Report to Congressional Requesters

United States Government Accountability Office

GAO 

March 2006 IMMIGRATION 

BENEFITS 

Additional Controls 

and a Sanctions 

Strategy Could 

Enhance DHS’s Ability 

to Control Benefit 

Fraud 

GAO-06-259 
What GAO Found

United States Government Accountability Office

Why GAO Did This Study

Highlights

Accountability Integrity Reliability

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-259.

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on the link above. 

For more information, contact Paul L. Jones 

at (202) 512-8777 or jonespl@gao.gov. 

Highlights of GAO-06-259, a report to 

congressional requesters 

March 2006

IMMIGRATION BENEFITS 

Additional Controls and a Sanctions 

Strategy Could Enhance DHS's Ability to 

Control Benefit Fraud 

Although the full extent of benefit fraud is unknown, available evidence 

suggests that it is a serious problem. Several high-profile immigration benefit 

fraud cases shed light on aspects of its nature—particularly that it is 

accomplished by submitting fraudulent documents and can be facilitated by 

white collar and other criminals, with the potential for large profits. USCIS 

staff denied about 20,000 applications for fraud in fiscal year 2005. 

USCIS has established a focal point for immigration fraud, outlined a fraud 

control strategy that relies on the use of automation to detect fraud, and is 

performing risk assessments to identify the extent and nature of fraud for 

certain benefits. However, USCIS has not implemented important aspects of 

internal control standards established by GAO and fraud control best 

practices identified by leading audit organizations—particularly a 

comprehensive risk management approach, a mechanism to ensure ongoing 

monitoring during the course of normal activities, clear communication 

regarding how to balance multiple objectives, mechanisms to help ensure 

that staff have access to key information, and performance goals for fraud 

prevention. 

DHS does not have a strategy for sanctioning fraud. Best practices advise 

that a credible sanctions program, which includes a mechanism for 

evaluating effectiveness, is an integral part of fraud control. Because most 

immigration benefit fraud is not prosecuted criminally, the principal means 

of sanctioning it would be administrative penalties. Although immigration 

law gives DHS the authority to levy administrative penalties, the component 

of DHS that administers them does not consider them to be cost-effective 

and does not routinely impose them. However, DHS has not evaluated the 

costs and benefits of sanctions, including the value of potential deterrence. 

Without a credible sanctions program, DHS’s efforts to deter fraud may be 

less effective, when applicants perceive little threat of punishment. 

Minimizing Immigration Benefit Fraud through Internal Controls 

Information

and 

 Communica-

 tions

Monitoring

Control

Activities

Risk

Assessment

Objective:

Minimize

Immigration

Benefit

Fraud 

Source: GAO.

In 2002, GAO reported that 

immigration benefit fraud was 

pervasive and significant and the 

approach to controlling it was 

fragmented. Experts believe that 

individuals ineligible for these 

benefits, including terrorists and 

criminals, could use fraudulent 

means to enter or remain in the 

U.S. You asked that GAO evaluate 

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration 

Service’s (USCIS) anti-fraud 

efforts. This report addresses the 

questions: (1) What do available 

data and information indicate 

regarding the nature and extent of 

fraud? (2) What actions has USCIS 

taken to improve its ability to 

detect fraud? (3) What actions does 

the Department of Homeland 

Security (DHS) take to sanction 

those who commit fraud? 

What GAO Recommends

To enhance DHS’s efforts to 

control benefit fraud, GAO 

recommends that USCIS 

implement additional internal 

controls and best practices to 

strengthen its fraud control 

environment and that DHS develop 

a strategy for implementing a 

sanctions program that includes a 

mechanism for assessing their 

effectiveness and that considers 

the costs and benefits of sanctions, 

including their deterrence value. 

DHS generally agreed with 4 of the 

6 recommendations but cited 

actions indicating it has addressed 

GAO’s other 2 recommendations. 

GAO believes that additional 

actions are needed. 
Page i GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

Letter 1

Results in Brief 4 

Background 8 

Fraud Is A Serious Problem, But Its Full Extent Is Unknown 13 

Although USCIS Has Taken Steps to promote Fraud Control, 

Additional Controls and Best Practices Could Improve Its Ability 

to Detect Fraud 19 

Most Benefit Fraud Is Not Criminally Prosecuted, but DHS Does 

Not Have an Administrative Sanctions Program 35 

Conclusions 38 

Recommendations for Executive Action 40 

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation 41 

Appendix I Scope and Methodology 45 

Appendix II Comments from the Department of Homeland 

 Security 47 

Appendix III GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments 52 

Figures 

Figure 1: USCIS Applications Completed in Fiscal Year 2005 9 

Figure 2: Immigration Benefit Fraud Detection and Referral 

Process 12 

Figure 3: Internal Control Environment 20 

Contents 
Page ii GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

Abbreviations 

AICPA American Institute of Certified Public Accountants 

BFU Benefit Fraud Unit 

CBP Customs and Border Protection 

CFR Code of Federal Regulations 

CIS Citizenship and Immigration Services 

DHS Department of Homeland Security 

DOL Department of Labor 

FDNS Office of Fraud Detection and National Security 

FDU Fraud Detection Unit 

ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement 

INA Immigration and Nationality Act 

INS Immigration and Naturalization Service 

NAO National Audit Office of the United Kingdom 

PAS Performance Analysis System 

TECS Treasury Enforcement Communication System 

USCIS United States Citizenship and Immigration Services 

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Page 1 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

March 10, 2006 

The Honorable John N. Hostettler 

Chairman 

Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims 

Committee on the Judiciary 

House of Representatives 

The Honorable Charles E. Grassley 

Chairman 

Committee on Finance 

United States Senate 

In fiscal year 2005, over 6 million applications were filed by those seeking 

an immigration benefit—the ability of an alien to live and in some cases 

work in the United States either permanently or on a temporary basis. 

Most immigration benefits can be classified into two major categories—

family-based and employment-based. Family-based applications are filed 

by U.S. citizens or permanent resident aliens to establish their 

relationships to certain alien relatives such as a spouse, parent, or minor 

child who wish to immigrate to the United States. Employment-based 

applications include applications filed by employers for aliens to come to 

the United States temporarily to work or receive training or for alien 

workers to work permanently in the United States. Other immigration 

benefits include granting citizenship to resident aliens (called 

naturalization), offering asylum to aliens who fear persecution in their 

home countries, and authorizing international students to study in the 

United States. 

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) within the Department 

of Homeland Security (DHS) is the agency primarily responsible for 

processing applications for immigration benefits. The former Immigration 

and Naturalization Service (INS) previously had this responsibility, which 

USCIS assumed when DHS was created in March 2003. USCIS’s staff of 

adjudicators process immigration benefits in 4 service centers and 33 

district offices around the country. In some cases, applicants may try to 

United States Government Accountability Office

Washington, DC 20548 
Page 2 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

obtain a benefit illegally through fraud.1 USCIS adjudicators who suspect 

fraud are to refer suspicious applications and supporting evidence to 

USCIS’s Office of Fraud Detection and National Security (FDNS), created 

in 2003. FDNS staff are responsible for reviewing these potential fraud 

cases and determining whether to forward them to DHS’s Immigration and 

Customs Enforcement (ICE)—which, among other things, is responsible 

for investigating violations of immigration law, including immigration 

benefit fraud. ICE may or may not decide to initiate a criminal 

investigation, depending on the facts in the referral and on workloads and 

priorities of its field offices. 

DHS, terrorism experts, and federal law enforcement officials familiar 

with immigration benefit fraud believe that individuals ineligible for 

immigration benefits, including terrorists and criminals, could use 

fraudulent means to enter or remain in the United States. In 2002, we 

reported that immigration benefit fraud was pervasive and significant and 

that INS’s approach to immigration benefit fraud was fragmented and 

unfocused.2

 A 2005 study by a former 9/11 Commission counsel found that 

of the 94 foreign-born terrorists known to operate in the United States 

between the early 1990s and 2004, 59 or two-thirds committed immigration 

fraud including 6 of the September 11th hijackers.3

 To determine what 

actions have been taken since our 2002 report to address immigration 

benefit fraud, you asked that we evaluate current anti-fraud efforts. This 

report addresses the following questions: 

(1) What do available data and information indicate regarding the nature 

and extent of immigration benefit fraud? 

(2) What actions has USCIS taken to improve its ability to detect 

immigration benefit fraud? 

 1

 Immigration benefit fraud refers to the willful misrepresentation of material fact to gain 

an immigration benefit. It is often facilitated by document fraud (use of forged, counterfeit, 

altered or falsely made documents) and identity fraud (fraudulent use of valid documents 

or information belonging to others). 

2

 GAO, Immigration Benefit Fraud: Focused Approach Is Needed to Address Problems, 

GAO-02-66 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 31, 2002). 

3

 See also testimony of Janice Kephart, former counsel, The National Commission on 

Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border 

Security, and Citizenship and the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland 

Security, Senate Judiciary Committee, Mar. 14, 2005. 
Page 3 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

(3) What actions does DHS take to sanction those who commit benefit 

fraud? 

To address these questions, we interviewed responsible officials at and 

reviewed relevant documentation obtained from DHS and the 

Departments of State, Justice, and Labor. Regarding the nature and extent 

of immigration benefit fraud, we analyzed USCIS management data 

contained in its Performance Analysis System (PAS), results from two 

fraud assessments USCIS had completed before December 2005, 

information reported by DHS and the U.S. Attorneys Offices based on 

investigations and prosecutions of immigration benefit fraud, and 

information in fraud bulletins prepared by one USCIS Service Center. We 

evaluated the methodology used in USCIS’s fraud assessments and 

determined that it provided a reasonable basis for projecting the frequency 

with which fraud was committed within the time period from which the 

samples were drawn. We assessed the data derived from PAS and 

determined that these data were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of 

this review. Because we selected investigations and prosecutions to 

review based upon information that was available, the information 

obtained from them is not necessarily representative or exhaustive of all 

immigration benefits cases nationwide. Similarly, information contained in 

the fraud bulletins is not necessarily representative of immigration benefit 

fraud nationwide. To determine how USCIS detects fraud during the 

adjudications process and to evaluate these efforts, we interviewed USCIS 

headquarters officials and USCIS’s FDNS staff. We also interviewed 59 

adjudicators at the 4 USCIS Service Centers and 2 USCIS district offices 

with responsibility for and familiarity with adjudicating different types of 

applications in a group setting, which allowed us to identify points of 

consensus among these adjudicators. In addition we interviewed ICE 

Office of Investigations officials from four ICE field offices. As we did not 

select probability samples of adjudicators and ICE Office of Investigations 

staff to interview, the results of these interviews may not be projected to 

the views of all USCIS adjudicators and ICE Office of Investigations field 

staff nationwide. Further, we compared the practices in place to the 

Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government4

 and to guidance 

from internationally recognized, leading organizations in fraud control, 

including the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the 

United Kingdom’s National Audit Office. To determine what measures 

 4

 GAO, Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government, GAO/AMID-00-21.3.1

(Washington, D.C.: November 1999). 
Page 4 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

DHS has taken to sanction those who commit immigration fraud, we 

interviewed knowledgeable officials at USCIS and ICE, examined fraud 

investigation and prosecution statistics, and analyzed USCIS statistics 

about the amount of fraud identified by its adjudicators. We conducted our 

work from October 2004 to December 2005 in accordance with generally 

accepted government auditing standards. Appendix I presents more details 

about our objectives, scope, and methodology. 

