Since October 2022 hundreds of thousands of migrants from four countries have flown directly into the United States, receiving a work permit and a two-year authorization to stay in the United States legally via a controversial parole program set up by President Joe Biden. That program, known as the CHNV (Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela) Parole program, has now been paused by DHS after an internal report found large amounts of fraud in sponsor applications.
Fraud? Color us shocked.
The programs started in October 2022 and initially applied only to Venezuelans who could show they had not previously entered the United States illegally, had a sponsor, and (allegedly) passed certain biometric and biographical vetting. It was expanded to include Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans in January 2023, and had a limit of 30,000 people a month.
The report, which was obtained by Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), showed that some Social Security numbers, addresses, and phone numbers were used hundreds of times on applicant forms, and that 100,948 of the sponsor forms had been filed by 3,218 different “serial” sponsors – those whose number appears on 20 or more forms.
From FAIR’s press release on the leaked report:
According to the internal agency review, evidence of fraud includes the use of fake Social Security Numbers (SSNs), including SSNs of deceased individuals, and the use of false phone numbers. Many applications listed the same physical address. In fact, 100 addresses were listed on over 19,000 forms, and many parole applicants applied from a single property (including a mobile park home, warehouse, and storage unit). In addition, many applications were submitted by the same IP address. If this weren’t bad enough, the same exact answers to Form I-134A questions were provided on hundreds of applications – in some instances, the same answer was used by over 10,000 applicants.
The report reveals that the 100 IP addresses accounted for 51,133 of the Form I-134A applications submitted. In one example, an IP address located in Tijuana, Mexico, was used 1,328 times.
Form I-134A is the sponsor’s application. So, 51,133 of them shouldn’t have been filled out in Tijuana, and obviously deceased individuals are not able to financially support migrants. It definitely looks like this program has become yet another way for cartels to suck money from vulnerable people who want to get into this country, and undoubtedly there’s no real sponsor for those 51,133 applications. It wouldn’t be a surprise if we learned that cartels are somehow preventing people who don’t use their services to complete an application from being admitted to the program.
There’s more:
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.
The report was created by the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate to ensure DHS can quickly respond to fraud in immigration benefits programs.
I’d like to see what this “quick response” is.
A DHS spokesperson told Fox News:
“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. 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.”
Blah, blah, blah. Chalk up another “win” for Border Czar Kamala Harris.
