Summary
- President Biden’s and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas’ parole in place (PIP) scheme is designed to launder the immigration status of over half a million illegal aliens who, as of June 17, have lived continuously in the U.S. for at least 10 years and have married U.S. citizens.
- The PIP scheme represents an extravagant wedding of marriage fraud and indifference to such fraud by Secretary Mayorkas’ DHS. Of course, the American public will be paying for the reception. The progeny of such a wedding will be immigration fraud on a massive scale, damaging the rule of law and inevitably leading to more chain migration, as illegal alien spouses will be able to petition for green cards for numerous other family members.
- According to the 9/11 Commission’s staff report, an interrogated al Qaeda associate stated “that some al Qaeda operatives married American women to obtain U.S. visas” and that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, believed marriage fraud to be “a fantastic mechanism for operatives to acquire valid documents”. Future terrorist wedding planners will certainly take advantage of this “fantastic mechanism”.
- DHS claims that it “has strong processes in place to identify and address potential fraud, which will be applied … to ensure the integrity” of the program. But the PIP scheme will be run by people answering to Secretary Mayorkas, who as director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Obama administration apparently considered anyone at the agency concerned about immigration fraud to have “black spots on their heart[]”, and who oversaw an agency where faithful civil servants were allegedly retaliated against for resisting pressure to approve fraudulent petitions.
- Marriage fraud for immigration purposes was already endemic before Mayorkas. As a consular officer once put it, “there is no stronger incentive to fall in love than when you get a deportation notice in the mail”. Consular officers have estimated that between 5 to 30 percent of marriages between aliens and U.S. citizens are fraudulent.
- The nuptials will occur regardless of whether President Biden is reelected. If Biden loses, he will likely act quickly to expand the scheme to encompass future weddings before the Trump administration takes over. If Biden wins, he will likewise act to expand the scheme during his second term.
The Biden/Mayorkas Parole in Place Scheme
President Biden’s and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas’ parole in place (PIP) scheme is designed to launder the immigration status of over half a million illegal aliens who “[h]ave been continuously present in the United States for at least 10 years as of June 17, 2024” and “[h]ave a legally valid marriage to a U.S. citizen as of June 17, 2024”. The scheme will enable them “to apply for lawful permanent residence without having to leave the United States”.
My colleague Andrew Arthur thoroughly analyzed the scheme when it was just a rumor. Suffice it to say that once impeached Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas uses “his discretion [to] parole into the United States [though in this case they are already here — hence “in place”] temporarily under such conditions as he may prescribe only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit any alien applying for admission to the United States”, their U.S. citizen spouses can then petition for them for (a numerically unlimited number of) green cards, and the erstwhile illegal alien spouses can then adjust status to permanent residence while in the U.S.
Without parole, the illegal alien spouses would not have been able to adjust status (unless they were “visa overstayers” who had actually been admitted to the U.S.), but would have had to apply for green cards overseas. However, if they were to do so and had been “unlawfully present in the United States for a period of more than 180 days” when 18 or older, they would have been inadmissible to the U.S. for three years from the date of their departure (if their unlawful presence had been for less than one year) or for 10 years (if it had been for one year or more). Secretary Mayorkas can waive this ground of inadmissibility for an alien “who is the spouse or son or daughter of a U.S. citizen or of an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence, if it is established to [his] satisfaction … that the refusal of admission to such immigrant alien would result in extreme hardship to the citizen or lawfully resident spouse or parent of such alien”, and an alien can even apply for such a waiver before leaving the U.S. under an Obama administration innovation. But, as Arthur has noted, “Alien spouses who don’t go through the [waiver] process generally skip it because they’re concerned they won’t be allowed back in and/or because they don’t want to spend the handful of months outside the United States consular processing requires.”
