To say there has been a little government fraud uncovered since President Donald Trump started his second term would be an understatement. It seems everywhere you look, every government program, and just about every state in the nation has reported alleged fraud schemes. Now, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has discovered another one, this time involving thousands of foreign workers.
ICE Says Fraud Discovery Is Just the ‘Tip of the Iceberg’
ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons announced at a press conference earlier this week that federal investigators have discovered more than 10,000 foreign students who were part of the federal STEM Optional Practical Training (OPT) program were connected to “suspect employers,” and Lyons said this is “just the tip of the iceberg.”
OPT is an extension program that allows foreign nationals who are in the US on a student visa to work in the country for up to two years. But many of these students were “working” for bogus companies that didn’t exist, while other beneficiaries were being “managed” by employees based in India, according to Lyons. Some shell companies were reportedly helping recent graduates to stay in the country without a sponsorship for a legitimate US company.
The immigration program lets international students with F-1 visas temporarily work in America in jobs that are related to their field of study. OPT was created back in 1992, at the end of the George H.W. Bush administration, and then President Barack Obama expanded on it. Lyons said the Department of Homeland Security expected “only a few thousand foreign students would receive training approval before returning home.”
"Instead," Lyons said, OPT "ballooned into an uncontrolled guest worker pipeline with hundreds of thousands of foreign students working in the United States." He added that "as the program size exploded, so has the fraud."
Investigators only looked at 25 OPT employers and visited work sites in several states including Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. “We’ve discovered empty buildings, locked doors and addresses where hundreds of foreign students are allegedly employed,” Lyons explained. Several OPT employers reportedly listed the same addressed, even though “none actually lease the facility.”
ICE officials claim that several residential homes were listed as work locations for hundreds of foreign students. When the agencies visited the buildings, people who answered the door allegedly denied any knowledge of the companies. "When someone does open the door, their statements are inconsistent, or they claim no knowledge of the business," said Lyons.
By the Numbers
As the acting ICE director noted, the number of foreign students and workers who took advantage of the program grew well beyond expectations. Homeland Security’s report, which uses Student Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), showed there were 1,582,808 records for active F-1 and M-1 students in 2024. The total number of foreign students increased by 5.3%, and the number of those students from India and China “made Asia the most popular continent of origin.” According to the report, students from India increased by 11.8% compared to 2023 (+44,715).
“There were 194,554 pre- and post-completion optional practical training (OPT) students with both an employment authorization document (EAD) and who reported working for an employer in 2024, compared to 160,627 in 2023,” the report detailed. “This marks a 21.1 percent increase from 2023 and the fourth year of consecutive growth.”
Most of the students who participated in the STEM OPT extension were from India (48%) and just over 20% from China. California had the largest percentage of foreign students.
The ICE investigation has only just begun, and with the number of foreign students and workers continuing to increase, the number of fraud discoveries will likely grow as well. “This is not accidental,” Lyons said of the 10,000-plus students so far. “This is deliberate, coordinated and criminal.” He added that “this fraud is not victimless,” and called it a “blatant attack on the goodwill of the American people.”
Vice President JD Vance, appointed as the nation’s “fraud czar” by President Trump, applauded the discovery in an X post as “another great win for our fraud task force.” Vance said the administration “will not tolerate foreign nationals abusing our visa system at the expense of the American people.”
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