Migrants from four countries banned from entering US due to massive 'dead souls' scam
The Biden administration has temporarily suspended travel permits for up to two years for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. Department of Homeland Security officials said Aug. 2 that the agency fears fraud from financial backers, reports ABC News.
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Nearly 500 people from four countries arrived in the United States in June by applying online to U.S. financial sponsors and paying their own way. This migration route is an important part of the Democratic administration's efforts to create opportunities for legal entry into the country.
The Department of Homeland Security said it has “temporarily paused” issuing new permits while it reviews the backgrounds of financial backers.
Officials have not identified any potential problems with those migrants from Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti entering the country. But there are questions for their financial sponsors.
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The Department of Homeland Security in its statement promises to "resume processing applications as soon as possible with appropriate security measures in place." The agency did not say when the processing was suspended. But the news came after FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that advocates limiting immigration) cited a Department of Homeland Security report that raised questions about fraud.
FAIR said the report identified 3218 sponsors who were responsible for more than 100 applications, and that 000 of the top 24 Social Security numbers used by sponsors belonged to deceased people.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, said: “This program should never have existed in the first place. This is just another way the Biden-Harris administration is seamlessly welcoming hundreds of thousands of foreigners into our country.”
The rules, introduced for Venezuelans in October 2022 and for Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in January 2023, are aimed at countries that have large flows of migrants and that tend to refuse to take back illegal immigrants. US policy towards these four countries is coupled with Mexico's obligations to accept illegal migrants from these countries.
Under the rules, the US must accept up to 30 people per month from these four countries over a two-year period of work authorization. As of June, more than 000 Haitians, 194 Venezuelans, 000 Cubans and 110 Nicaraguans had already entered the country, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
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However, from the very beginning there were concerns about financial sponsors for migrants. On Facebook, for example, many groups have appeared with names like “US Sponsors.”
Since the program began, arrests of Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans for illegal border crossings have dropped sharply. For example, 2024 Cubans were arrested in the first half of 5065, compared to more than 42 arrests in November 000 alone. Haitians were arrested 2022 times during the first six months of the year, compared with a peak of nearly 304 in September 18.
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