Trump team accused of ‘largest fraud’ in immigration history by taking $1 billion in fees from migrants

The Trump administration is allegedly carrying out a more than $1 billion scam on immigrants, the “largest fraud in the history of the U.S. immigration system,” according to a new analysis.

The Cato Institute study alleges that a combination of Trump administration policies, including freezing visa and status applications for citizens of 92 countries, has resulted in the government collecting more than $1 billion in fees for immigration petitions it never plans to finalize.

“The government took their money, and now it won’t even adjudicate their applications—in many cases, it refuses even to issue denials,” Cato immigration expert David J. Bier writes in the analysis. “The State Department is actually telling consular officers not to notify future applicants that the government has banned them.”

The alleged fraud originates from a group of new restrictions, according to the analysis. They include the Trump administration’s expanded travel ban affecting 40 countries; a freeze and ex post facto review of applications for immigration benefits such as employment authorization and permanent residency; and a recently announced State Department policy pausing visa processing for 75 countries. The Trump administration alleges migrants from these 75 countries draw excessively from the U.S. welfare system.

Taken together, these policies affect people from countries that account for half of all legal immigrants to the U.S. The restrictions have imperiled an estimated 2 million applications for various types of status, Cato finds.

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

The State Department policy was announced in January as the administration, echoing recent viral claims from a right-wing content creator, alleged that Somali immigrants in Minnesota were defrauding U.S. government benefit programs en masse.

A coalition of immigrant advocacy groups and U.S. citizens sued the administration last month over the policy, alleging that it is based on false pretenses, given that most applicants for immigration visas are ineligible for welfare for years and must provide extensive proof that they will support themselves or have adequate financial sponsors.

The plaintiffs include U.S. citizens who are members of mixed-status families who have been separated from their loved ones by the freeze, including a Long Island man who became separated from his wife when she returned to Guatemala for a visa interview.

Joanna Cuevas Ingram, a senior staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center, told The New York Times last month that the Trump administration’s policy, which impacts nations with large non-white populations, closely mirrors 1920s-era racial immigration quotas.

The White House, under the guise of cracking down on fraud, is seeking “to reinstate those old racial quotas,” she said.

President Trump tried repeatedly to institute a mass travel ban for individuals from largely Muslim-majority countries during his first term.