Michelle Hackman has described the 3/10 year bars in the Wall Street Journal as “administrative cobwebs preventing spouses from being granted green cards”, but as Arthur has noted, “what the Journal describes as ‘administrative cobwebs[’] … is instead federal statute, passed by Congress”. Specifically, it was the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) that established the bars. Lamar Smith, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s Immigration Subcommittee from 1995 to 2000 and author of H.R. 2202, the House foundation for IIRIRA, explained in 1997 (along with my then subcommittee co-counsel Edward Grant) that “[f]orty percent of illegal immigrants … originally entered the United States with [temporary] legal status” and simply never left. “By strengthening the penalties for violations, th[is] provision[] aim[ed] to provide a much greater incentive in the future for compliance with our immigration laws.”
I have long complained about the executive branch’s abuse of the statutory parole power going back to the Eisenhower administration. One of my first pieces for the Center for Immigration Studies was titled “The Pernicious Perversion of Parole” , and I have since penned “Biden’s Perversion of Immigration Parole Has Reached a New Low” and that “Biden’s Perversion of Parole Is a Constitutional Crisis in the Making” . I have written that:
There is a “dark” web, a dark internet, referring to websites that cannot be accessed without special software … . [T]his dark web “may be used ... to conceal criminal or otherwise malicious activities”, with major markets in illicit drugs, pharmaceuticals, fake documents, fraud, hacking, and child sexual abuse/exploitation.
There is also a “dark” immigration codex, one that can be equally as sinister. In contravention of the bedrock constitutional principal of separation of powers, Congress has not passed this shadow Immigration and Nationality Act, rather it has been created out of whole cloth by the executive branch, usually for the express purpose of “circumvent[ing] Congressionally established immigration policy” (as the House Judiciary Committee concluded in 1996).
The abuse continues with President Biden. In fact, his administration has actually driven the megalomaniacal perversion of the executive’s statutory immigration powers to new lows.
The Biden/Mayorkas PIP scheme’s perversion of parole is uniquely troubling in that it raises the specter of massive marriage fraud. Arthur has warned us to “Expect more than a fair share of fraud [with the PIP scheme] that overwhelmed USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] adjudicators won’t be able to stop.” He explained that:
[T]he 10-year continuous presence requirement … is an invitation to fraud as spouses of U.S. citizens who have been here for briefer periods will start scrambling to collect (and create) documents to show longer terms of presence — and to cover up subsequent departures.
DHS’s ability to control fraud in this program … will only be as good as USCIS’s ability to screen those applications for bogus claims in the adjudication process.
The agency just doesn’t have the resources or the bandwidth to take more than a cursory glance at 550,000 new PIP requests.
All that is bad enough. But it doesn’t account for two additional factors that will make the level of fraud far worse. First, the Secretary of Homeland Security implementing the scheme is the impeached Alenjandro Mayorkas. Second, marriage fraud for immigration purposes was already endemic before Mayorkas took the helm at DHS.
The Mayorkas Fraud Mill
DHS claims that “USCIS has strong processes in place to identify and address potential fraud, which will be applied here to ensure the integrity of th[e PIP] program.” As President Biden might say, cut the malarky! The program will be run by people answering to Secretary Mayorkas. And when Secretary Mayorkas used to run USCIS during the Obama administration, he apparently considered anyone at the agency concerned about immigration fraud to have “black spots on their heart[]”. Aside from this phrase’s likely inclusion on Stanford University’s ill-considered list of banned language in its “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative”, Mayorkas’ use of it also indicates his blind spot for fraud.
In October 2010, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to then DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano regarding then USCIS Director Mayorkas. Grassley informed Napolitano that:
My office [has] received allegations that senior USCIS officials are putting political pressure on career employees to approve more visa applications, even if the applications might be fraudulent or the applicant is ineligible. When the career employees at the California Service Center (CSC) resisted the pressure to bend the rules, they were allegedly retaliated against through involuntary transfers and frivolous internal investigations.
