The Department of Homeland Security has abruptly halted a Biden administration program that allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants outside the United States to bypass normal immigration protocols and fly into the country amid serious allegations of fraud.
The DHS has suspended the “CHNV” program following a report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which found that an internal government audit documented a large number of fraudulent applications as the U.S. admitted nearly half a million migrants from four countries.
“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,” a DHS spokesperson told the Washington Examiner on Friday.
The report by FAIR, a nonprofit group that calls for restricting immigration levels, stated that the Social Security numbers of deceased sponsors in the U.S. and fake phone numbers were used on applications.
Address fraud was also found to be widespread. Roughly 100 street addresses were listed on 19,000 applications and were often traced back to buildings that included a warehouse or storage unit.
In another example, 100 IP addresses used to access the internet (in other words, the connection from a particular phone, tablet, or computer) were used to apply in more than 51,133 instances.
The revelation comes after Republicans, including House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green (R-TN), have warned since the program’s inception 18 months ago that the process circumvented the legal immigration process by mass-paroling hundreds of thousands of people rather than admitting them on a discretionary basis.
“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,” Green said in a statement. “The Biden-Harris administration should terminate the CHNV program immediately.”
As of late June, more than 494,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have been admitted, roughly 30,000 per month.
Read more at Washingtonexaminer.com
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