A group of senators led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday calling on the administration to put an end to the “fundamentally flawed” CHNV program.
The program, which was recently reinstated despite findings of fraud, allows 30,000 people each month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to immigrate to the United States. These beneficiaries are flown to the United States and given two-year work permits.
“Slight ad-hoc improvements and boilerplate language to improve the program will not address the fundamental injustices, failures, and illegalities of the CHNV program.”
In the letter I received, The Daily WireSenator Cruz and other lawmakers called on the federal government to “immediately” end the “ineffective, illegal and dangerous” program.
The Department of Homeland Security suspended CHNV “out of an abundance of caution” in mid-July after a report from the Office of Fraud Detection and National Security found fraud in some applications submitted by U.S.-based sponsors of foreign beneficiaries. The report found that about 3,000 sponsors had submitted more than 100,000 applications. It also found that some sponsors had used phone numbers of deceased individuals, safekeeping addresses, and false zip codes.
A DHS spokesman said the agency would conduct “additional vetting” of sponsors to prevent future fraud, but less than six weeks after the report was released, the program was reinstated.
In his letter, Cruz said, “Patchwork improvements and platitudes to improve the program will not address the fundamental injustice, failure, and illegality of the CHNV program. This fundamentally flawed program must be permanently eliminated. Not only has this program facilitated fraud, it has exposed serious weaknesses in our immigration system with dire consequences for public safety. The tragic sexual assault and murder of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray at the hands of two illegal Venezuelan immigrants illustrates the dangers posed by the Biden-Harris Administration's immigration policies.”
The senators said the program was illegal and had “serious deficiencies in oversight.”
“By establishing a national origin-based classification program, the Biden Administration has created a parallel immigration system without Congressional authorization,” the senators said.
“There are numerous cases of crimes committed by CHNV participants, including sexual assault, rape and murder,” they note. “With scammers charging up to $5,000 in sponsorship fees, the program is clearly vulnerable to exploitation by human traffickers and other nefarious actors.”
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