The US Department of Homeland Security announced on Friday (August 2) that it has temporarily suspended a program that allows citizens from four countries to enter the United States for humanitarian reasons due to concerns about fraudulent sponsors.
The program, known as “parole,” allows up to 30,000 people each month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter the US as long as they have a sponsor in the US and meet other conditions. Sponsors must be legally residing in the US and have sufficient financial support for the sponsored individuals during their stay in the US.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stated on Friday that it has suspended the entry program and is conducting additional reviews of sponsors.
“DHS takes very seriously any abuse of its programs,” DHS said in a statement, announcing the temporary halt on issuing travel authorizations to new beneficiaries while sponsors’ applications are under review. DHS aims to resume processing applications promptly after taking appropriate security measures.
According to The Washington Times, prior to DHS announcing the suspension of the entry program, the oversight organization Federation for American Immigration Reform revealed partial contents of a government internal report showing the extent of fraudulent activities in the program, including the use of deceased individuals’ social security numbers and thousands of applications using the same address.
From the perspective of sponsors, around 3,200 sponsors were responsible for over 100,000 applications, meaning each sponsor supported over thirty immigrants.
Based on DHS statistics, as of June 30, approximately 495,000 citizens from these four countries have entered the US under this program.
This entry program is a key part of the Biden administration’s strategy to reduce illegal border crossings in the southern border. The program encourages immigrants from Haiti, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba to find sponsors in the US and submit applications to bring them into the country. Immigrants are typically granted residency and work permits for up to two years.
Following claims from the Federation for American Immigration Reform about widespread fraud in the program, Republican lawmakers have urged the Biden administration to terminate the program.
“Shut it down permanently. This program should have never existed in the first place,” wrote House Speaker Mike Johnson on the social media platform X.