Our review of several high-profile immigration benefit fraud cases sheds 

light on some aspects of the nature of immigration benefit fraud—

particularly that it is accomplished by submitting fraudulent documents, 

that it can be facilitated by white collar and other criminals, and that it has 

the potential to result in large profits. Although the full extent of benefit 

fraud is not known, available evidence suggests that it is an ongoing and 

serious problem. Fraudulent documents submitted included but were not 

limited to marriage and birth certificates, financial statements, business 

plans, organizational charts, fictitious employee resumes, and college 

transcripts. White-collar and other criminals can facilitate immigration 

benefit fraud. Individuals who pose a threat to national security and public 

safety may seek to enter the United States by fraudulently obtaining 

immigration benefits. Moreover, those facilitating immigration benefit 

fraud, in some cases, have reaped large profits from aliens willing to pay 

thousands of dollars to fraudulently obtain an immigration benefit. In 

fiscal year 2005, USCIS denied about 20,000 applications due to fraud. In 

addition, in 2005, USCIS’s new fraud detection office conducted the first 

two in a series of planned fraud assessments—reviews of applications for 

religious worker and replacement permanent resident card benefits. Based 

on the results of the completed religious worker assessment, which 

estimated that 33 percent of all religious worker applications were 

potentially fraudulent, we project that about 660 applications—one-third 

of religious worker applications submitted over a 6-month period in 

2004—may have contained fraudulent information. Some findings of the 

religious worker assessment and facts uncovered during criminal 

investigations and prosecutions demonstrate that USCIS adjudicators do 

not always detect fraud during the adjudications process, thus allowing 

applicants to receive benefits for which they were not eligible. Moreover, 

USCIS’s policy of issuing temporary work authorization within 90 days to 

those applicants waiting for their applications for permanent residency to 

be decided, although intended to allow bonafide applicants to work as 

soon as possible, can be exploited by aliens filing fraudulent applications 

with the intent of receiving the temporary work authorization for which 

they would otherwise be ineligible. These aliens can then use the 

Results in Brief 
Page 5 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

temporary work authorization to obtain other official documents, such as 

drivers’ licenses. Based on an estimate from the DHS Office of 

Immigration Statistics that about 85 percent of applicants who apply for 

permanent residency also apply for temporary work authorization, the 

Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman contends that many 

aliens who filed a fraudulent claim for permanent residency may have 

received temporary work authorization. 

To help it detect immigration benefit fraud, USCIS established FDNS as its 

focal point for dealing with immigration benefit fraud, outlined a strategy 

for detecting immigration benefit fraud, and is undertaking a series of risk 

assessments to identify the extent and nature of fraud for certain 

immigration benefits. However, USCIS has not yet implemented some 

aspects of internal control standards established by GAO and fraud 

control best practices identified by leading audit organizations that could 

further enhance its ability to detect fraud. Specifically, USCIS’s new fraud 

detection office is in the initial stages of implementing a fraud assessment 

program, which examines the extent and nature of fraud associated with 

the immigration category being assessed. However, this program, as 

currently implemented, does not provide a basis for the type of 

comprehensive risk analysis we advocate. First, USCIS current assessment 

plan does not include risk assessment of the majority of major 

immigration benefit categories—for example, temporary work 

authorization. Additionally, it focuses primarily on determining the fraud 

rate for selected immigration applications and identifying procedural 

vulnerabilities, for example, not routinely verifying the existence of 

churches associated with religious work applications. It does not draw on 

all available sources of strategic threat information to assess threats, such 

as ICE’s Office of Intelligence, nor does it assess the consequences of 

granting a benefit to the wrong person—for example some benefits 

facilitate access to critical infrastructure while others do not. More 

comprehensive information about vulnerabilities, threats, and 

consequences as part of its fraud assessments would allow USCIS to 

identify those benefits that represent the highest risk and practice riskbased decision making in its efforts to balance fraud detection with other 

organizational priorities like reducing backlogs and improving customer 

service. In addition, USCIS also lacks a mechanism to help ensure that 

information gathered during the course of its normal operations and those 

of related operations—including criminal investigations and 

prosecutions—inform decisions about whether and what actions, 

including changes to policies, procedures, or programmatic activities, 

might improve the ability to detect fraud. Moreover, adjudicators we 

interviewed reported that communication from management did not 
Page 6 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

clearly communicate to them the importance of fraud control; rather, it 

emphasized meeting production goals, designed to reduce the backlog of 

applications, almost exclusively. These adjudicators shared, for example, 

memos from different parts of the agency, which they told us sent 

conflicting messages about how they were to balance, during the course of 

their duties, fraud-prevention objectives with service-related objectives. 

USCIS headquarters operations management told us that the adjudications 

operations is a “high-pressure” production environment and that they are 

seeking to increase production, but it was not their intention that this 

should come at the expense of making incorrect adjudication decisions. 

Also, our interviews with adjudicators indicated that they have limited 

access to some tools that could support their fraud detection ability such 

as external databases for verifying applicant information. Interviews with 

USCIS staff also indicated that adjudicators may not always receive 

relevant information that could support their efforts to detect fraud, and 

although some information is provided, it is not always provided in a form 

that adjudicators can reasonably manage as, for example, in an electronic 

database. Finally, USCIS has not established performance goals—

measures and targets—to assess its benefit fraud activities. 

DHS does not have a strategy for sanctioning fraud or for evaluating the 

effectiveness of sanctions. Best practice guidance issued by the United 

Kingdom’s National Audit Office, for example, suggests that a strategy for 

sanctioning fraud, along with a mechanism for evaluating the effectiveness 

of sanctions is central to a good fraud control environment. Data provided 

by USCIS indicates that in fiscal year 2005 most immigration fraud 

detected by USCIS did not result in ICE criminal investigations and 

subsequent prosecutions. Since most fraud is not criminally prosecuted, 

the principal means of sanctioning it would be administrative penalties. 

The Immigration and Nationality Act does provide the authority to levy 

administrative penalties; however, DHS does not currently use this 

authority. This is largely because a 1998 federal court ruling enjoined INS 

from implementing certain administrative penalties for document fraud 

until it revised certain forms to provide adequate notice to aliens of the 

immigration consequences of waiving the opportunity to challenge 

document fraud fines. Although DHS has not conducted a formal costbenefit analysis, according to ICE officials responsible for pursuing 

administrative penalties, these penalties are not cost-effective because the 

fines are less than the costs to impose them when a hearing is requested. 

Accordingly, DHS has not made updating the forms to allow sanctions to 

be administered in compliance with the court ruling a priority. 

Nevertheless, according to USCIS officials, an effective administrative 

sanctions program is important to its fraud deterrence efforts. The lack of 
Page 7 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

a clear strategy for how and when to punish fraud perpetrators, which 

considers the nonfinancial benefit of deterrence and includes a 

mechanism for evaluating effectiveness, limits DHS’s ability to project a 

convincing message that those who commit fraud face a credible threat of 

punishment in one form or another. 

In order to enhance USCIS’s ability to detect immigration benefit fraud, we 

are recommending that the Secretary of Homeland Security direct the 

Director of USCIS to adopt additional internal controls and best practices 

to strengthen USCIS’s fraud control environment, particularly by (1) 

expanding the scope of its current fraud assessment program and using a 

more comprehensive risk management approach; (2) establishing a 

mechanism to ensure that information uncovered during USCIS’s and 

related agencies’ normal operations feeds back into evaluations of USCIS’s 

policies, procedures, and operations; (3) clearly communicating to 

adjudications staff the importance of both fraud prevention-related and 

service-related objectives, and how these objectives are to be balanced by 

adjudicators as they carry out their duties; (4) providing USCIS staff with 

access to information and tools from relevant internal and external 

sources; and (5) establishing outcome and output based performance 

goals that reflect the status of fraud control efforts. In addition, in order to 

enhance DHS’s ability to sanction immigration benefit fraud, we 

recommend that the Secretary of Homeland Security direct the Director of 

USCIS and the Assistant Secretary of ICE to develop a strategy for 

sanctioning immigration benefit fraud that takes into account the value of 

deterrence and establishes a mechanism for evaluating effectiveness. 

We presented a draft of this report to DHS and the Departments of State, 

Justice, and Labor. State, Justice, and Labor had no comments on our 

report. DHS stated that our report generally provided a good overview of 

the complexities associated with pursing immigration benefit fraud and 

the need to have a program in place that proactively assesses 

vulnerabilities within the myriad of immigration processes. However, DHS 

stated that our report did not fully portray USCIS’s efforts to address 

immigration benefit fraud and provided other examples of efforts USCIS 

has undertaken or plans to undertake. Where appropriate, we revised the 

draft report to recognize these additional efforts by USCIS. DHS generally 

agreed with and plans to take action to implement four of our six 

recommendations and cited actions it has already taken to address our 

other two recommendations. DHS agreed on the need to expand its fraud 

assessment program, provide USCIS staff access to information from 

internal and external sources, and establish outcome and output 

performance based goals. DHS agreed that goals were needed but did not 
Page 8 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

specify what action(s) it was planning to take. DHS agreed to study the 

costs and benefits of an administrative sanctions program. DHS stated that 

a mechanism to ensure that information uncovered during USCIS’s and 

related agencies normal operations feeds back into evaluations of USCIS’s 

policies, procedures, and operations already exists. DHS cited examples of 

how FDNS shares information with other agencies, participates in interagency anti-fraud effort efforts, and has recommended changes to how 

USCIS adjudicates religious worker applications as evidence that such 

feedback takes place. Although these are all positive efforts, USCIS does 

not yet have policies and procedures that specify how information about 

fraud vulnerabilities uncovered during the course of normal operations—

by USCIS and related agencies—is to be gathered—from which internal 

and external sources—and the process for evaluating this information and 

making decisions about appropriate corrective actions. Therefore, we 

continue to believe that USCIS needs to institutionalize through policies 

and procedures a feedback mechanism. With respect to communicating 

clearly the importance of USCIS’s fraud prevention objectives, DHS stated 

that USCIS leadership clearly advocates balancing objectives related to 

timely and quality processing of immigration benefits, and cited the 

creation of FDNS as evidence that USCIS senior leadership believes 

national security and fraud detection are a high priority. However, our 

interviews with adjudicators indicate that this message may not be 

reaching USCIS adjudications staff. DHS disagreed with our 

recommendation that USCIS and ICE establish a mechanism for the 

sharing of information related to the status and outcomes of USCIS fraud 

referrals to ICE. DHS provided us a February 2006 memorandum of 

agreement between ICE and USCIS that establishes a mechanism for the 

sharing of information related to the status and outcomes of fraud 

referrals; therefore, we withdrew this recommendation. 

USCIS is responsible for processing millions of immigration benefit 

applications received each year for various types of immigration benefits, 

determining whether applicants are eligible to receive immigration 

benefits, and detecting suspicious information and evidence to refer for 

fraud investigation and possible sanctioning by other components or 

agencies. USCIS processes applications for about 50 types of immigration 

benefits. In fiscal year 2005, USCIS received about 6.3 million applications 

and adjudicated about 7.5 million applications. Figure 1 shows the 

percentage of applications completed by type of application in fiscal year 

2005. 

Background 
Page 9 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

Figure 1: USCIS Applications Completed in Fiscal Year 2005 

To process these immigration benefit applications, in fiscal year 2005 

USCIS had a staff of about 3,000 permanent adjudicators located in 4 

service centers, where most applications are processed, and 33 district 

offices.5

 In fiscal year 2004, for example, service centers adjudicated about 

67 percent of all applications, and districts about 33 percent. In general, 

service centers adjudicate applications that do not require an interview 

with the applicant, using the evidence submitted with the applications. 

District offices generally adjudicate applications where USCIS requires an 

interview with the applicant (e.g., naturalization). USCIS also has eight 

offices that process applications for asylum in the United States. In fiscal 

year 2005, USCIS’s budget amounted to just under $1.8 billion, of which 

about $1.6 billion was expected from service fees and $160 million from 

congressionally appropriated funds. 

