The Biden-Harris administration's Department of Homeland Security on Thursday announced plans to restart CHNV, a controversial immigration program that was temporarily suspended after widespread fraud was discovered.
The administration's CHNV program allows 30,000 people each month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to immigrate to the U.S. Recipients fly into the U.S. and are given two-year work permits.
“A massive shell game.”
To be eligible for the program, applicants must pass a screening process and have a U.S.-based sponsor.
The Fraud Detection and National Security Agency report found fraud on sponsorship applications. Some sponsors used the same Social Security numbers, addresses and phone numbers hundreds of times. Approximately 3,000 sponsors submitted more than 100,000 applications. The internal report found cases of sponsors using phone numbers of deceased people, warehouse addresses and fake zip codes.
As a result, the Department of Homeland Security announced it was suspending the program in mid-July “out of an abundance of caution.”
About a month and a half later, the Biden-Harris administration decided to reinstate the program, claiming additional safeguards had been put in place.
A DHS spokesman said the department would conduct “additional vetting” of sponsors, including setting up two sub-agency agencies to check “financial records and criminal history.”
A spokesman said most cases involved filing errors or other oversights and that only a small number of sponsors engaged in wrongdoing.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.), a strong critic of the “clearly flawed” program, blasted the administration for continuing to consider migrant flights illegal.
He accused the Department of Homeland Security of “failing to root out fraud and to put in place adequate safeguards to prevent exploitation by sponsors.”
“It is not surprising that the Biden-Harris Administration has rushed to reinstate the illegal CHNV mass release program, despite evidence of clear fraud in the program,” Green continued. “The CHNV program, coupled with the use of the CBP One app at the Southwest border, helps the president and border agents play a massive dummy game, encouraging inadmissible aliens to easily cross the border at ports of entry rather than travel between ports of entry.”
“But fundamentally, if DHS stopped importing 30,000 inadmissible aliens each month in the first place, there would be no fraud to prevent,” Green added.
A DHS spokesperson reported that since December 2022, Border Patrol has seen a 98% decrease in encounters with illegal immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. New York Post Reported.
Greene and Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, called the Biden-Harris administration's CHNV program a “bait-and-switch” scheme.
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