In order to further investigate these allegations, my staff has interviewed seven USCIS employees and obtained hundreds of pages of supporting documents. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that Director Mayorkas is fostering an environment that pressures employees to approve as many applications as possible and condones retaliation against those who dissent.
Grassley listed a series of allegations against Mayorkas by USCIS employees, including that he viewed the customer as king. Now, this would have been fine, even admirable, had Mayorkas owned a deli. It would even have been fine had Mayorkas considered the American public or the national interest or the rule of law as customer. However, for Mayorkas the customer was apparently the petitioning alien or relative or prospective employer seeking an immigration benefit:
During a recent visit to the CSC, Director Mayorkas became “visibly agitated” when advised that the employees were interested in learning more about fraud detection efforts. Mayorkas asked, “Why would you be focusing on that instead of approvals.” One witness stated that “his message was offensive to a lot of officers who are trained to detect fraud. Mayorkas admonished officers to “look at petitions from the perspective of the customer.”
USCIS leadership expressed a goal of “zero complaints” from “customers,” implying that approvals were the means to such an end.
DHS conducted a human capital survey where USCIS scored low because employees felt pressured by upper management to approve applications.
Following a presentation by Director Mayorkas at a management conference … Deputy Chief Counsel Doug Craig said that Mayorkas had directed him to “get to yes.” At the same event, Chief Counsel Roxana Bacon said that Mayorkas says that all the time and that he had said it recently at a town hall meeting.
How did Mayorkas view officers who thought the American public, or the national interest, or the rule of law was king? “At a conference … Mayorkas said that there are some ‘managers with black spots on their hearts’ who can't see their way to grant benefits.”
What were the consequences for such employees? Mayorkas allegedly said about those with the aforementioned “spots” that “I am dealing with some of these managers.” This “comment[] came just after two senior CSC officials who resisted the ‘get to yes’ culture were involuntarily transferred to other assignments.” Further:
One high-level official told CSC employees that these managers “were not transferred for approving too many applications.”
Other USCIS personnel who were seen as too close to these CSC officials were also transferred or detailed to other assignments, in some cases on less than one day’s notice.
Grassley informed Napolitano that:
[Last month] I wrote to USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas about my concerns … . [H]is response was inadequate. For example, I sought information regarding the number of involuntary transfers of USCIS employees in order to fully assess the alleged retaliatory transfers. Director Mayorkas failed to answer the question.
My colleague Jessica Vaughan wrote at the time that “both outside studies and reports from USCIS' own fraud detection unit confirm that fraud is rampant in applications for green cards and other benefits, as high as 25-90 percent in some categories and locations”. She concluded that “these accusations … raise deeply troubling questions about the integrity of our legal immigration system in the hands of its current leadership”.
Two years later in 2012, still during Mayorkas’ reign of terror as USCIS director, Chris Crane, president of the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council 118, American Federation of Government Employees, testified at a hearing on the aftermath of fraud by immigration attorneys held by the House Judiciary Committee’s immigration subcommittee that:
One [US]CIS supervisor confirmed it is the unwritten policy of CIS that once lawful status is granted it will not be revoked, even when known that the status was obtained through fraud.
As a rule, there is no consequence to private attorneys or their clients who engage in fraud, even when reported by CIS and ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] employees … . As one ICE attorney stated, Why play by the rules when there is no consequence for violating the law?
Employees believe that [US]CIS has become a production line with a singular purpose of approving as many benefits applications as possible, ignoring fraudulent activities.
[US]CIS adjudicators and field supervisors claim that training for fraud prevention is not provided and training requests are ignored. One [US]CIS supervisor stated, “It’s as if they don’t want employees trained in fraud detection.”
