The Biden administration has paused a controversial plan that was flying hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the U.S. per year after massive fraud was discovered.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed Friday that it temporarily paused its program that allows up to 30,000 nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela (CHNV) to enter the country each month.
The sudden freeze of the contentious program comes after an internal DHS report revealed rampant fraud among the sponsors paying for the migrants to come to the country, a source familiar with the report told Fox News.
The freeze will give the agency time to investigate if fraud has occurred in their supporter applications – which are forms filled by individuals who ‘agree to provide financial support to a beneficiary and undergo background checks.’
Just 3,200 individual sponsors signed up to support roughly 101,000 migrants according to the report, prompting concerns at DHS that the system is being abused.
The report indicating fraud also shockingly found that some of the names used to fill out sponsor forms belonged to dead people.
Migrants board flights in Texas bound for Chicago. A Biden administration plan to allow migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela to enter the U.S. aboard planes has been paused this week after major fraud was discovered internally by DHS
Additionally, storage units were found to be the home address for some sponsor applications, while certain phone numbers were used on thousands of applications.
Almost 3,000 sponsors applications were filled out using fake zip codes, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) a conservative immigration nonprofit which first obtained the report, found.
According to a DHS spokesperson the agency now has ‘review mechanisms in place to detect and prevent fraud and abuse in our immigration processes. DHS takes any abuse of its processes very seriously,’ a DHS spokesperson said.
‘Where fraud is identified, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will investigate and litigate applicable cases in immigration court and make criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.’
The spokesperson continued: ‘Out of an abundance of caution, 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.’
‘Shut it down permanently,’ Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said of the Biden plan. ‘This program should have never existed in the first place.’
‘It’s just another way the Biden-Harris Administration has welcomed hundreds of thousands of aliens into our country, unchecked.’
House Homeland Security Chair Mark Green, R-Tenn., told DailyMail.com, ‘This admission by the Biden-Harris administration vindicates every warning we have ever issued about the unlawful CHNV mass-parole program.’
‘It also exposes the lie by administration officials, like now-impeached DHS Secretary Mayorkas, about the quality and extent of the vetting process—not just for the inadmissible aliens seeking entry, but those attempting to sponsor them.’
‘We issued a subpoena last year to compel documents regarding this program, and while DHS partially complied, the department remains delinquent in producing certain documents and communications relating to the program.’
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at an airport to receive Americans released in a prison swap. Their program has allowed hundreds of thousands of immigrants to fly directly to the U.S., obtain work permits and live in the U.S.
Green added: ‘This is exactly what happens when you create an unlawful mass-parole program in order to spare your administration the political embarrassment and bad optics of overrun borders. The Biden-Harris administration should terminate the CHNV program immediately.’
The flight program was started in October 2022 and was initially meant for Venezuelans who met certain conditions like they had not previously tried to enter the U.S. illegally, had a U.S.-based sponsor and passed biographical vetting.
Notably, the migrants are responsible for their own travel, but the program allows them to fly to the U.S.
The sponsors for the migrants also must undergo background checks, which makes the reported fraud among them even more concerning.
Still, DHS emphasized that CHNV beneficiaries are ‘thoroughly screened’ prior to their arrival.
‘The multi-layered screening and vetting for advanced travel authorizations is separate from the screening of U.S.-based supporters,’ the spokesperson told Fox News. ‘DHS has not identified issues of concern relating to the screening and vetting of beneficiaries.’
As of October 2023, there were around 1.6 million applicants waiting for DHS approval to fly to the U.S. using Biden’s parole program, the agency said this year.