 5

 USCIS also employed an additional 1,475 adjudicators on a temporary basis to support its 

backlog reductions efforts. 

6%

6%

9%

Source: GAO analysis of USCIS Performance Analysis System (PAS) data.

Nonimmigrant worker 

Employment authorization 

Travel document 

Naturalization

11% Permanent resident 

17%

9%

19%

23%

Spouse & family 

Replacement/renewal of permanent

resident card 

Other application types
Page 10 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

In fiscal year 2004, USCIS had a backlog of several million applications 

and has developed a plan to eliminate it by the end of fiscal year 2006.6

 In 

June 2004, USCIS reported that it would have to increase production by 

about 20 percent to achieve its goal of adjudicating all applications within 

6 months or less by the end of fiscal year 2005. At that time, it estimated 

that it would have to increase current annual processing from about 6 

million to 7.2 million applications. Since USCIS did not plan for further 

increases in staffing levels, reaching its backlog goal would require some 

reduction in average application processing times, overtime hours, and 

adjudicator reassignments. 

With the creation of DHS in 2003, the immigration services and 

enforcement functions of the former INS transitioned to different 

organizations within DHS. USCIS assumed the immigration benefit 

functions and ICE assumed INS’s investigative and detention and removal 

of aliens functions. Within ICE’s Office of Investigations, the Identity and 

Benefit Fraud unit now conducts immigration benefit fraud criminal 

investigations and ICE’s Office of Detention and Removal Operations is 

responsible for identifying and removing aliens illegally in the United 

States. 

Because the immigration service and enforcement functions are now 

handled by separate DHS components, these components created two new 

units to, among other things, help coordinate the referral of suspected 

immigration benefit fraud uncovered by adjudicators to ICE’s Office of 

Investigations. First, USCIS created FDNS in 2003 to, among other things, 

receive fraud leads from adjudicators and determine which leads should 

be referred to ICE’s Office of Investigations. To accomplish this task, 

FDNS has Fraud Detection Units (FDU) at all four USCIS service centers 

and the National Benefits Center.7

 When fraud is suspected, the 

applications are to be referred FDUs. The FDUs, comprised of Intelligence 

Research Specialists and assistants, are responsible for further developing 

suspected immigration fraud referrals to decide which leads should be 

referred to ICE for possible investigation. FDU staff are also to refer to 

 6

 See GAO, Immigration Benefits: Improvements Needed to Address Backlogs and Ensure 

Quality of Adjudications, GAO-06-20 (Washington D.C.: November 2005). 

7

 The National Benefits Center serves as a hub for applications adjudicated at USCIS field 

offices. Among other things, the center performs initial evidence review and conducts 

background checks before sending the file to the appropriate district office for 

adjudication. 
Page 11 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

ICE or other federal agencies applicants who may pose a threat to national 

security or public safety or who are potentially deportable. FDUs are 

responsible for following up on potential national security risks identified 

during background checks of immigration benefit applicants. FDUs also 

perform intelligence analysis to identify immigration fraud patterns and 

major fraud schemes. In addition to establishing FDUs, in January 2005 

FDNS assigned 100 new Immigration Officers to USCIS district offices, 

service centers, and asylum offices to work directly with adjudicators to 

handle fraud referrals and conduct limited field inquiries. Second, ICE’s 

Office of Investigations created four new Benefit Fraud Units (BFU) in 

Vermont, Texas, Nebraska, and California located either at or near the 

four USCIS service centers. The ICE BFUs are responsible for reviewing, 

assessing, developing, and when appropriate, referring to ICE field offices 

for possible investigation immigration fraud leads and other public safety 

leads received from the FDUs and elsewhere. Specifically, the ICE BFUs 

are intended to identify those referrals that they believe warrant 

investigation, such as organizations and facilitators engaged in large-scale 

schemes or individuals who pose a threat to national security or public 

safety, and refer them to ICE field offices. In turn, ICE field offices will 

investigate and refer those cases they believe warrant prosecution to the 

U.S. Attorneys Offices. Figure 2 illustrates the typical immigration benefit 

fraud referral and coordination process. 
Page 12 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

Figure 2: Immigration Benefit Fraud Detection and Referral Process 

The Homeland Security Act of 2002 created the office of the Citizenship 

and Immigration Services Ombudsman. The ombudsman’s primary 

function is to: assist individuals and employers in resolving problems with 

USCIS; identify areas in which individuals and employers have problems in 

dealing with USCIS; and propose changes in the administrative practices 

of USCIS in an effort to mitigate problems. The ombudsman has issued 

two annual reports that have highlighted issues related to prolonged 

processing times, limited case status information, immigration benefit 

fraud, insufficient standardization in processing, and inadequate 

information technology and facilities. 

Other federal agencies also play important roles in the immigration benefit 

application process. The Department of State is responsible for approving 

Field Anti-Fraud

Units 

Fraud Detection Units

SAC

SAC

SAC

SAC SAC

District and 

Asylum Office

Adjudications

(Special Agent In-Charge Offices) 

Fraud Referrals

Rejected Referrals

Fraud leads are 

evaluated and 

developed

Suspicious applications

or documentation are

forwarded to FDNS for

evaluation

Accepts fraud referrals based on

individual SAC priorities and

overall ICE goals

Performs field investigation

and enforcement action

Immigration and

Customs Enforcement 

Fraud Detection

And National

Security

U.S. Citizenship and 

Immigration Services

Service Center

Adjudications

USAO USAO

USAO

U.S. Attorneys Offices (USAOs)

DHS DOJ

Reviews referrals for prosecution

based on principles of federal 

prosecution and individual 

USAO priorities

Immigration Benefit Fraud Detection & Referral Process

Field

Verification

Requests

Fraud Referrals

to ICE

Results of Field

Verification

Fraud Leads

Rejected Leads

Fraud Leads

Rejected Leads

Benefit

Fraud

Unit

USAO USAO

Source: USCIS.

Fraud Referrals
Page 13 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

and issuing a visa allowing an alien to travel to the United States. The 

Department of Labor’s (DOL) Division of Foreign Labor Certification 

provides national leadership and policy guidance to carry out the 

responsibilities of the Secretary of Labor under the Immigration and 

Nationality Act (INA) concerning foreign workers seeking admission to 

the United States for employment. DOL provides certifications for foreign 

workers to work in the United States, on a permanent or temporary basis, 

when there are insufficient qualified U.S. workers available to perform the 

work at wages that meet or exceed the prevailing wage for the occupation 

in the area of intended employment. The DOL Office of the Inspector 

General’s Office of Labor Racketeering and Fraud Investigations is 

responsible for investigating fraud related to these labor certifications. 

Fraudulent schemes used in several high-profile immigration benefit fraud 

cases sheds light on some aspects of the nature of immigration benefit 

fraud—particularly that it is accomplished by submitting fraudulent 

documents, that it can be committed by organized white-collar and other 

criminals, and that it has the potential to result in large profits for these 

criminals. The benefit fraud cases we reviewed involved individuals 

attempting to obtain benefits for which they were not eligible by 

submitting fraudulent documents or making false claims as evidence to 

support their applications. Fraudulent documents submitted included but 

were not limited to birth and marriage certificates, tax returns, financial 

statements, business plans, organizational charts, fictitious employee 

resumes, and college transcripts. For example, in what ICE characterized 

as one of the largest marriage fraud investigations ever undertaken, 44 

individuals were indicted in November 2005 for their alleged role in an 

elaborate scheme to obtain fraudulent immigrant visas for hundreds of 

Chinese and Vietnamese nationals. According to a USCIS fraud bulletin, 

this scheme may have been ongoing for 10 years. Another major 

investigation revealed evidence that an attorney had filed about 350 

applications on behalf of aliens seeking permanent employment as 

religious workers at religious institutions in the United States. 

Investigators found evidence that most of these aliens were unskilled 

laborers who were not pastors or other religious workers and had little or 

no previous affiliation with the religious institution. According to this 

investigation, some religious institutions appeared to specialize in 

obtaining legal status for aliens in the country who were not eligible for 

religious worker immigration benefits. In another investigation involving 

at least 2,800 apparently fraudulent marriage and fiancée applications 

identified in 2002 and investigated through 2004, a U.S. citizen appeared to 

have submitted multiple applications with as many as 11 different spouses. 

Fraud Is A Serious 

Problem, But Its Full 

Extent Is Unknown 
Page 14 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

One USCIS Service Center prepared fraud bulletins using information from 

various State Department Consular posts overseas describing immigration 

fraud uncovered by these posts. Our analysis of the bulletins issued from 

July 2004 through December 2004 prepared by USCIS’s California Service 

Center revealed that aliens from 23 different countries were believed to 

have sought a variety of immigration benefits fraudulently. For example, 

individuals apparently sought to enter the United States through fraud by 

falsely claiming they were: (1) legitimately married to or a fiancé of a U.S. 

citizen; (2) a religious worker; (3) a performer in an entertainment group; 

(4) a person with extraordinary abilities, such as an artist, race car driver, 

or award winning photographer; (5) an executive with a foreign company; 

(6) a child or other relative of a citizen or permanent resident; or (7) a 

domestic employee of an alien legally in the United States, such as a 

diplomat or business executive. According to one of the bulletins, in one 

case State Department consular officers suspected illegal aliens were 

entering the United States under the guise of membership in a band. 

According to another bulletin, two individuals were suspected of 

smuggling children into the United States. In this case, the alleged parents 

submitted a non-immigrant visa application for their “daughter,” and 

provided a fraudulent birth certificate and passport for her. The “parents” 

eventually admitted to taking children to the United States as their own to 

reunite them with their illegally working family members. 

Some individuals seeking immigration benefits pose a threat to national 

security and public safety, and white collar and other criminals sometimes 

facilitate immigration benefit fraud. For example, according to FDNS, each 

year about 5,200 immigration benefit applicants are identified as potential 

national security risks, because their personal information matches 

information contained in U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s 

Interagency Border Inspection System, a database of immigration law 

violators and people of national security interest. Additionally, according 

to federal prosecutors, immigration benefit fraud may involve other 

criminal activity, such as income tax evasion, money laundering, 

production of fraudulent documents, and conspiracy. Also, organized 

crime groups have used sophisticated immigration fraud schemes, such as 

creating shell companies, to bring in aliens ostensibly as employees of 

these companies. In addition, a number of individuals linked to a hostile 

foreign power’s intelligence service were found to have been employed as 

temporary alien workers on military research. 

Investigations have revealed that perpetrating fraud on behalf of aliens can 

be a profitable enterprise. For instance, in 2003 and 2004, one USCIS 

service center identified about 2,800 apparently fraudulent marriage 
Page 15 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

applications between low-income U.S. citizens and foreign nationals from 

an Asian country. The U.S. citizens appeared to have been paid between 

$5,000 and $10,000 for participating in the marriage fraud scheme. In 

another example from an investigation by DOL’s Inspector General, to 

fraudulently obtain the labor certifications needed to work in the United 

States, at least 900 aliens allegedly paid a recruitment firm an average of 

$35,000, with some aliens paying as much as $90,000, resulting in at least 

$31 million in revenue for this firm. In one of the largest labor certification 

fraud schemes ever uncovered, federal investigators found evidence that a 

prominent immigration attorney in the Washington, D.C., area submitted at 

least 1,436 and perhaps as many as 2,700 fraudulent employment 

applications between 1998 and 2002. According to the sworn testimony of 

a DOL special agent, this attorney and his associates are alleged to have 

made at least $11.4 million for the 1,400 applications that the agent 

reviewed, in all of which he found evidence of fraud, and perhaps as much 

as $21.6 million if all 2,700 applications were fraudulent, as he strongly 

suspected. In another case, an attorney allegedly charged aliens between 

$8,000 and $30,000 to fraudulently obtain employment-based visas to work 

in more than 200 businesses that included pizza parlors, auto parts stores, 

and medical clinics. 