ICE agents and officers report that when investigations indicate the alien and/or their attorney representative engaged in immigration fraud to obtain lawful status for the alien, [US]CIS and ICE supervisors direct officers and agents to ignore the fraud and take no action. Officers and agents are literally told that it is the position of ICE and [US]CIS that once lawful status is granted to an alien even though fraud and violation of law was involved no action will be taken to revoke the fraudulently obtained status. Only convictions for new crimes, if any, can initiate actions against the alien who gained lawful status illegally. Likewise, no action is taken against private attorneys who may have been involved. [US]CIS and ICE employees maintain that ICE and [US]CIS will only take action in the case if large scale fraud involving a large volume of cases is uncovered or if the case could otherwise be of interest in the media. One [US]CIS supervisor confirmed to me that it is still the unwritten internal policy of [US]CIS that once lawful status is granted it will not be revoked, even when it later becomes known that the status or other benefits was obtained through fraud by an alien and/or their private attorney representative.
The impression left with [US]CIS and ICE employees is that [US]CIS has to some extent become a “production line” or “mill” with the one and only purpose of approving as many benefits applications as possible, ignoring fraudulent activities and the fact that many applicants don’t actually qualify for benefits. Employees believe that resisting these practices will result in harassment from supervisors, and of course lost promotions and career opportunities. [US]CIS and ICE employees believe that because of agency practice, aliens applying for benefits and their private attorneys are above the law and free to engage in fraudulent activities.
Yes, Secretary Mayorkas might want to trademark the phrase “Proudly crushing public servants who want to do the right thing and insure the integrity of our nation’s immigration system since 2009.”
Crane also testified that “One ICE Officer … reports that [US]CIS management officials told [US]CIS adjudications officers at [a town hall] meeting that if 49% or less … of the information contained in an alien’s application for benefits is fraudulent then the application should still be approved.” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) quipped that “Half just doesn’t seem like that much. Fifty percent is an F on the test in South Carolina. Trust me, I know, from firsthand experience, a 50 is an F.” Gowdy, later the chairman of the immigration subcommittee, had panache.
Subcommittee Chairman Elton Gallegly (R-Calif.) stated at the hearing that:
Maryland lawyer Patrick Tzeuton was convicted of conspiracy to prepare false asylum applications, immigration fraud, and obstruction of official immigration proceedings. Tzeuton prepared over 1,100 asylum applications, many of which are believed to be fraudulent. In support of these applications, he and his assistants submitted fraudulent supporting affidavits such as fake medical certificates demonstrating that an immigrant had been beaten and tortured in Cameroon. So far, of the 1,100-plus cases he handled, only 40 have been identified for further action by ICE and referred to USCIS. Tzeuton was convicted in 2009. None of the immigrants involved have been removed as of this date.
Gallegly concluded that “The jury is still out on whether DHS makes a concerted and vigorous effort to go back and revoke immigration benefits after attorneys have been found to engage in fraud.” In some cases, DHS did, while in others “little seems to have been done, even where attorneys were convicted years ago and DHS boasted of uncovering the fraud.”
It does not instill confidence that Secretary Mayorkas will be the one to “ensure the integrity of th[e PIP] program”.
What Is More Alluring, Americans or Marriage Fraud?
Former State Department consular officer and Center for Immigration Studies Fellow David Seminara wrote an report in which he asked whether it is just that “Americans [are] the most beautiful, charming, and seductive people on the planet or [that we] are … in demand as marriage partners by those in the developing world in part because marrying a U.S. citizen is the quickest and easiest path toward becoming an American lawful permanent resident ... ?” Could it be that both propositions be true, that both Americans and marriage fraud are alluring?
Seminara explained the allure (of fraud, not touching on that of Americans):
For illegal immigrants, finding an American spouse is not just an aspiration, it’s a mission, and it is the most common way of returning to the United States for those who have been deported.
