US suspends humanitarian entry permits for citizens of 4 countries over fraud concerns

SAN DIEGO –

The U.S. government has temporarily suspended humanitarian permits for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to enter the country and stay for up to two years amid concerns that their financial backers are committing fraud, officials said Friday.

Nearly 500,000 people of these nationalities had arrived in the United States through June under the program after applying online with financial sponsors in the country and traveling by plane at their own expense. It is an important policy of the Democratic administration to create or expand avenues for legal entry while restricting the right to asylum for those who cross the border without authorization.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it has “temporarily paused” new authorizations while it reviews the backgrounds of financial sponsors.

Migrants walk along the highway through Suchiate, Chiapas state in southern Mexico, Sunday, July 21, 2024, during their journey north toward the U.S. border.

(Edgar H. Clemente/AP)

DHS said it had not identified any security risks related to individuals from the four countries in question, and that concerns related only to their sponsors. Beneficiaries “are thoroughly screened and vetted prior to their arrival in the United States,” DHS said in a statement, promising to “resume processing of applications as soon as possible, with appropriate safeguards in place.”

The DHS did not specify when the processing of permits was suspended. But the news came after the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a group that advocates for a more restrictive immigration policy, cited an internal DHS report that raised suspicions of fraud.

The Associated Press was unable to corroborate details of the internal document, which was not provided by DHS or FAIR. But FAIR says the report found, among other things, that 3,218 sponsors were responsible for more than 100,000 applications and that 24 of the top 1,000 Social Security numbers used by sponsors were for deceased individuals.

Criticism from Republicans was not long in coming. House Speaker Mike Johnson said that “this program should never have existed in the first place. It is just another way for the Biden-Harris administration to welcome hundreds of thousands of foreigners into our country without restraint.”

The policy — introduced for Venezuelans in October 2022 and for the other three nationalities in January 2023 — targets countries from which large numbers of people migrate to the United States and which generally refuse to accept deportees. The policy is accompanied by a commitment by Mexico to readmit people from those countries who cross the U.S. border without authorization.

Under this policy, the United States accepts up to 30,000 people a month from those countries for two years with the possibility of applying for a work permit. More than 194,000 Haitians, 110,000 Venezuelans, 104,000 Cubans and 86,000 Nicaraguans have benefited through June, according to data from the Office of Customs and Border Protection.

Concerns about financially motivated sponsors have been around almost from the start. Facebook groups with names like “Sponsors US” have dozens of posts offering and seeking sponsors.

Arrests for crossing the border without authorization have fallen for the four nationalities that benefited from the permits. During the first half of the year, authorities arrested 5,065 Cubans, while in November 2022 alone they had arrested 42,000. During the same half, 304 Haitians were arrested, compared to almost 18,000 in September 2021.