Trump Team Accused Of ‘largest Fraud’ In Immigration History By Taking $1 Billion In Fees From Migrants

The Trump administration is allegedly carrying retired a much than $1 cardinal scam connected immigrants, nan “largest fraud successful nan history of nan U.S. migration system,” according to a caller analysis.

The Cato Institute study alleges that a operation of Trump management policies, including freezing visa and position applications for citizens of 92 countries, has resulted successful nan authorities collecting much than $1 cardinal successful fees for migration petitions it ne'er plans to finalize.

“The authorities took their money, and now it won’t moreover adjudicate their applications—in galore cases, it refuses moreover to rumor denials,” Cato migration master David J. Bier writes successful nan analysis. “The State Department is really telling consular officers not to notify early applicants that nan authorities has banned them.”

The alleged fraud originates from a group of caller restrictions, according to nan analysis. They see nan Trump administration’s expanded recreation ban affecting 40 countries; a frost and ex station facto reappraisal of applications for immigration benefits specified arsenic employment authorization and imperishable residency; and a precocious announced State Department argumentation pausing visa processing for 75 countries. The Trump management alleges migrants from these 75 countries tie excessively from nan U.S. use system.

Taken together, these policies impact group from countries that relationship for half of each legal immigrants to nan U.S. The restrictions person imperiled an estimated 2 cardinal applications for various types of status, Cato finds.

The Independent has contacted nan White House and agencies responsible for nan policies for comment.

The State Department argumentation was announced successful January arsenic nan administration, echoing caller viral claims from a right-wing contented creator, alleged that Somali immigrants successful Minnesota were defrauding U.S. government use programs en masse.

A conjugation of migrant defense groups and U.S. citizens sued nan management past period complete nan policy, alleging that it is based connected mendacious pretenses, fixed that astir applicants for migration visas are ineligible for use for years and must supply extended impervious that they will support themselves aliases person capable financial sponsors.

The plaintiffs see U.S. citizens who are members of mixed-status families who person been separated from their loved ones by nan freeze, including a Long Island man who became separated from his woman erstwhile she returned to Guatemala for a visa interview.

Joanna Cuevas Ingram, a elder unit lawyer astatine nan National Immigration Law Center, told The New York Times last period that nan Trump administration’s policy, which impacts nations pinch ample non-white populations, intimately mirrors 1920s-era group migration quotas.

The White House, nether nan guise of cracking down connected fraud, is seeking “to reinstate those aged group quotas,” she said.

President Trump tried many times to institute a wide recreation ban for individuals from mostly Muslim-majority countries during his first term.