One consular officer with substantial experience in Latin America characterized the phenomena of deportees resurfacing as newlyweds by saying, “I guess there is no stronger incentive to fall in love than when you get a deportation notice in the mail.[”]
Grassley also explained the allure (of marriage fraud) at a March 2017 hearing on fiancé visa fraud held by the Senate Judiciary Committee: “Marriage provides one of the quickest paths to citizenship. That’s why abuse of the K-1 visa category is very concerning. It provides foreign nationals almost immediate access to the United States and the benefits of US citizenship.” As did Gregory Nevano, deputy assistant director at ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations’ (HSI) Illicit Trade, Travel, and Finance Division, who testified that: “Marriage to a U.S. citizen can afford a person the ability to enter, reside in, and work in the United States, and therefore it is a popular means for otherwise unauthorized individuals to seek lawful permanent resident status.”
Nevano explained the fraud process:
Individuals who engage in marriage fraud are willing to pay substantial fees in exchange for the marriage and subsequent filing of immigration petitions with USCIS. As a result, an industry exists whereby criminal organizations recruit U.S. citizens willing to enter into fraudulent marriages and file the required applications and petitions on behalf of their alien spouses.
Typically, a broker or facilitator recruits a U.S. citizen to marry an alien who may or may not already be in the United States. While the alien may be outside the United States and enter using a K-1 fiancé visa obtained through fraud, many aliens who enter without inspection or through the use of other nonimmigrant visa classifications participate in marriage fraud … .
In a typical marriage fraud scenario, a person may pay thousands of dollars to the facilitator, with the U.S. citizen spouse receiving a percentage of that payment. The U.S. citizen spouse then files materially false paperwork with USCIS. The “sham” couple typically appears before USCIS for an interview, during which they provide false statements about their “marriage” and life together.
Seminara also explained the process:
Perhaps the most easily detectable type of marriage fraud is when a fee — typically between $5,000 and $10,000 [writing in 2008] — is paid to the American to marry a foreign national who wishes to live in the United States or already does, but needs to regulate his or her legal status. An officer with experience in an Andean country in South America told me that the going rate for a bogus marriage there is $5,000, while officers with experience in the Pacific Rim report that many intending immigrants will pay up to $20,000 to marry an American.
Recent immigrants in the United States often play a pivotal role in smuggling in their friends and relatives via fraudulent marriages ... . [I]f you dig deep enough into many seemingly mismatched couples, you’ll find that the American petitioner is often a co-worker or acquaintance of a recent immigrant who wants to help bring friends or family into the United States.
Grassley gave examples of fraud:
[R]ecently three individuals pled guilty to a large marriage fraud scheme in which they posed as attorneys and charged Chinese nationals up to $50,000 to set up sham marriages. These shams led to 70 fraudulent marriages. In another case, a woman in the Bronx, married 10 men from 1999 to 2010, charging them $5,000 to $10,000 each. At one point, she was married to eight of them at the same time. Among them was an alleged terrorist who was deported in 2006 for making threats against the United States.
As did Seminara:
During my tenure in Skopje [the capital of North Macedonia], I interviewed several native-born American waitresses who worked at restaurants owned by ethnic Albanian immigrants from Kosovo or Macedonia. The women were filing marriage-based immigration petitions for friends or relatives of the restaurant owners. The common threads in each case were that the Americans had no connection to the Balkans, had never traveled internationally, and claimed to have accepted free trips to Kosovo or Macedonia as bonuses from their bosses. Only one of the women — after a lengthy interview during which I informed her of the penalties for marriage fraud —admitted that her boss had strongly implied that she might lose her job if she didn’t agree to take what the boss referred to as a “business trip to Kosovo” to marry his nephew.
Just this March, HSI announced that:
Four California-based people have been sentenced in federal court in Boston for their roles in running a large-scale marriage fraud agency that arranged hundreds of sham marriages for the primary purpose of circumventing immigration laws.
“The defendants in this case knowingly and willing abused our current immigration system to obtain fraudulent green cards,” said HSI Special Agent in Charge Chad Plantz. “These fraudsters and nefarious actors are responsible for over 600 illegal applications filed with the courts[.]”
HSI described how the scheme worked:
The agency prepared and submitted false petitions, applications and other documents to substantiate the sham marriages and secure adjustment of clients’ immigration statuses for a fee of between $20,000 and $35,000 in cash.
