The Biden administration has paused a program that allows certain migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to legally enter the United States amid concerns about fraud among financial sponsors.
The program, known as “humanitarian parole,” allows up to 30,000 migrants from these countries to lawfully enter the country by air each month, as long as they can prove they have someone in the U.S. to financially sponsor them for up to two years.
The Department of Homeland Security said it had suspended the program while it investigates the backgrounds of U.S.-based financial sponsors.
“DHS takes any abuse of its processes very seriously,” spokesperson Erin Heeter said in a statement. “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.”
The Biden administration started the program in 2022, and expanded it in 2023 to curb illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border. More than 500,000 migrants had entered the country through June, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The pause came after the fraud detection unit of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) found that a large number of financial sponsors were applying to sponsor multiple migrants.
The news broke after the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a group that favors stricter immigration enforcement, claimed the program was “riddled with fraud.”
FAIR said in a statement Friday it had obtained a government review of the fraud that showed sponsors used fake Social Security numbers, some belonging to deceased individuals, and false phone numbers. Multiple applications also came from the same address.
According to CBS News, DHS stopped granting travel permits to Venezuelans as part of the policy in June, before suspending the program for the remaining three countries.