesn’t say how many of the potentially fraudulent original apps were ultimately approved, but it raises a number of red flags.
The authors found patterns of suspicious use of Social Security numbers, where the same number was used in 20 or more applications. The authors labeled those repeat sponsors as “serial sponsors” and noted that the Social Security numbers of 3,218 serial sponsors were used on 100,948 forms. At least 24 of the most used Social Security numbers are numbers associated with dead people, according to the report.
The report’s authors also found problems with 3,355 duplicate phone numbers used on more than 110,000 forms.
Physical addresses provided by sponsors also raised questions. Multiple sponsors used the same physical addresses multiple times for more than 19,000 applications. Almost 130 applications appear to use the address for a single-family home less than 900 square feet in rural Pennsylvania. There were 596 applications using an address for commercial storage in Orlando, and more than 500 applications used an address matching a storage unit facility in Pompano Beach, Florida.
The report also analyzed the IP addresses associated with the apps and found that more than 1,300 apps were tied to a single IP address in Tijuana, Mexico.
The report noted “a trend” – more women than men were potentially sponsored for nine IP addresses. For example, one IP address was linked to applications to sponsor 18 women, 14 of whom were under the age of 18.