Although the full extent of immigration benefit fraud is unknown, available 

USCIS data indicate that it is a serious problem. According to USCIS PAS 

data, in fiscal year 2005, USCIS denied just over 20,000 applications 

because USCIS staff detected fraudulent application information or 

supporting evidence during the course of adjudicating the benefit request. 

Three application categories accounted for more than three-quarters of the 

fraud denials: temporary work authorization (36 percent), application for 

permanent residency (30 percent), and application for a spouse to 

immigrate (14 percent). These three application types also accounted for 

almost half of all applications adjudicated by USCIS in fiscal year 2005. 

Moreover, in fiscal year 2005, USCIS denied approximately 800,000 

applications for other reasons, such as ineligibility for the benefit sought 

or failure to respond to information requests. USCIS adjudications staff 

and officials told us that it is likely that some of these applications denied 

for other reasons also involved fraud. 

Information provided by State Department and DOL officials also indicates 

that fraud is a serious problem. Once USCIS approves a sponsor’s 

application on behalf of an alien to immigrate, the application is sent to 

the State Department’s National Visa Center, which forwards the 

application to the appropriate State Department overseas consulate post, 

which then interviews the alien to determine whether a visa should be 
Page 16 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

issued. According to National Visa Center officials, out of 2,400 

applications returned on average each month to USCIS by the National 

Visa Center, that are denied or withdrawn for various reasons, about 900 

involve fraud or suspected fraud as determined by consular officers 

overseas. When the DOL Inspector General audited labor certification 

applications filed in 2001, it also found indications of a significant amount 

of fraud. According to the Inspector General, of the approximate 214,000 

applications filed from January 1, 2001, through April 30, 2001, and not 

subsequently cancelled or withdrawn, 54 percent (about 130,000) 

contained false—possibly fraudulent—information.8

In June 2005, the FDNS completed the first in a series of fraud 

assessments. The results from this assessment of religious worker 

applications indicate that about 33 percent of the 220 sampled applications 

resulted in a preliminary finding of potential fraud.9

 Based on a 33 percent 

rate, we estimate that, during the 6-month period of fiscal year 2004 from 

which the sample was drawn, about 660 out of approximately 2,000 

applications may have been fraudulent.10 Of the 72 potential fraud cases 

discovered in the fraud assessment, about 54-percent (39 cases) showed 

evidence of tampering or fabrication of supporting documents; 44-percent 

(32 cases) of the petitioners’ addresses did not reveal a bona fide religious 

institution; about 42-percent (30 cases) may have misrepresented the 

beneficiaries’ qualifications; and 28-percent (20 cases) did not provide the 

salary noted in the application. The assessment also uncovered one case 

where law enforcement had identified an applicant as a suspected 

terrorist. 

Information from other investigations and prosecutions of benefit fraud 

also reveal that, in some cases, applicants may have submitted fraudulent 

 8

 DOL Inspector General, Restoring Section 245(i) of the Immigration Nationality Act 

Created a Flood of Poor Quality Foreign Labor Certification Applications 

Predominantly for Aliens Without Legal Work Status, Report No: 6-04-004-03-321 

(Washington, D.C. : Sept. 30, 2004). 

9

 USCIS reviewed applications submitted on behalf of religious workers—such as 

ministers, or other individuals who work in a professional capacity in a religious vocation 

or occupation—seeking an immigrant visa in order to work in the United States. FDNS 

chose this application because based upon past experience FDNS believed there was a high 

prevalence of fraud. According to FDNS, most of the fraud involved religious institutions 

that were not affiliated with a major religious organization. 

10 However, with a sampling margin of error of 5 percent, the fraud rate could be between 

28 percent and 38 percent. 
Page 17 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

documents and made false statements that were not detected before the 

applicant obtained an immigration benefit. For example, while 

investigating one fraud scheme, investigators identified more than 2,000 

apparently fraudulent applications where there was evidence that some 

aliens, fraudulently claiming to be managers and executives of foreign 

companies with U.S. affiliates, acquired benefits that granted them the 

ability to work in the United States. To execute this scheme, organizers 

allegedly prepared application packages that included fraudulent business 

and employee related documents including financial statements, business 

plans, organizational charts, and fictitious employee resumes. 

One joint law enforcement investigation, previously mentioned, uncovered 

evidence that an attorney and his associate had filed at least 1,436 

applications on behalf of legitimate companies—mostly local 

restaurants—that did not actually request these workers. In this case there 

was evidence that they forged the signatures of company management on 

the applications. Another investigation involving marriage fraud found 

evidence that U.S. citizens were recruited and paid to marry Vietnamese 

nationals. The fraud organizers appeared to have assisted the U.S. citizens 

in obtaining their passports, scheduled travel arrangements, and escorted 

them to Vietnam where they arranged introductions with Vietnamese 

nationals whom the citizens then married. These citizens then filed 

applications that facilitated these Vietnamese nationals’ entry into the 

United States as spouses even though it appeared that they did not intend 

to live together as husband and wife. 

Even when adjudicators rejected applications based on fraud, some of 

these applicants had already received interim benefits while their 

applications were pending final adjudication allowing them to live and 

work in the United States, and in some cases obtain other official 

documents, such as a driver’s license. Under current USCIS policy, for 

example, if USCIS cannot adjudicate an application for permanent 

residency and the accompanying application for work authorization within 

90 days, the applicant is entitled to an interim work authorization, an 

interim benefit designed to let applicants work while awaiting a decision 

regarding permanent residency.11 According to the Citizenship and 

Immigration Services Ombudsman’s fiscal year 2004 and 2005 annual 

 11 8 C.F.R. § 274a.13(d). 8 CFR § 274a.12(c) states that USCIS has the discretion to establish 

a specific validity period for an employment authorization document, and 8 C.F.R. § 

274a.13(d) provides that such period shall not exceed 240 days in the case of an interim 

authorization. 
Page 18 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

reports and our discussion with him, for many individuals the primary goal 

is to obtain temporary work authorization regardless of the validity of 

their application for permanent residency. That is, aliens can apply for 

temporary work authorization, knowing that they do not qualify for 

permanent residency, with the intent of exploiting the system to gain work 

authorization under false pretenses. 

Once a temporary work authorization is fraudulently obtained, an alien 

can use it to obtain other valid identity documents such as a temporary 

social security card and a driver’s license, thus facilitating their living and 

working in the United States. According to the FDNS Director, once such 

fraud scheme involved at least 2,500 individuals in Florida who allegedly 

filed frivolous applications for employment authorization and then used 

the receipt, showing they had filed an application, to obtain Florida State 

driver’s licenses or identification cards.12 ICE agents we interviewed also 

said that they suspected that many individuals apply for permanent 

residency fraudulently simply to obtain a valid temporary work 

authorization document. The interim benefit remains valid until it expires 

or until it is revoked by USCIS. 

In his 2005 report, the Ombudsman cites a DHS Office of Immigration 

Statistics estimate—which the ombudsman’s office confirmed with 

USCIS’s division of performance management—that about 85 percent of 

applicants for permanent residency also apply for temporary work 

authorization. As a result, according to the ombudsman, many aliens have 

received temporary work authorizations, for which they were later found 

to be ineligible. Our analysis of PAS data shows, for example, that from 

fiscal year 2000 through 2004, USCIS denied 26,745 applications due to 

fraud out of the approximately 3 million applications received for 

permanent residency. These data illustrate that, if aliens that filed 

fraudulent applications for permanent residency also requested temporary 

work authorization at a rate consistent with the 85 percent cited by the 

Office of Immigration Statistics, then thousands of aliens received 

temporary work authorization based on their fraudulent claims for 

permanent residency during fiscal year 2000 through 2004. 

 12 USCIS subsequently informed Florida’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor 

Vehicles, and the American Association of Motor Vehicles Administration issued a national 

advisory notifying other state motor vehicle departments that they should not accept the 

application receipt as evidence of lawful immigration status. 
Page 19 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

To help it detect immigration benefit fraud, USCIS has taken some 

important actions consistent with activities prescribed by the Standards 

for Internal Control in the Federal Government and with recognized best 

practices in fraud control. Specifically, it has established an internal unit 

to act as its focal point for addressing immigration benefit fraud, outlined 

a strategy for detecting immigration benefit fraud, and is undertaking a 

series of fraud assessments to identify the extent and nature of fraud for 

certain immigration benefits. However, USCIS has not applied some 

aspects of internal control standards and fraud control best practices that 

could further enhance its ability to detect fraud. 

The Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government provide an 

overall framework to identify and address, among other things fraud, 

waste, abuse, and mismanagement. Implementing good internal control 

activities and establishing a positive control environment is central to an 

agency’s efforts to detect and deter immigration benefit fraud. The 

standards address various aspects of internal control that should be 

continuous, built-in components of organizational operations, including 

the control environment, risk assessment, control activities, information 

and communications, and monitoring. 

As with work we have previously published related to managing improper 

payments, fraud control would typically require a continual interaction 

among these components in keeping with an agency’s various objectives.13

For example, internal controls that promote ongoing monitoring work 

together with risk assessment controls to provide a foundation for 

decision making. Also, as internal control standards advise, a precondition 

to risk assessment is the establishment of clear, consistent agency 

objectives. Once established, risk assessment controls must also work 

together with information and communication controls to ensure that that 

every level of the agency is cognizant of the commitment and approach to 

both controlling fraud and meeting other agency objectives. Similarly, 

conditions governing risk change frequently, and periodic updates are 

required to ensure that risk information—including threats, vulnerabilities, 

and consequences—stays current and relevant. Information collected 

 13 GAO, Strategies to Manage Improper Payments, Learning from Private Sector 

Organizations, GAO-02-69G (Washington, D.C.: October 2001). 

Although USCIS Has 

Taken Steps to 

promote Fraud 

Control, Additional 

Controls and Best 

Practices Could 

Improve Its Ability to 

Detect Fraud 

Internal Control Standards 

and Other Guidance 

Provide Direction for 

Establishing Good Fraud 

Control Practices 
Page 20 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

through periodic assessment, as well as daily operations can inform the 

assessment, and particularly, the analysis of risk. As shown in figure 3, the 

control environment surrounds and reinforces the other components, but 

all components work in concert toward a central objective, which, in this 

case, is to minimize immigration benefit fraud. 

Figure 3: Internal Control Environment 

Other audit organizations have published guidance that includes 

discussion of sound management practices for controlling fraud that 

complement the internal control standards. Among these are the American 

Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) guidance on 

management of antifraud programs and controls to help prevent and deter 

fraud14 and a fraud control practices guide developed by the United 

Kingdom’s National Audit Office (NAO) entitled “Good Practices in 

Tackling External Fraud.” The NAO guidance outlines a risk-based 

 14 Excerpt from Statement on Auditing Standards, No. 99, Considerations of Fraud in a 

Financial Statement Audit. 

Information and

Communications

Monitoring

Control

Activities

Risk

Assessment

Objective:

Minimize

Immigration

Benefit Fraud 

Control Environment

Source: GAO.
Page 21 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

strategic approach to combating fraud that also includes evaluating the 

effectiveness of sanctions. 