…
[Two of the defendants] assisted with arranging marriages and submitting fraudulent marriage and immigration documents for the agency’s clients. [One] relied on several other co-conspirators to recruit U.S. citizens to marry the agency’s clients in exchange for payment.
After pairing foreign national clients with citizen spouses, [the] agency staged fake wedding ceremonies at chapels, parks and other locations, performed by hired online officiants … . [A] friend … who worked at one of the chapels, assisted with sham wedding ceremonies and marriage documents. For many clients, the agency would take photos of undocumented clients and citizen spouses in front of prop wedding decorations for later submission with immigration petitions.
[The] agency then submitted fraudulent, marriage-based immigration petitions to [USCIS] … . [They] advised clients about creating and maintaining the appearance of legitimate marriage to their spouses.
[A defendant] conducted practice interviews with the agency’s clients and their fake spouses for the purpose of preparing couples to pass required interviews with immigration authorities. He coached the sham couples to provide the same fabricated answers to questions posed during green card interviews and conceal the fraudulent nature of the marriages.
[Defendants] assisted clients with preparing fraudulent supporting documents submitted as evidence of the marriages’ legitimacy … [and] rented the use of their apartment addresses to clients who lived outside of Los Angeles so those clients could list these addresses as their own on green card applications and related documents to make it appear to immigration authorities that they were living with their sham spouses in the Los Angeles area.
[The] agency would assist certain clients — typically those whose spouses became unresponsive or uncooperative — with obtaining green cards under the Violence Against Women Act by claiming the undocumented clients had been abused by alleged American spouses. Specifically, [they] would submit fraudulent applications on clients’ behalves for temporary restraining orders against spouses based on fabricated domestic violence allegations. [The] agency would then submit the restraining order documentation along with immigration petitions to USCIS, in order to take advantage of VAWA provisions that permit noncitizen victims of spousal abuse to apply for lawful permanent resident status without their spouses’ involvement.
How prevalent is marriage fraud conducted to obtain immigration benefits? Grassley stated in post-hearing follow-up questions to DHS that “At the hearing, [Matthew] Emrich[, associate director, Fraud Detection and National Security, USCIS,] stated that 45 percent of the hours spent investigating benefit fraud were spent on marriage fraud cases.” Grassley then asked DHS to “provide additional information on the types of marriage fraud cases and results of these investigations for fiscal years 2011-2016”. DHS responded that “Of the suspected marriage fraud cases and leads closed between FY11 and FY16, approximately 60 percent of investigations resulted in a finding of fraud.”
Seminara has written that:
The vast majority of sham marriages go undetected, largely because USCIS lacks the manpower to conduct wide-scale field investigations. In fact, USCIS reportedly completes investigations on less than 1 percent of marriage-based green card applications.
There is no way of knowing what percentage of the 300,000-plus spouses who gain green cards each year through marriage to American citizens or [lawful permanent residents] do so based on a fraudulent relationship, but consular officers [I] interviewed … offered estimates ranging from 5 to 30 percent.
Seminara gave a dispiriting account of what happened when consular officers tried to get USCIS to deny cases on the basis of marriage fraud (and this was pre-Mayorkas):
Consular officers often find that returning petitions to USCIS is like dropping a case into a black hole — most likely you’ll never hear about it again.
One of the most frustrating aspects of the fight against marriage fraud from the perspective of consular officers is that USCIS often disregards an interviewing officer’s recommendations for the revocation of approved petitions, a denial of pending petitions, or a request for denial of hardship waivers for applicants who are ineligible to return to the United States because of immigration violations or criminal convictions. The consular officers, who actually interview applicants and sometimes American sponsors as well, have no authority to deny or revoke a marriage-based petition that they believe to be fraudulent. Interviewing officers can only document the case and forward it on to USCIS, where the deciding official generally never meets either spouse.
