Fraud in Somali Immigration to the U.S.
A decade of immigration from Somalia to the United States faced significant challenges with widespread fraud, according to insights from retired federal officials and those from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The P-3 refugee program, established through the Refugee Act of 1980, enables the spouses, unmarried children, and parents of refugees to apply for refugee status as well. Between 2003 and 2008, over 95 percent of refugees entering the U.S. via this program were Africans, predominantly Somalis.
In March 2008, then-President George W. Bush halted the program after the State Department uncovered extensive fraud. Around 36,000 individuals, mainly from Africa, had come to the U.S. as P-3 refugees, with a large number resettling in Minnesota.
Following this, in November 2008, the State Department published a report indicating it started requiring DNA tests for P-3 refugees from Somalia, Ethiopia, and Liberia to verify their relationship with U.S.-based sponsors.
The DNA testing indicated that the department could “confirm all claimed biological relationships in less than 20% of cases.” The report stated:
We initially tested samples from around 500 refugees, mainly from Somalia and Ethiopia, in Nairobi, Kenya, who were being considered for U.S. resettlement via the P-3 program. Given the high rate of fraud suggested by these samples, we expanded testing to Ethiopia, Uganda, Ghana, Guinea, Gambia, and Ivory Coast. Most of the roughly 3,000 refugees tested were from Somalia, Ethiopia, and Liberia. It’s important to note that initial DNA testing is restricted to families applying to the P-3 program and will not include checks between applicants and their relatives in the U.S.
In July 2018, retired ICE official Charles Thaddeus Filling released a 30-page brief labeling the situation “the biggest refugee fraud crisis of our time,” calling it possibly “the biggest failure in immigration history.”
Filling noted, “For years before the suspension, thousands of fraudulent P-3 refugees—many using false identities—entered the U.S. During the 1930s, when 25 percent of the workforce was unemployed, it was termed the ‘Great Depression.’ The level of fraud in the P-3 program was nearly 100 percent, making it justifiable to refer to it as the largest refugee fraud crisis of modern times.”
In 2012, former President Barack Obama reinstated the P-3 refugee program, implementing a series of reforms, which included mandatory DNA testing of applicants to confirm family ties to refugees in the U.S.