According to internal control standards, factors leading to a positive 

control environment include clearly defining key areas of authority and 

responsibility, establishing appropriate lines of reporting, and 

appropriately delegating authority and responsibility for operating 

activities. Similarly, the NAO fraud control guidance advises agencies to 

develop specific strategies to coordinate their fraud control efforts and to 

ensure that someone is fully responsible for implementing the plans in the 

way intended and that sufficient resources are in place. Consistent with 

internal control and best practice guidance, USCIS established the FDNS 

office to enhance its fraud control efforts by serving as its focal point for 

addressing immigration benefit fraud. 

Established in 2003, FDNS is intended to combat fraud and foster a 

positive control environment by pursuing the following objectives: 

• develop, coordinate, and lead the national antifraud operations for 

USCIS; 

• oversee and enhance policies and procedures pertaining to the 

enforcement of law enforcement background checks on those applying 

for immigration benefits; 

• identify and evaluate vulnerabilities in the various policies, practices 

and procedures that threaten the legal immigration process; 

• recommend solutions and internal controls to address these 

vulnerabilities; and 

• act as the primary USCIS conduit and liaison with ICE, U.S. Customs 

and Border Protection (CBP), and other members of the law 

enforcement and intelligence community. 

In September 2003, in support of its objectives, FDNS outlined a strategy 

for detecting immigration benefit fraud in USCIS’s National Benefit Fraud 

Strategy. According to the strategy, because most immigration benefit 

fraud begins with the filing of an application, a sound approach to fraud 

prevention begins at the earliest point in the process—the time an 

application is received. Accordingly, USCIS established FDNS Fraud 

Detection Units (FDU) in each of the service centers in order to help 

identify potential fraud and process adjudicator referrals. Subsequently, 

FDNS appointed staff to serve as Immigration Officers working directly 

with adjudicators at the service centers and district offices to identify 

potential fraud and, to some extent, verify fraud through administrative 

Consistent with Internal 

Control Standards and 

Fraud Control Best 

Practices, USCIS Has 

Established a Fraud Focal 

Point, Related Strategies, 

and a Fraud Assessment 

Program 
Page 22 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

inquiries—once it was determined that ICE had declined to investigate a 

referral—in order to assist adjudicators in making eligibility 

determinations. 

The strategy also discusses various technological tools to help the FDUs 

detect fraud early in the process—in particular, by enabling FDNS staff to 

check databases to confirm applicant information and by developing new 

automated tools to analyze application system data using known fraud 

indicators and patterns to help identify potential cases of fraud. USCIS has 

hired a contractor to develop for FDNS an automated capability to screen 

incoming applications against known fraud indicators, such as multiple 

applications received from the same person. According to FDNS, it plans 

to deploy an initial data analysis capability by the third quarter of fiscal 

year 2006 and release additional data analyses capabilities at later dates, 

but could not predict when these latter capabilities would be achieved. 

However, according to an FDNS operations manager, the near and 

midterm plans are not aimed at providing a full data mining capability. In 

the long term, USCIS plans to integrate these data analyses tools for fraud 

detection into a new application management system being developed as 

part of USCIS’s efforts to transform its business processes for adjudicating 

immigration benefits, which includes developing the information 

technology needed to support these business processes. Also, in the long 

term, according to the FDNS Director, a new USCIS application 

management system would ideally include fraud filters to screen 

applications and remove suspicious applications from the processing 

stream before they are seen by adjudicators. 

FDNS has adopted as one of its objectives the identification and 

evaluation of vulnerabilities in USCIS policies, practices, and procedures 

that threaten the immigration benefit process. Consistent with this 

objective and good internal control practices, in February 2005, FDNS 

began to conduct a series of fraud assessments aimed at determining the 

extent and nature (i.e., how it is committed) of fraud for several 

immigration benefits that FDNS staff determined, based on past studies 

and experience, benefit fraud may be a problem. To conduct these 

assessments, FDNS first selected a statistically valid sample of 

applications. 15 FDNS field staff then attempted to verify whether key 

 15For each of assessment, USCIS plans to review a sample of applications designed to 

achieve a 95 percent confidence interval. Reviews will be conducted by Immigration 

Officers in district offices. 
Page 23 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

information on the applications was true. They did this by doing such 

things as comparing information contained in benefit applications with 

information in USCIS data systems and law enforcement and commercial 

databases, conducting interviews with applicants, and, in some cases, 

visiting locations to verify, for example, whether a business actually 

existed. As of December 2005, FDNS had completed its assessment of the 

religious worker application and replacement of permanent resident card 

applications, and was in the process of completing the assessment of two 

immigrant worker application subcategories.16 As of December 2005, FDNS 

planned to initiate two other assessments in January 2006 and another at a 

later time.17

Although USCIS has taken some important steps consistent with internal 

control standards and other good fraud control practices, it has not yet 

implemented some aspects of internal control standards and fraud control 

best practices that could further enhance its ability to detect fraud. 

Specifically, it lacks (1) a comprehensive approach for managing risk, (2) a 

monitoring mechanism to ensure that knowledge arising from routine 

operations informs the assessment of policies and procedures, (3) clear 

communication regarding how to balance multiple agency objectives, (4) a 

mechanism to help ensure that adjudicators staff have access to important 

information, and (5) performance goals related to fraud prevention. 

Although FDNS has initiated a fraud assessment program that identifies 

vulnerabilities for the specific benefit being assessed, it does not employ a 

comprehensive risk management approach to help guide its fraud control 

efforts. That is, FDNS has not (1) developed a plan for assessing the 

majority of benefits that USCIS administers, (2) fully incorporated threat 

and consequence information as part of the assessment process, and (3) 

applied a risk-based approach to evaluating alternatives for mitigating 

identified vulnerabilities. 

 16For the religious worker assessment, USCIS staff reviewed a sample of 220 cases that 

were randomly selected from a 6-month period of April 1, 2004, to September 30, 2004. For 

the replacement of permanent resident card assessment, USCIS staff reviewed a sample of 

245 cases that were selected from a 6-month period of May 1, 2004, to October 31, 2004. 

Cases selected included pending and completed cases. 

17 USCIS asked that we not divulge the specific benefit types planned for future 

assessments because of concerns that publishing this information could jeopardize the 

validity of these future assessments. 

Additional Internal 

Controls and Use of Other 

Best Practices Could 

Further Improve USCIS’s 

Ability to Detect Benefit 

Fraud 

USCIS Has Not Adopted a 

Comprehensive Risk 

Management Approach to Help 

Guide Its Fraud Control Efforts 
Page 24 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

A central component of the Standards for Internal Control in the Federal 

Government is risk assessment, which includes identifying and analyzing 

risks that agencies face from internal and external sources and deciding 

what actions should be taken to manage these risks. NAO’s fraud control 

guide also advises that in the fraud context, risk assessment involves such 

things as assessing the size of the threat from external fraud, the areas 

most vulnerable to fraud, and the characteristics of those who commit 

fraud. Moreover, we have consistently advocated a model of risk 

management that takes place in the context of clearly articulated goals 

and objectives and includes comprehensive assessments of threats, 

vulnerabilities, and consequences to help agencies evaluate and select 

among alternatives for mitigating risk in light of the potential for a given 

activity to be effective, the related cost of implementing the activity, and 

other relevant management concerns (including its impact on other 

agency objectives). 18

FDNS fraud assessments are an initial step toward adopting a risk 

management approach. However, FDNS has no specific plans to assess the 

majority of the benefit types that it administers. FDNS’s current plan calls 

for assessing benefit types that represent only about 25 percent of the 

applications USCIS received in fiscal year 2004, for example, and do not 

include benefits like temporary work authorization which accounted for 

almost 30 percent of applications received in 2004, and which the CIS 

Ombudsman suspects may be a high risk for fraud, and for which PAS data 

show a high denial rate for fraud. FDNS officials told us that, although the 

fraud assessments have been valuable, they have taken more time and 

effort than originally planned. Likewise, FDNS has not established a 

strategy and methodology for prioritizing any future fraud assessments. 

Until it extends the assessments to additional benefit types, the fraud 

assessments offer only limited information about vulnerabilities to the 

immigration benefits system 

Moreover, the approach to risk management that we advocate calls for the 

assessment of threats and consequences, in addition to the vulnerability 

information provided by the current approach to fraud assessment. 

Currently, the fraud assessments do not incorporate a comprehensive 

 18 See, for example, GAO, Homeland Security: A Risk Management Approach Can Guide 

Preparedness Efforts, GAO-02-208T (Washington, D.C.: October 2001); and GAO, Risk 

Management: Further Refinements Needed to Assess Risks and Prioritize Protective 

Measures at Ports and Other Critical Infrastructure, GAO-06-91 (Washington, D.C.: 

December 2005). 
Page 25 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

threat assessment—that is, they do not draw on all available sources of 

threat information—for example, information that might be available from 

such sources as ICE’s Office of Intelligence and other DHS intelligence 

gathering efforts. Threat assessment might help FDNS identify, for 

example, whether terrorists might be more likely to try to exploit certain 

immigration benefits. Neither do the fraud assessments include an 

assessment of the consequences of granting a particular benefit to a 

fraudulent filer. Such an assessment might help USCIS determine the 

relative harm that granting such a benefit might pose to the United States 

and its immigration benefit system. Although ultimately any benefit 

obtained under false pretenses undermines the system established by U.S. 

immigration law, consideration of whether, for example, granting a 

specific benefit may also facilitate easier access for potential terrorists to 

critical infrastructure or pose a greater detriment to the U.S. economy 

could inform sound risk-based decision making. 

Equipped with a more comprehensive understanding of the risks it faces—

particularly which benefits represent the highest risk, USCIS management 

would then be in a better position to select appropriate risk mitigation 

strategies and actions, particularly in situations where it is necessary to 

make resource trade-offs or to balance multiple agency objectives. For 

example, an obvious vulnerability to the immigration benefit system is the 

submission of false eligibility evidence. Currently, however, USCIS 

procedures do not include the verification of any eligibility evidence for 

any benefit, despite its potential to help mitigate vulnerability to fraud.19

Verification of such evidence—by comparing it to other information in 

USCIS databases, by checking it against external sources of information, 

or by interviewing applicants—is the most direct and effective strategy for 

mitigating this vulnerability. Employer wage data reported to state labor 

agencies, for example, could be a useful source of information to help 

determine if an employer has paid prevailing wages. Data from state motor 

vehicle departments can be used to verify that the two individuals claiming 

to be married live at the same address. We previously reported that USCIS 

could benefit from verifying employer related information with the 

 19 According to the Adjudicator’s Field Manual, adjudicators are to try to adjudicate the 

application based only on their review of the evidence submitted. The field manual further 

states that only when an adjudicator cannot decide whether to grant an immigration benefit 

based on the evidence submitted, are they to consider taking additional steps such as 

conducting internal research, requesting additional evidence, interviewing individuals, or 

requesting a site visit. 
Page 26 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

Internal Revenue Service.20 USCIS adjudicators told us that access to 

commercial databases that provide identification and credential 

verification would be helpful in verifying information contained in benefit 

applications. Additionally, district office adjudicators told us that it was 

often only during interviews that fraud became evident, even when their 

earlier review had not raised suspicions.21 A successful State Department 

effort offers further evidence that the practice of verifying key information 

can be an effective mitigation strategy. Due to a high incidence of fraud in 

a program that allows foreign companies to bring executives into the 

United States, one State Department consular post in Latin America began 

verifying with local authorities two key pieces of evidence that applicants 

were required to submit. According to the post, it subsequently noticed a 

decrease in the number of potentially fraudulent applications for this 

benefit. 

