US Homeland Security halts immigration permits from 4 countries amid concern about sponsorship fraud

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Biden administration has temporarily suspended permits for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to enter the United States and stay up to two years amid concerns about fraud by their financial sponsors, officials said Friday.

Nearly 500,000 people from the four countries arrived through June under presidential authority after applying online with financial sponsors in the United States and flying at their own expense. It is a major piece of the Democratic administration’s policies to create or expand paths for legal entry while restricting asylum for those who cross the border illegally.

The Homeland Security Department said it “temporarily paused” new authorizations while it reviews the backgrounds of financial sponsors.

The department said it has not identified any security or public safety concerns about people from the four countries who benefit, just their sponsors. Beneficiaries “are thoroughly screened and vetted prior to their arrival to the United States,” it said in statement that promised to “restart application processing as quickly as possible, with appropriate safeguards.”

Homeland Security didn’t say when processing was suspended. But the news broke after the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that favors immigration restrictions, cited an internal Homeland Security report that raised questions about fraud.

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The Associated Press did not confirm details of the internal review, which neither Homeland Security nor FAIR provided. But FAIR said the report found, among other things, that 3,218 sponsors were responsible for more than 100,000 filings and that 24 of the top 1,000 Social Security numbers used by sponsors corresponded to dead people.

Republican critics pounced. House Speaker Mike Johnson said, “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.”

The policy — introduced for Venezuelans in October 2022 and for the other three nationalities in January 2023 — is aimed at countries that send large numbers of people to the United States and generally refuse to accept those who are deported. It is paired with commitments from Mexico to take back people from those countries who cross the U.S. border illegally.

Under the policy, the U.S. accepts up to 30,000 people a month from the countries for two years with eligibility for work authorization. More than 194,000 Haitians, 110,000 Venezuelans, 104,000 Cubans and 86,000 Nicaraguans benefited through June. according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Concerns about sponsors seeking a quick profit surfaced almost from the start. Facebook groups with names like “Sponsors U.S.” carried dozens of posts offering and seeking financial supporters.

Arrests for illegal crossings have plummeted among the four nationalities. Cubans were arrested 5,065 times during the first half of the year, compared with more than 42,000 arrests in November 2022 alone. Haitians were arrested 304 times during the first six months of the year, compared with a peak of nearly 18,000 in September 2021.