The Biden administration has put a freeze on an immigration program that allows up to 30,000 citizens a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela (CHNV) to travel into the U.S. and enter legally under the administration's use of parole.
The Department of Homeland Security paused the program last month when it discovered massive fraud by sponsors of the migrants, not fraud committed by the migrants themselves.
An internal DHS report uncovered fraud in the applications to sponsor the migrants.
"DHS 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."
"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," they said.
What sort of "fraud" and abuse of process was uncovered?
The internal report found that forms from those applying for the program included social security numbers, addresses and phone numbers being used hundreds of times in some cases.
Parts of the report shared with Fox News Digital by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a conservative immigration group, showed that 100,948 forms were filled out by 3,218 serial sponsors — those whose number appears on 20 or more forms.
It also found that 24 of the 1,000 most used numbers belonged to a dead person. Meanwhile, 100 physical addresses were used between 124 and 739 times on over 19,000 forms. Those addresses included storage units. One sponsor phone number was submitted on over 2,000 forms, and there were 2,839 forms with non-existent sponsor zip codes, according to the leak.
DHS swears on a stack of bibles that the CHNV beneficiaries are "thoroughly screened and vetted prior to their arrival to the United States."
"The multi-layered screening and vetting for advanced travel authorizations is separate from the screening of U.S.-based supporters," the spokesperson said. "DHS has not identified issues of concern relating to the screening and vetting of beneficiaries."
So they're saying that even though the sponsors are perpetrating fraud on DHS by giving false information to the U.S. government about who the beneficiaries are, the migrants are clean and would never dream of being in cahoots with crooked sponsors just to get into the U.S.?
I call BS on that.
"This is an indication that the administration was willing to cut every corner and endanger public safety in order to bring in as many illegal aliens as they could," Ira Mehlman, a spokesperson for FAIR, told Fox News Digital.
Except, the CHNV migrants aren't "illegal." Biden invited them. They have work permits that allow them to stay in the U.S. for two years. They entered the U.S. legally.
The problem is that the program is a massive abuse of Congressional authority. Immigration parole was designed to fill some cracks in the system that facilitated people with genuine humanitarian problems to enter the U.S. with a lot less red tape. Allowing 30,000 immigrants a month from four countries to enter the country is an appalling abuse of Congressional authority. At one time, it was discussed among Republicans whether Biden should be impeached for abuse of power because of that program.
The idea that all of these migrants are vetted and screened appropriately is nonsense. Republicans should try to put an end to this program legislatively.
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