On the other hand, verifying any applicant-submitted evidence in pursuit 

of its fraud-prevention objectives represents a resource commitment for 

USCIS and a potential trade-off with its production and customer servicerelated objectives. In fiscal year 2004, USCIS had a backlog of several 

million applications and has developed a plan to eliminate it by the end of 

fiscal year 2006.22 In June 2004, USCIS reported that it would have to 

increase monthly production by about 20 percent to achieve its 

legislatively mandated goal of adjudicating all applications within 6 

months or less by the end of fiscal year 2006. According to USCIS, because 

it does not plan to increase its current overall staffing level, meeting its 

backlog reduction goal will require some combination of reductions in the 

standard processing time for various applications, overtime hours, and 

adjudicator reassignments. It would be impossible for USCIS to verify all 

of the key information or interview all individuals related to the millions of 

applications it adjudicates each year—approximately 7.5 million 

applications in fiscal year 2005—without seriously compromising its 

service-related objectives. Identifying situations and benefits that 

represent the highest risk to USCIS could help its management determine 

whether and under what circumstances verification is so vital to 

 20 See GAO, Taxpayer Information: Options Exist to Enable Data Sharing between IRS 

and USCIS but Each Presents Challenges, GAO-06-100 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 11, 2005). 

21 Currently, personal interviews are conducted only for certain applications and only in 

USCIS’s district offices. 

22 See GAO, Improvements Needed to Address Backlogs and Ensure Quality of 

Adjudications, GAO-06-20 (Washington D.C.: November 2005). 
Page 27 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

maintaining the integrity of the immigration benefits system that it 

outweighs any potential increase in processing time and costs. In this 

example, such an approach to risk management would inform selection 

among alternative verification strategies by considering (1) the risk of 

failing to detect fraud based on information provided by assessments of 

vulnerabilities, threats, and consequences, (2) the cost of conducting the 

verification (including its effect on other organizational objectives like 

service), and (3) the potential for the verification activities, given the 

current tools and information available, to actually detect fraud. 

In addition to procedural vulnerabilities like the verification example, a 

risk management approach could also guide USCIS in the evaluation of 

policies that strike a balance between two or more agency objectives and 

organizational priorities. For example, as previously discussed, USCIS’s 

policy of granting interim employment authorization documents to 

applicants whose adjustment of status applications have not been 

adjudicated within 90 days can be exploited by aliens seeking to gain work 

authorization under false pretenses and to use work authorization to 

obtain valid identity documents such as temporary social security cards 

and drivers licenses. In his 2004 and 2005 annual reports, the CIS 

Ombudsman identified this policy as a significant vulnerability in the 

immigration benefits process, because he contends that for many 

individuals the primary goal is to obtain temporary work authorization 

regardless of the validity of their applications for permanent residency. On 

the other hand, as we have previously reported, the reason for issuing 

temporary work authorization is to allow legitimate applicants to work as 

soon as possible, which according to USCIS, can serve to reduce the 

negative effects of delay on applicants and their families.23 Using more 

comprehensive risk information to evaluate policies that represent tradeoffs between fraud control and other agency objectives may help USCIS 

management determine whether and to what extent unintended policy 

consequences like in this example place the integrity of the immigration 

benefits system at risk. This kind of risk management approach also would 

provide USCIS management an opportunity to evaluate and select among 

various approaches to balancing fraud control with other agency 

objectives. In the temporary work authorization example, USCIS could 

evaluate a variety of alternative strategies and select among them on the 

basis of all available information, including risk. These strategies might 

 23 See GAO, Immigration Benefits: Several Factors Impede Timeliness of Application 

Process, GAO-01-488 (Washington D.C.: May 2001). 
Page 28 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

include: (1) maintaining the current policy if it is found to pose a tolerable 

level of risk, (2) seeking applicable regulatory changes, or (3) applying the 

policy disparately, to the extent allowed by law, across benefit types based 

on the level of risk each represents. In commenting on a draft of this 

report, DHS stated that a proposed regulatory change would clarify 

USCIS’s ability to withhold the adjudication of an application for 

employment authorization pending an ongoing investigation. 

Internal control standards advise that controls should be generally 

designed to ensure that ongoing monitoring occurs in the course of normal 

operations and is ingrained in the agency’s operations. FDNS’s fraud 

assessment program provides some information about how fraud is 

committed in the form of concentrated periodic assessments. However, 

currently USCIS does not have a mechanism to ensure routine feedback to 

FDNS about vulnerabilities identified during the course of normal 

operations and to incorporate it into adjudication policies and procedures. 

Besides information about vulnerabilities obtained from its operational 

experience adjudicating applications, additional information might be 

available to FDNS from external entities that also have responsibility for 

some aspect of controlling benefit fraud. One external source of fraud 

information that might inform USCIS operations is the U.S. Attorneys 

Office, which prosecutes immigration benefit fraud cases. For example, 

one U.S. Attorney, based on cases his office has prosecuted, has issued 

memoranda showing how underlying regulatory and adjudication 

processes have invited abuse of the immigration system. A March 2005 

memorandum prepared by this office explained how a recent investigation 

revealed significant weaknesses in the asylum process that allowed 

ineligible aliens to obtain asylum, and made suggestions for reforming the 

process. The memorandum stated that these suggestions were intended to 

start a discussion among federal agencies with immigration 

responsibilities that could lead to needed reforms. In commenting on a 

draft of this report, DHS stated that USCIS is developing a plan of action to 

work with other DHS entities and the Executive Office of Immigration 

Review within the Department of Justice to respond to specific 

recommendations made by the U.S. Attorney that prepared the 

memorandum on asylum program weaknesses. 

Another source of information available to USCIS about fraud 

vulnerabilities are the criminal investigations conducted by ICE, DOL, and 

USCIS Lacks a Mechanism to 

Ensure That Ongoing 

Monitoring Occurs in the 

Course of Normal Operations 
Page 29 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

the DHS Office of Inspector General,24 which could reveal such 

information as the characteristics of those who commit fraud and how 

these individuals exploited weaknesses in the immigration benefit process 

to obtain benefits illegally. USCIS’s National Benefit Fraud Strategy does 

not mention incorporating lessons learned from investigative and 

prosecutorial activities into its fraud control efforts—specifically, how the 

knowledge ICE, DOL, and DHS investigators and U.S. Attorneys gained 

during the course of investigations and prosecutions could be collected 

and analyzed in order to become aware of opportunities to reduce fraud 

vulnerabilities.25 A mechanism to help ensure that information from these 

and related sources results in appropriate refinements to policies and 

procedures could enhance USCIS’s efforts to address fraud vulnerabilities. 

DOL, which plays an important role in the benefits process for some 

permanent employment benefits, has used external information to refine 

its procedures in this way. Specifically, it analyzed the results of major 

criminal investigations and prosecutions to evaluate and establish new 

procedures that require verifying key application information, such as the 

existence of a business. DOL found it was necessary to change its 

permanent labor certification procedures to require verification of basic 

application information in order to mitigate the risk of mistakenly 

approving permanent labor certification applications, and protect the 

fundamental integrity of the labor certification process from blatant 

abuse.26

 24 Among other things, this office investigates criminal allegations of USCIS employee 

involvement in immigration benefit fraud. The DHS Office of Inspector General provides 

the results of such investigations to USCIS’s Office of Security and Investigations. 

25 A February 2006 memorandum of agreement between USICS and ICE requires ICE to 

submit a report to USCIS on the findings of investigations resulting from referrals from 

USCIS. However, the memorandum does not require ICE to report the findings from benefit 

fraud investigations resulting from leads from other sources, such as other ICE 

investigations or other agencies. 

26 For permanent employment immigration, petitioners are required to obtain labor 

certifications from the Department of Labor. The DOL is required to certify that there are 

not sufficient U. S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available and that at least 

the prevailing wage will be paid. The labor certification is then submitted to USCIS along 

with an application for an alien worker using an I-140 immigration form. USCIS’s 

responsibility is to then ensure that the prospective employee has the necessary 

qualifications for the job. 
Page 30 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

Internal control standards advise that for agencies to manage their 

operations, they must have relevant, reliable, and timely communications. 

Furthermore, establishing a positive fraud control environment is central 

to an agency’s efforts to detect and deter immigration benefit fraud. The 

NAO guidance also advises management to ensure that all levels of the 

organization are made to share a concern about fraud. It is the stated 

mission of USCIS to provide the right benefit, to the right person, at the 

right time, and no benefit to the wrong person. Specifically, it aims to 

adjudicate all benefit requests within 6 months of receipt, without 

compromising the integrity of the process, nor significantly increasing 

staff. These objectives—speed, quality, and cost—are inherently in tension 

with one another. Therefore, it is particularly important, given USCIS’s 

multiple objectives, that it clearly communicates the importance of each of 

the objectives at every level of the organization, and provides clear 

guidance to adjudicators about how to balance them in the course of their 

daily duties. 

Although USCIS’s backlog elimination plan acknowledges the need to 

balance its focus on reducing the backlog with efforts to ensure 

adjudicative quality, some USCIS adjudicators we interviewed indicated 

that it was not clear to them how the agency expected them to balance 

fraud detection efforts and production goals during the course of their 

duties. Adjudicators we spoke with said that communications from 

management emphasized meeting production backlog goals almost 

exclusively. They said that management’s focused attention on reducing 

the backlog placed additional pressure on them to process applications 

faster, thereby increasing the risk of making incorrect decisions, including 

approving potentially fraudulent applications. For example, adjudicators 

at all four service centers we spoke with told us that operations 

management seemed to be almost exclusively focused on reducing the 

backlog in order to meet production goals.27 USCIS headquarters 

operations management responsible for overseeing adjudications at 

service centers and district offices told us that the adjudications operation 

is a “high-pressure” production environment and that they are seeking to 

increase production, but it was not their intention that this should come at 

the expense of making incorrect adjudication decisions. 

 27 At one service center the union representing adjudicators filed a grievance in June 2005 

claiming that proposed new performance standards for adjudicators were unrealistic and 

would compromise the quality of adjudication decisions. 

USCIS May Not Clearly 

Communicate the Importance 

of Fraud Control and How 

Adjudicators Are to Balance It 

with Other Objectives 
Page 31 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

The FDNS Director told us that he had also discussed with operations 

management the need to strike a more balanced approach to meeting 

production goals and ensuring that the right eligibility decision is made. 

He acknowledged that until FDNS establishes an ability to proactively 

identify fraud through its automated analysis tools, adjudicators will 

continue to play a primary role in detecting fraud. Therefore, he 

acknowledged the importance of clear and balanced communications 

from operations management to adjudicators in support of USCIS’s new 

fraud detection process and the shared responsibilities in this regard. 

Nevertheless, adjudicators we interviewed told us that they have received 

guidance from different parts of the agency regarding the lengths to which 

they should go in confirming suspected fraud that they were uncertain 

how to interpret. For example, in December 2004, the FDNS Director 

issued guidance stating that adjudicators should obtain the evidence 

needed to support their suspicions of fraud before making a referral, 

including, if necessary, requesting additional evidence from applicants. 

