| Submit your comments on this article | |
| -Lurid Crime Tales- | |
| ICE drops ‘uncontrolled' fraud bombshell involving thousands of foreign students, ‘phantom employees' | |
| 2026-05-14 | |
At a news conference Tuesday, Lyons said the cases uncovered thus far are "just the tip of the iceberg." OPT is a U.S. immigration program that lets international students on F-1 visas work temporarily in the country in jobs related to their field of study. Lyons said that when the program was first created under the Bush administration and expanded under the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security expected "only a few thousand foreign students would receive training approval before returning home." "Instead," Lyons said, that OPT "ballooned into an uncontrolled guest worker pipeline with hundreds of thousands of foreign students working in the United States." "Today, we are announcing we have identified over 10,000 foreign students who claim to be working for highly suspect employers, and that’s just among the top 25 OPT employers. This is only the tip of the iceberg," he said. "We’ve dramatically expanded our oversight of OPT and can report that we found fraud nationwide." According to Lyons, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) officers have visited "problematic OPT worksite employers" in Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina and Florida. He said that many of the suspicious employers include nongovernmental organizations. According to Lyons, investigators have "discovered empty buildings and locked doors at addresses where hundreds of foreign students are allegedly employed." Investigators have also found hundreds of foreign students listed as working out of residential addresses. "In many places," he continued, "multiple OPT employers claim to operate from the same address, but none actually lease the facility." "When someone does open the door, their statements are inconsistent, or they claim no knowledge of the business," said Lyons. The ICE director also said investigators uncovered what he referred to as "phantom employees," who he said are foreign students who obtained work authorization through OPT but never actually showed up for work at the sites they claimed to work out of. "This is not accidental," Lyons concluded. "This is deliberate, coordinated and criminal." He added that "this fraud is not victimless," calling it a "blatant attack on the goodwill of the American people." Vice President JD Vance, who President Donald Trump appointed "fraud czar," celebrated the discovery in an X post as "another great win for our fraud task force." Vance wrote that the administration "will not tolerate foreign nationals abusing our visa system at the expense of the American people." JD Vance Announces the White House Fraud Task Force's Latest Move to Stop Medicaid Fraud [Townhall] Vice President JD Vance revealed on Wednesday that the new White House Fraud Task Force will be sending letters to all 50 states demanding proof that state governments are taking Medicaid fraud seriously. He warned that any state failing to meet the Trump administration’s standards could face cuts to its Medicaid funding. "Today, we are sending across 50 Medicaid programs, we are sending letters that will require them to show that they are effectively and aggressively prosecuting Medicaid fraud in their states," the vice presdient said. "And if they do not, if they do not aggressively prosecute Medicaid fraud, we are going to turn off the money that goes to these anti-fraud units." "And I want to say a couple things about this." You may think, obviously, this is a Republican administration, we're all proud Republicans up here. You may think that this is purely a red state or blue state issue. That's actually not true. We see Medicaid fraud issues in Ohio, the state that I used to represent in the United States Senate. We also see Medicaid issues, fraud issues in a state like Maryland, which is obviously a very blue state. Related: Foreign student 03/20/2026 VDH - Our New Ungracious Immigrants Foreign student 02/15/2026 Federal data shows over $1 billion in foreign funding to Michigan's top public universities Foreign student 01/23/2026 DHS Slates Mahmoud Khalil for Deportation to Algeria Related: F-1 visa: 2025-03-27 Another one bites the dust: US detains, revokes visa of Turkish student at Tufts who co-wrote an anti-Israel op-ed F-1 visa: 2025-03-23 Trump admin revokes visa of Cornell student that took 'cue from the armed resistance in Palestine,' called for America's destruction F-1 visa: 2024-12-02 The Hamas-university nexus, doing Iran’s work for the vicious joy of it: 11/24-11/30 Related: JD Vance 05/12/2026 Ohio gov candidate Vivek Ramaswamy sounds alarm about Medicaid fraud ‐ after 288 companies found registered to same address JD Vance 05/10/2026 Iran keeps US waiting for response to latest proposal after fighting flare-ups, UK destroyer heads to Hormuz JD Vance 05/09/2026 Iran reported several clashes with US forces in the Strait of Hormuz | |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #2 |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2026-05-14 14:54 |
| #1 |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2026-05-14 08:54 |