Applicants who have been recently deported are scrutinized more than other applicants, but consular officers frequently have a difficult time convincing their USCIS counterparts to deny suspect petitions and requests for waivers of visa ineligibilities.
A couple that seems outrageously incongruous in person might not look so crazy on paper, and so the result is that USCIS rubber-stamps nearly all marriage petitions.
Typically, the American spouse of a recent deportee will need to prove extreme “hardship” if the foreign spouse is not allowed to return. But USCIS approves many waiver requests based on “hardships” that are routine for anyone moving from one country to another. The most common hardship claims are that the American cannot speak the language of his or her spouse’s country, is employed in the United States, and, for recently naturalized Americans, that returning to their home country to be with their spouses would be too much to bear.
You might ask why we should worry about marriage fraud being a part of the Biden/Mayorkas PIP scheme when an illegal alien spouse, in order to qualify must “have been continuously present in the United States for at least 10 years as of June 17, 2024” and “[h]ave a legally valid marriage to a U.S. citizen as of June 17, 2024”. All the marriages have already occurred, and most occurred before the spouses could have known about their prospective ability to utilize parole in place, as Michelle Hackman’s story was not published until April.
First, as I discussed earlier, even without the PIP scheme, illegal aliens can obtain immigration benefits through fraudulent marriages to U.S. citizens. Those who came to the U.S. illegally can seek a discretionary waiver while present in the U.S., allowing them to receive immigrant visas overseas without risking being denied admission back into the U.S. because of their prior illegal presence. And it is quite unlikely that Secretary Mayorkas’ DHS will be able to, or even desire to, identify prior fraudulent marriages.
Second, and more importantly, any program in the nature of the PIP scheme is likely to be expanded once implemented. This is what occurred with the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Then Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano created the program through a June 2012 memo that made one of the eligibility criteria “not [being] above the age of 30”. Two years later, Jeh Johnson, President Obama’s subsequent DHS secretary, issued a memo that in part provided that:
DACA will apply to all otherwise eligible immigrants who entered the United States by the requisite adjusted entry date before the age of sixteen ... regardless of how old they were in June 2012 or are today. The current age restriction excludes those who were older than 31 on the date of announcement (i.e., those who were born before June 15, 1981). That restriction will no longer apply.
In November 2015, the Fifth Circuit in Texas v. U.S. upheld a preliminary injunction against this expansion of DACA, but the Obama administration’s intent was clear.
It is entirely reasonable for illegal aliens to believe that an administration establishing an amnesty program will likely loosen its eligibility criteria once it is up and running, either as part of the original plan or because of subsequent political pressure. Thus, they have every incentive to do what they can —such as engage in a fraudulent marriage — to qualify for an anticipated loosening of the criteria.
Till Death Do Us Part: The Use of Marriage Fraud by Foreign Terrorist Organizations
The 9/11 Commission (the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States), reported that Abu Zubaydah “played [a] key role[] in facilitating travel for al Qaeda operatives”. According to “9/11 and Terrorist Travel”, the commission’s staff report, Zubaydah told interrogators “that some al Qaeda operatives married American women to obtain U.S. visas” and that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, “believed it was a fantastic mechanism for operatives to acquire valid documents”.
Further, Janice Kephart, who served as a counsel to the 9/11 Commission and was a primary author of “9/11 and Terrorist Travel”, has written a report for the Center for Immigration Studies “cover[ing] the immigration histories of 94 terrorists who operated in the United States between the early 1990s and 2004, including six of the September 11th hijackers”. Among her findings were that:
Once in the United States, 16 of 23 applicants for legal permanent residency obtained it, and 20 of 21 attempts to become naturalized were successful. At least 18 of these applications were based on marriage to a U.S. citizen, with a minimum of 10 being a sham (one convicted terrorist married three times).