According to adjudicators and FDU staff we interviewed, this guidance 

appears to conflict with a subsequent January 2005 memorandum, issued 

by the Director of Service Center Operations, which states that adjudicator 

requests for information should not be used as a device simply to 

“investigate” suspected fraud. Adjudicators we interviewed at one service 

center said that whenever operations management communicated with 

them about practicing more discretion in issuing requests for additional 

evidence, they believed it was primarily intended to put more pressure on 

them to process applications faster, which in turn they said puts additional 

pressure on them to not to request additional evidence when making 

eligibility decisions. Consequently, they were concerned about having to 

approve applications with less confidence in the correctness of their 

determinations. An FDNS Immigration Officer working in a service center 

echoed the adjudicators concerns about seemingly conflicting guidance, 

saying that interpreting such guidance from management made the job of 

adjudicators more difficult. However, he said that adjudicators and local 

managers would more likely heed the direction of USCIS operations 

management, their direct supervisors, rather than FDNS. Clear 

communications about the importance of both fraud prevention-related 

and service-related objectives and how they are to be balanced may help 

adjudicators ensure that they are appropriately supporting USCIS’s 

multiple objectives as they carry out their duties. In commenting on a draft 

of this report, DHS stated that the USCIS Director moved FDNS to a new 

directorate that reports directly to the USCIS Deputy Director. This will 

allow FDNS to provide focus and guidance to all USCIS operations. 
Page 32 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

USCIS does not have a mechanism to help ensure that adjudicators have 

access to information related to detecting fraud they may need to carry out 

their responsibilities. Information regarding fraud trends can be provided 

in various forms including e-mails, intranet Web pages, and bulletin board 

notices. The adjudicators at the service centers and district offices we 

visited received some fraud-related information or training subsequent to 

their initial hire. 28 Our interviews indicated, however, that the frequency 

and method for distributing ongoing information about fraud detection is 

not uniform across the service centers and district offices we visited; some 

adjudicators reported that more information or a more centralized 

information management system would better prepare them to detect 

fraud. At two service centers, adjudicators we interviewed told us that, 

after their initial training, they were provided with some information 

regarding fraud trends via e-mail. However, these adjudicators also 

reported difficulty with managing the information in this format. They said 

that providing this information through a different means—either through 

a Web-based system or through a training course that would summarize 

new knowledge related to fraud trends—would be easier and quicker to 

use. One of the service centers provided adjudicators with operating 

manuals—developed for specific benefit application types—that included 

information regarding typical fraud trends encountered by the service 

center, which adjudicators said they found useful in their efforts to detect 

fraud. 

At two other service centers, adjudicators we interviewed told us that they 

were not provided any fraud e-mail updates but received some limited 

information about fraud during general group meetings. Adjudicators at 

these two centers told us that receiving more specific and detailed 

information about fraud trends and practices would enhance their ability 

to detect fraud. At one service center, adjudicators suggested that having a 

method by which to incorporate the knowledge and lessons learned from 

experienced adjudicators would also help them to better detect fraud. 

Additionally, one of the district offices we visited provided an additional 2-

day training course that included techniques for detecting fraud during an 

interview. Adjudicators we interviewed at this district office told us that 

the course helped prepare them to better detect fraud. USCIS 

headquarters officials responsible for field operations told us that there is 

 28 USCIS initial adjudicator training provides approximately 4 hours of fraud-related 

training that focuses primarily on detecting fraudulent documents during 6 weeks of 

training. 

Adjudicators and FDNS Staff 

Lack Access to Important 

Information and Information 

Tools 
Page 33 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

no standard training regarding fraud trends and that fraud-related training 

varied across field offices. 

In addition to calling for relevant information to be shared internally, 

internal control standards require that management ensure that there are 

adequate means of communicating with and obtaining from external 

stakeholders information that may have a significant impact on achieving 

agency goals. During our audit work, USCIS and ICE, had not yet 

established a feedback mechanism for the timely sharing of information 

related to the status and outcomes of fraud referrals that is essential to the 

fraud referral process shared by USCIS and ICE. According to FDNS field 

staff we interviewed, information from ICE field offices on the status of 

USCIS referrals—for example, whether ICE has initiated an investigation 

in response to a referral—was sporadic and incomplete in some cases and 

non-existent in other cases. In addition, when ICE fails to accept a referral, 

FDNS may initiate an administrative inquiry to resolve an adjudicator’s 

suspicions of fraud. However, because ICE did not routinely provide 

information about its investigative decisions, it was difficult for FDNS to 

know when to initiate such inquiries or to plan for the staff time needed to 

conduct them. Moreover, according to FDNS staff and adjudicators we 

interviewed, without timely feedback about the investigative status of their 

referrals, adjudicators lacked the information needed to make more timely 

eligibility determinations, whether or not an investigation is opened by 

ICE. In November 2005, ICE and USCIS officials told us that ICE 

investigators were recently assigned to each of the FDUs, which may help 

increase communication and information sharing between USCIS and ICE. 

Additionally, according to the FDNS Director, having direct access to 

information stored in ICE’s case management information system, the 

Treasury Enforcement Communication System (TECS) maintained by 

Customs and Border Protection (CBP), would allow FDNS staff to 

determine with greater certainty whether someone who has filed for an 

immigration benefit is connected to any ongoing ICE criminal 

investigation. However, ICE officials told us they opposed allowing FDNS 

access to sensitive case management information. They said that there 

was a need to segregate sensitive law enforcement data about ongoing 

cases from non-law enforcement agencies like FDNS. 

In commenting on a draft of this report, DHS provided us with a February 

14, 2006, memorandum of agreement between ICE and USCIS that 

established a mechanism for the sharing of information related to the 

status and outcomes of fraud referrals. In addition the agreement provides 

USCIS staff with access to TECS data so USCIS can determine whether 
Page 34 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

someone who has filed for an immigration benefit is connected to any 

ongoing ICE criminal investigation. If properly implemented, this 

agreement should resolve USCIS’s concerns regarding the status and 

outcome of fraud referrals to ICE and access to TECS data. 

Internal control standards call for agencies to establish performance 

measures to monitor performance related to agency objectives. Measuring 

performance allows an organization to track progress made toward 

achieving its objectives and provides managers with crucial information 

on which to base management decisions. The Government Performance 

and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 also requires that agencies establish longterm strategic and annual goals, measure performance against these goals, 

and report on the progress made toward meeting their missions and 

objectives. It calls for agencies to assess specific outcomes related to their 

missions and objectives, in addition to designing output measures to 

describe attributes of the goods and services produced by the agencies’ 

programs. 

USCIS’s 2005 Strategic Plan includes both a prevention theme—ensuring 

the integrity of the system, and a service theme—providing efficient and 

customer oriented services, along with related goals and objectives. 

However, DHS and USCIS have not established specific performance goals 

to assess benefit fraud activities. In fiscal year 2004 USCIS reported 

performance goals related to naturalization, legal permanent residency, 

and temporary residency to DHS for its annual Performance and 

Accountability Report. The objective for each of these three performance 

goals was to “provide information and benefits in a timely, accurate, 

consistent, courteous, and professional manner; and prevent ineligible 

individuals from receiving” the benefit. Although the objective includes 

preventing ineligible individuals from receiving the benefit, the related 

measure—achieve and maintain a 6-month cycle time goal—does not. 

There is no discussion in the strategic plan of how to balance its 

prevention objectives with its service objectives. Instead, USCIS’s longterm strategic approach appears to rely heavily on the development of an 

enhanced case management system, new fraud databases and data 

analyses tools, and automated information services to overcome the 

inherent tension between these prevention and services themes as they 

relate to the prevention of benefit fraud and reducing the backlog of 

immigration applications. Establishing output measures—for example, the 

number of cases referred to and accepted by FDNS—and outcome 

measures—for example, the percentage of fraudulent applications 

detected relative to targets established using baseline data from fraud 

DHS Lacks Performance Goals 

for USCIS’s Antifraud Efforts 
Page 35 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

assessments—could provide USCIS with more complete information 

about the effectiveness of its fraud control efforts in meeting its strategic 

goal objective to ensure the security and integrity of the immigration 

system. 

FDNS officials told us that they are now participating in USCIS’s Office of 

Policy and Strategy Performance Measurement Team’s efforts to develop 

performance metrics, and that FDNS is leading an effort to develop 

metrics related to USCIS’s strategic goal to ensure the security and 

integrity of the immigration system by increasing the detection of 

attempted immigration benefit fraud. However, specific DHS metrics 

regarding USCIS’s antifraud efforts have yet to be developed and approved 

by DHS. 

Although best practice guidance suggests that sanctions for those who 

commit benefit fraud are central to a strong fraud control environment, 

and the INA provides for criminal and administrative sanctioning, DHS 

does not currently actively use the administrative sanctions available to it. 

Fraud control best practices advise that a credible sanctions program, 

which incorporates a mechanism for evaluating its effectiveness, including 

the wider value of deterrence, is an integral part of fraud control. 

According to the AICPA’s fraud guidance, the way an entity reacts to fraud 

can send a strong message that helps reduce the number of future 

occurrences. Therefore, taking appropriate and consistent actions against 

violators is an important element of fraud control and deterrence. The 

guide further advises that a strong emphasis on fraud deterrence has the 

effect of persuading individuals that they should not commit fraud 

because of the likelihood of punishment. Similarly, the NAO guide states 

that a key element of a good fraud control program is to impose penalties 

and sanctions on those who commit fraud in order to penalize those who 

commit fraud and deter others from carrying out similar types of fraud. 

Data provided by USCIS indicates that most benefit fraud it uncovers and 

refers to ICE is not prosecuted. In fiscal year 2005, USCIS referred 2,289 

immigration benefit fraud cases to ICE BFUs. However, 598, about 26 

percent were accepted by the BFUs. Neither USCIS nor ICE provided us 

with information about which of the FDNS referrals accepted by the BFUs 

resulted in an ICE investigation. However, ICE officials said that the 

majority of ICE’s immigration benefit fraud investigations do not originate 

with USCIS referrals, but from other investigative sources. Given limits on 

its resources, ICE officials told us that they generally prioritize their 

investigative resources and assign them to cases involving individuals who 

Most Benefit Fraud Is 

Not Criminally 

Prosecuted, but DHS 

Does Not Have an 

Administrative 

Sanctions Program 
Page 36 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

are filing large numbers of fraudulent applications for profit, because 

these cases generally have a greater probability of being prosecuted by the 

U.S. Attorneys Offices. Therefore, the principal means of imposing 

sanctions on most immigration benefit fraud would be through 

administrative penalties. 

The INA provides both criminal and administrative sanctions for those 

who commit immigration benefit fraud.29 The act’s criminal provisions 

provide for fines and/or imprisonment for up to 5 years for a person who 

fails to disclose that they have, for a fee, assisted in preparing an 

application for an immigration benefit that was falsely made, and 

monetary fines and/or imprisonment for up to 15 years for a second such 

conviction. The act also provides for administrative penalties for 

applicants who make false statements or submit a fraudulent document to 

obtain an immigration benefit or enter into a marriage solely to obtain an 

immigration benefit.30 For document fraud committed after 1999, it 

provides monetary fines ranging from $275 to $2,200 per document subject 

to a violation for a first offense and from $2,200 to $5,500 per document for 

those who have previously been fined. Monetary penalties collected are to 

be deposited into the Immigration Enforcement Account within the 

Department of the Treasury. Funds from this account can be used for 

activities that enhance enforcement of provisions of the INA including: (1) 

the identification, investigation, apprehension, detention, and removal of 

criminal aliens; (2) the maintenance and updating of a system to identify 

and track criminal aliens, deportable aliens, inadmissible aliens, and aliens 

illegally entering the United States; and (3) for the repair, maintenance, or 

construction of border facilities to deter illegal entry along the border. In 

addition, under certain circumstances, individuals determined through the 

adjudication process to have committed fraud, are deemed inadmissible 

should they later try to file another immigration application. In some 

cases, aliens who are determined in a formal hearing to have committed 

fraud can be removed from the United States and be barred from entering 

in the future. 

