ICE announced a major crackdown on OPT program meant for foreign students who are F-1 visa holders.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced a major crackdown on an immigration program that allows international students to work temporarily in the country. Calling the OPT program a ‘magnet for fraud’, ICE director Todd M Lyons said the agency uncovered irregularities involving nearly 10,000 foreign students participating in the federal government’s Optional Practical Training program. When the OPT was created under the Bush administration and expanded under the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security anticipated only a few thousand foreign students would receive training approval before returning home, Lyons said, giving a background of the program.But instead of what was expected, OPT ballooned into an uncontrolled guest worker pipeline with hundreds of thousands of foreign students working in the United States, the director said in a press conference Tuesday. “As the program size exploded, so did the fraud. During the first Trump administration, we uncovered thousands of foreign students claiming employment at work sites that did not exist, blatantly fabricating information provided to DHS. Under the Biden administration, the fraud escalated even further,” he said. Lyons announced that ICE identified 10,000 students working for highly suspect employers and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. He said these companies are just among the top 25 OPT employers.Investigators found empty buildings, locked doors at addresses where hundreds of foreign students were allegedly employed. In many cases, multiple OPT employers claimed to operate from the same address, but none actually leased the facility. These companies are involved in financial red flags, including breaches of contract, suspicious movement of cash across countries.HSI said last week they visited 18 apparent OPT worksites in Texas and the findings were alarming. They found coordinated employer clusters where numerous OPT workers were on nearly identical websites, sharing job postings. One employer, during the site visit, claimed they have only three OPT students but according to records, they have 500 foreign students working. The company officials could not reply to basic questions from the investigators and referred to HR persons from India.What is OPT?OPT (Optional Practical Training) is a US immigration program that lets international students on F-1 visas work temporarily in jobs related to their field of study. It’s administered through the US Citizenship and Immigration Services and schools authorized under the F-1 student visa system.
