Illegal Border Crossings Today:

USCIS is Quietly Making Plans to Restart the Fraud-Ridden CHNV Program

USCIS building

FAIR Take | August 2024

Over the weekend, The Washington Times reported that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is quietly planning to restart the Cuba-Haiti-Nicaragua-Venezuela (CHNV) parole program. The program was shut down abruptly in July due to the results of an internal review indicating the program was riddled with fraud. FAIR obtained a copy of the report and published highlights of its findings.

Not only is USCIS eager to restart the program, it appears that the agency is still not particularly worried about the integrity of the application process. According to The Washington Times, USCIS recently sent out an email to its workforce looking for volunteers to review CHNV applications. “This will be a full-time, remote detail for 180 days. No prior experience is necessary,” a human resources official wrote. “Training will be provided, and overtime may be available.” Indeed, the email seems to expressly forbid full-fledged immigration officers, those with experience adjudicating benefits applications, from participating.

When asked about the CHNV program, the Department of Homeland Security defended its ability to detect fraud. “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,” a spokesman said in a statement. The Department promised that the program would be restarted “as quickly as possible, with appropriate safeguards.”

However, as The Washington Times notes, the Department has failed to close loopholes in the program’s rules that encourage fraud. For example, DHS still does not prohibit aliens from these four countries from paying Americans to sponsor them into the country. According to the Examiner, some aliens are offering as much as $5,000 to be sponsored.

It remains unclear exactly when USCIS will re-launch the CHNV program. However, the agency asked for volunteers to raise their hands before the end of August.