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

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

Nearly 500,000 people from the four countries arrived under presidential authority through June after applying online to financial sponsors in the United States and flying at their own expense. It is a key part of the Democratic administration’s policy to create or expand paths for legal access while asylum applications for people who cross the border illegally are being restricted.

The Department of Homeland Security said it has temporarily suspended the new authorizations while it investigates the backgrounds of the financial sponsors.

The department said it has not identified any security or public safety concerns about people from the four countries who are benefiting, only their sponsors. Beneficiaries “are being thoroughly screened and vetted prior to coming to the United States,” it said in a statement, pledging to “resume application processing as soon as possible, with appropriate safeguards in place.”

Homeland Security did not specify when the processing was suspended. But the news came after the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that advocates immigration restrictions, cited an internal Homeland Security report that raised questions about fraud.

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 applications and that 24 of the top 1,000 Social Security numbers used by sponsors corresponded to deceased individuals.

Republican critics hit back. House Speaker Mike Johnson said, “This program should never have existed in the first place. It’s just another way the Biden-Harris administration has welcomed hundreds of thousands of aliens into our country without due process.”

The policy — which was implemented in October 2022 for Venezuelans and in January 2023 for the other three nationalities — targets countries that send large numbers of people to the United States and typically refuse to accept those they deport. It comes alongside commitments by Mexico to take back people from those countries who cross the border into the U.S. illegally.

According to the policy, The U.S. is accepting up to 30,000 people per month from the countries for two years with work authorization. More than 194,000 Haitians, 110,000 Venezuelans, 104,000 Cubans and 86,000 Nicaraguans have benefited through June, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Concern about sponsors looking for quick profit surfaced almost from the beginning. Facebook groups with names like “Sponsors US” contained dozens of posts offering and seeking financial support.

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