Illegal immigrants are purchasing access to the Biden Administrations “parole program” for $5,000 each in Nicaragua, according to a recent report by the Washington Times.
Scammers charge the would-be parolees $1,000 upfront and provide connection with a U.S. resident who is willing to claim they will be the financial sponsor of the immigrant on federal forms. The immigrant then pays the scammer the remaining $4,000 and waits for the Department of Homeland Security to approve the sponsor before they board an airliner headed to a U.S. city.
A source who witnessed the Nicaraguan scam in operation told the Times, “Parole is being sold on the open market.”
As a reminder, Nicaragua is one of the four countries that the Biden Administration created a so-called “humanitarian parole” program for in January 2023. It also included Cuba, Venezuela, and Haiti. The CHNV program touted “safe and orderly pathways” for immigration that would allow up to 30,000 nationals from four specified countries to enter the U.S. The would-be immigrants would need a sponsor who guaranteed to provide financial support for the migrant if they cannot do so for themselves.
The pay-to-parole is undoubtably occurring in other countries according to Emilio Gonzalez the former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director during the George W. Bush Administration.
“If there’s a way to monetize this, people will figure it out,” he said. “This just stinks all over.”
The Washington Times indicated that the monetization comes in with the immigrant’s requirement for a sponsor. Theoretically, a family member or friend would be the sponsor of the immigrant, but not in every case. The scammers are marketing the program to those with no family or other connections in the U.S. to sponsor them.
The Biden Administration assured the Washington Times immigrants were not being encouraged to strike deals with scammers, but neither did they speak against those types of rules.
The USCIS has warned the migrants to be wary of individuals offering support through social media and online accounts, or in exchange for a fee or monetary compensation. The agency claimed it carefully vetted prospective sponsors through several fraud and security screening measures.
However, experts allege the agency doesn’t have the capability to investigate and keep track of sponsors fulfilling their financial promises to the immigrants, thus selling financial affidavits is an easy and lucrative risk to take.
Matthew O’Brien, a former immigration judge, and former head of USCIS’s national security division and now director of research at the Immigration Reform Law Institute laid bare the painful truth.
“So, what they’ve done is they’ve set up this thing that looks like it’s a requirement, that looks like it’s preventing people from gaming the system, and it’s another avenue for gaming the system,” O’Brien said. “Nobody’s verifying whether anybody can pay, or prosecuting them when they can’t, or prosecuting them when an alien goes on public benefits.”
The parole program has come under greater scrutiny in recent weeks as more “favored country” immigrants have clashed with law enforcement in several states. Venezuelan’s have taken the news by storm in New York and Chicago for a shoplifting crime wave. Not to mention the murder of college student Laken Riley and the Venezuelan charged with that crime.
Also, a Haitian immigrant Cory Alvarez paroled into the U.S. through the CHNV program was accused of raping a 15-year-old fellow migrant at a Massachusetts state-run migrant shelter. The case has raised more questions as to why he was in a state-run shelter, rather than being supported by his sponsor – the person who signed his financial support application.
Robyn Spradlin is a freelance journalist working as a contributor for Christian News Journal covering news and politics on the national and state levels. She has worked as a copywriter for Victory News on the Victory Channel since 2022. Robyn has a BA in Communication Studies and an MA in Journalism from Regent University and is a member of the Evangelical Press Association. She is an author, evangelistic minister and a musician. She lives in South Florida, where she enjoys the outdoors when she’s not writing.