Khalid Abu Al-Dahab married three American women before he finally was able to acquire legal permanent residency; he eventually was naturalized. During his 12 years in the United States, he provided money and fraudulent travel documents to terrorists around the globe. These activities linked him to numerous attacks, including the 1998 East Africa bombings.
As to the use made of marriage fraud by Hezbollah, which the U.S. State Department’s “Country Reports on Terrorism 2022” described as “Iran’s primary terrorist proxy group”, “designated as a[ foreign terrorist organization] on October 8, 1997”, and a “Lebanon-based radical Shia group [that] takes its ideological inspiration from the Iranian Revolution and the teachings of the late Ayatollah Khomeini”, Kephart wrote in her CIS report that:
Six individuals involved in the [Hezbollah] cigarette smuggling case in North Carolina engaged in a pattern of sham marriages to U.S. citizens followed by petitions to acquire legal permanent residency. The conspirators’ “legal” immigration status allowed them to operate in the United States for nearly a decade raising thousands of dollars in organized crime activity that was both sent back in dollars to [Hezbollah] in Lebanon and used to purchase military equipment … .
[T]hey needed to acquire an immigration status that would enable them to stay (and operate their cigarette smuggling operation) indefinitely. Three of these associates of [Hezbollah] entered in 1992; they used Lebanese passports with counterfeit nonimmigrant tourist visas purportedly issued in Venezuela, and once the conspirators were inside U.S. borders, they paid U.S. citizens to marry them.
From January 1999 through January 2000, Said Mohamad Harb, one of the key figures in [Hezbollah]’s North Carolina operation … helped secure three fraudulent visas and three sham marriages for the purpose of “legally” bringing to the United States his brother, his brother-in-law, and sister so that they might become legal permanent residents. The two men each obtained a nonimmigrant visa from the U.S. embassy in Cyprus; though given one- and two-week lengths of stays for conducting business upon entry into the United States, each married a U.S. citizen immediately after his arrival and therefore was allowed to stay indefinitely. In the case of Harb's sister, a male U.S. citizen was paid to meet her in Lebanon and then travel with her to Cyprus, where their marriage enabled her to acquire an immigration visa.
As to the use made of marriage fraud by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), also a State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization, Kephart reported that:
The 1995 raid of [suspected PIJ leader in the United States Sami] Al Arian's offices …. contributed to the eventual deportation of Mazen Al Najjar … [who was] Al Arian's brother-in-law and a co-founder and the executive director of WISE [World and Islam Enterprise, utilized as a front organization to enable terrorists to enter the U.S.] and attended numerous terror fundraising conferences. Al Najjar … committed a series of immigration violations, from a simple overstay of his student length of stay to his fraudulent marriage to an American woman for the purpose of obtaining permanent resident status. Prior to his deportation, Al Najjar was detained as a threat to U.S. national security.
Kephart concluded that:
Those who come to stay and embed themselves into communities throughout the United States will continue to rely on a false guise of legality. Sham marriages … that lead to legal permanent residency and an almost certain guarantee of naturalization will likely continue to be [one] of the most egregious immigration abuses by terrorists.
Conclusion — What’s Not to Love?
The Biden/Mayorkas PIP scheme represents an extravagant wedding of marriage fraud and indifference to such fraud by Secretary Mayorkas’ DHS. Of course, the American public will be paying for the reception. The progeny of such a wedding will be immigration marriage fraud on a massive scale, damaging the rule of law and inevitably leading to more chain migration, as illegal alien spouses “may go on to petition for numerous other family members to enter the United States” (according to Senate testimony of Gregory Nevano) that “only multiplies the consequences of this abuse” (per HSI). And future terrorist wedding planners will certainly take advantage of this “fantastic mechanism for operatives to acquire valid documents”.
The nuptials will occur regardless of whether President Biden is reelected in November. If Biden loses the presidential election, he will likely act quickly to expand the scheme to encompass future weddings before the Trump administration takes over. If Biden wins the presidential election, he will likewise act to expand the scheme during his second term.