Eric Daugherty@EricLDaugh
🚨 HOLY SMOKES. ICE has just announced a jaw-dropping fraud bust, saying 10,000 FOREIGN students are involved in the federal government's Optional Practical Training
There are EMPTY BUILDINGS where HUNDREDS of students should be "working" as part of their ability to be in America — run by foreign-linked groups that send money out of the country!
Locked doors, hundreds of students sharing the SAME ADDRESS, and "employers" sharing the same unleased addresses
There is a widespread "phantom employee" fraud going on. This is insane.
Many of the so-called "employers" have major red flags, such as facing lawsuits, no employment records, offshore payroll claims, and suspicious INTERNATIONAL MONEY flows
"HSI agents have visited problematic OPT employer work sites in Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Florida."
"Foreign students themselves are entering false addresses and employer names into the student and exchange visitor information system."
"But we are uncovering evidence of organized fraud that spans national and international borders. This is not accidental. It is deliberate, coordinated, and criminal."
"To give you an example, one employer we visited claimed to employ only three foreign students through OPT, while our records show over 500 foreign students claiming to work there."
"The company's representatives were unable to answer basic questions about the business and deferred HR managers in India."
"OPT employers are required to directly train foreign students, but we've seen multiple examples of alleged employers claiming that all management is overseas in India."
"We've also discovered multiple state networks which are large networks of alleged employers claiming to train thousands of foreign students in OPT, then farming them out to unreported third party employers, making oversight nearly impossible and raising serious national security issues."