DHS does not currently have a clear and comprehensive strategy for 

imposing sanctions or evaluating their effectiveness and is not actively 

enforcing the administrative penalties provided for by the INA. This is 

largely due to a 1998 federal appeals court ruling upholding a nationwide 

 29 Immigration fraud can also be criminally prosecuted under other federal statutes. 

30 8 U.S.C. §§ 1324c(a), (d); 1154(c). 
Page 37 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

permanent injunction against the procedures used by INS to institute civil 

document fraud charges under the INA.31 The court found that INS 

provided insufficient notice to aliens regarding their right to request a 

hearing on the imposition of monetary fines and the immigration 

consequences of failing to do so, and that until proper notifications were 

included on the fine and hearing waiver forms, INS was enjoined from 

implementing civil penalties for document fraud. According to the 

Director of Field Operations for ICE’s Office of Principal Legal Advisor, 

after the court ruling, the government’s cost to investigate and prosecute 

an immigration fraud case administratively, including appeals costs, would 

not be offset by the monetary sum that might be obtained. Moreover, the 

director stated that even if successful, there was no guarantee that the 

government could collect its fine from the alien. Therefore, according to 

the director, ICE does not consider implementing the administrative 

penalties for document fraud to be cost-effective. Accordingly, DHS has 

not made updating the forms in response to the ruling a priority. Similarly, 

another USCIS attorney told us that the provision of INA that pertains to 

marriage fraud is rarely used because, due to the significant commitment 

of resources necessary to establish a finding of fraud, enforcing it might 

not be cost-effective. However, DHS has not conducted a formal analysis, 

which includes an attempt to value the benefit of deterrence, to determine 

the total costs and benefits of imposing sanctions. 

Senior USCIS officials we spoke with, however, told us that administrative 

sanctions are important to their fraud control efforts. According to the 

FDNS Director, without the credible threat of a penalty, individuals have 

no fear of filing future fraudulent applications. In this regard, he said that 

FDNS administrative investigations of fraud referrals not investigated by 

ICE are critical, and, in his estimation, the resulting denial of a benefit and 

potential removal of an alien offer an effective deterrent to immigration 

benefit fraud. However, the director said that although an alien who 

commits immigration benefit fraud might be removable from the United 

States and, therefore, has some disincentive to commit fraud, U.S. citizens, 

if they are not prosecuted criminally, have little disincentive because 

without the enforcement of administrative sanctions they are not likely to 

be penalized, even if their violations are detected. Additionally, according 

to the Chief of Staff for USCIS, a strategy for administratively sanctioning 

those who commit fraud is necessary for controlling and deterring fraud. 

 31 Walters v. Reno, 145 F.3d 1032 (9th Cir. 1998). 
Page 38 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

Although DHS does not actively use its authorities to impose 

administrative penalties, Congress has continued to support the concept in 

legislation. In particular, the Real ID Act of 2005 allows the Secretary of 

Homeland Security, after notice and an opportunity for a hearing, to 

impose an administrative fine of up to $10,000 per violation on an 

employer for a substantial failure to meet any of the conditions of a 

petition for certain non-immigrant workers or a willful misrepresentation 

of a material fact in such a petition, and allows the secretary to deny 

petitions filed with respect to that employer for at least 1 year and not 

more than 5 years.32 However, without a strategy that includes a 

mechanism for assessing the effectiveness of sanctions and considers both 

the monetary value of fines collected and the value of deterrence, DHS will 

not be able to determine how and under what circumstances to best use 

the authority provided by the INA and other legislation to promote a 

credible threat of punishment in order to deter fraudulent filers. 

Although it lacks a strategy for imposing criminal and administrative 

sanctions, DHS, along with DOL, has proposed administrative rule changes 

that will help sanction those who commit fraud. Among other things, DHS 

has proposed that USCIS be able to deny, for a period of time, all 

applications from employers that DOL or DHS has found, respectively, to 

have submitted false information about meeting regulatory requirements 

or provided statements in their applications that were inaccurate, 

fraudulent or misrepresented a material fact. Final rules have not yet been 

published. 

In light of competing organizational priorities, institutionalizing fraud 

detection—so that it is a built-in part of the adjudications process and 

always a central part of USCIS’s planning, procedures, and methods—is 

vital to USCIS’s ability to accomplish its goals and objectives, particularly 

protecting the integrity of the immigration benefit system. USCIS has 

taken some important steps to implement internal controls, primarily 

through the activities of the Office of Fraud Detection and National 

Security. By strengthening existing controls and implementing additional 

fraud control practices, USCIS could enhance its ability to detect benefit 

fraud and gain greater assurance that its operations are designed to 

protect the integrity of the system, even as it strives to enhance service 

and meet its backlog reduction goals. Specifically, expanding the types of 

 32 Pub. L. No. 109-13, div. B, § 404(a), 119 Stat. 302, 319-20 (amending 8 U.S.C. § 1184(c)). 

Conclusions 
Page 39 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

benefits it assesses, including assessments of consequence, and drawing 

on all available sources of threat information to develop current fraud 

assessment activities into a more comprehensive risk management 

approach would provide additional knowledge about fraud risks and put 

the agency in a better position to make risk-based evaluations of its 

policies, procedures, and programmatic activities. Also, a mechanism to 

ensure that information uncovered during the course of normal 

operations—in USCIS and related agencies—feeds back into USCIS 

policies and procedures would help to ensure that it addresses loopholes 

and procedural weaknesses. In addition, clear communication of the 

importance of fraud prevention-related objectives and how they are to be 

balanced, in practice, with service-related objectives would help USCIS 

adjudicators to ensure that they are supporting the agency’s multiple 

objectives as they carry out their duties. Moreover, the provision of the 

tools and the relevant information that its adjudicators need to help them 

detect fraud could help them make eligibility determinations with greater 

confidence of their accuracy. Finally, performance goals—that include 

output and outcome measures, along with associated targets—reflecting 

the status of fraud control efforts would provide valuable information for 

USCIS management to evaluate its various policies, procedures, and 

programmatic activities and a better understanding of both the progress 

made and areas requiring more focused management attention to enhance 

fraud prevention. 

By demonstrating sufficiently adverse consequences for individuals who 

perpetrate fraud, sanctions serve to discourage future fraudulent filings, as 

individuals observe that the potential costs of engaging in fraud are likely 

to outweigh the potential gains. It is important to any program that 

encounters fraud to have a credible sanctions program to penalize those 

who engage in fraud and deter others from doing so. Currently, DHS’s 

sanctions program for immigration fraud is not a threat to most 

perpetrators because relatively few are prosecuted criminally and 

administrative sanctions are not actively being used. Although DHS 

officials told us that administrative sanctions are not cost-effective, 

comparing only the costs of administering sanctions with the potential 

return from the collection of fines may undervalue their potential 

deterrent effects. Although developing a sound methodology to establish 

and determine the value of deterrence provided by sanctions will require 

effort, best practices call for cost-effective sanctions, and consideration of 

the full range of costs and benefits, financial and nonfinancial, is central to 

making a valid determination of cost-effectiveness. Developing and 

implementing a strategy for imposing sanctions that includes a mechanism 

for assessing effectiveness and that more fully evaluates costs and 
Page 40 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

benefits, including nonfinancial benefits like the value of deterrence, could 

give DHS a better indication of how and under what circumstances 

administrative sanctions should be employed to enhance USCIS’s fraud 

deterrence efforts. 

In order to enhance USCIS’s overall immigration benefit fraud control 

environment, we recommend that the Secretary of Homeland Security 

direct the Director of USCIS to take the following five actions, which are 

consistent with internal control standards and best practices in the area of 

fraud control: 

• Enhance its risk management approach by (1) expanding its fraud 

assessment program to cover more immigration application types; (2) 

fully incorporating threat and consequence assessments into its fraud 

assessment activities; and (3) using risk analysis to evaluate 

management alternatives to mitigate identified vulnerabilities. 

• Implement a mechanism to help USCIS ensure that information about 

fraud vulnerabilities uncovered during the course of normal 

operations—by USCIS and related agencies—feeds back into and 

contributes to changes in policies and procedures when needed to 

ensure that identified vulnerabilities result in appropriate corrective 

actions. 

• Communicate clearly to USCIS adjudicators the importance USCIS’s 

fraud-prevention objectives and how they are to be balanced with 

service-oriented objectives to help adjudicators ensure that both 

objectives are supported as they carry out their duties. 

• Provide USCIS’s adjudicator staff with access to relevant internal and 

external information that bears on their ability to detect fraud, make 

correct eligibility determinations, and support the new fraud referral 

process—particularly ongoing updates regarding fraud trends and 

other information related to fraud detection. 

• Establish output and outcome based performance goals—along with 

associated measures and targets—to assess the effectiveness of fraud 

control efforts and provide more complete performance information to 

guide management decisions about the need for any corrective action 

to improve the ability to detect fraud. 

Recommendations for 

Executive Action 
Page 41 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

In addition, in order to enhance DHS’s ability to sanction immigration 

benefit fraud, we recommend the Secretary of Homeland Security direct 

the Director of USCIS and the Assistant Secretary of ICE to: 

• Develop a strategy for implementing a sanctions program that includes 

mechanisms for assessing its effectiveness and for determining its 

associated costs and benefits, including its deterrence value. 

We provided a draft of this report to the Departments of Homeland 

Security, State, Justice, and Labor for review. On March 1, 2006, we 

received written comments on the draft report from the Department of 

Homeland Security, which are reproduced in full in appendix II. The 

Departments of State, Justice, and Labor had no comments on our draft 

report. In its written comments, DHS stated that our report generally 

provided a good overview of the complexities associated with pursuing 

immigration benefit fraud and the need to have a program in place that 

proactively assesses vulnerabilities within the myriad of immigration 

processes. However, DHS stated that our report did not fully portray 

USCIS’s efforts to address immigration benefit fraud and provided other 

examples of efforts USCIS has undertaken or plans to undertake. Where 

appropriate, we revised the draft report to recognize these additional 

efforts by USCIS to address immigration benefit fraud. DHS noted that 

USCIS used GAO’s 2002 report on immigration benefit fraud as the 

foundation to build its antifraud program and believes that USCIS is on the 

right track to creating an effective antifraud program. We believe that 

USCIS is moving in the right direction and recognize that FDNS is in the 

beginning stages of developing and implementing a new antifraud program 

for USCIS. 

Overall, DHS agreed with and plans to take action to implement four of 

our six recommendations, and cited actions it has already taken to 

indicate that aspects of our other two recommendations are already in 

place. Specifically, regarding our recommendation that DHS enhance its 

risk management approach, DHS agreed that USCIS can enhance its risk 

management approach by expanding its fraud assessment program to 

cover more application types and plans to do so. DHS stated that its initial 

fraud assessments focused on benefits that were high risk, but that given 

existing resources it was not possible to conduct assessments on all 

benefit types within the first years of operation. DHS stated that USCIS 

believes that the benefit fraud assessments currently underway do provide 

a comprehensive risk analysis to identify vulnerabilities and measures to 

mitigate such vulnerabilities. DHS cites FDNS involvement in interagency 

anti-fraud efforts and that FDNS staff are assigned to various intelligence 

Agency Comments 

and Our Evaluation 
Page 42 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

units as support that its fraud assessments draws on sources of strategic 

threat information. However, DHS did not provide evidence or explain 

how, if at all, these efforts systematically incorporated threat and 

consequences into its fraud assessment process. In addition, DHS did not 

explain or provide us with evidence of how USCIS will use the results of 

the fraud assessments as part of a continuous, built-in component of its 

operations to evaluate and adjust, as necessary, policies and procedures. 

Regarding our recommendation that DHS provide USCIS adjudicator staff 

relevant information, DHS agreed that it needs to provide USCIS staff 

access to relevant internal and external information and is initiating 

training for supervisory adjudication officers and is planning to provide 

adjudicators selective access to the State Department’s Consolidated 

Consular Database and other open source databases. 

Regarding our recommendation that DHS establish performance goals to 

assess the effectiveness of fraud control efforts, DHS stated that FDNS has 

created performance goals for the number of benefit fraud assessments 

conducted during the year and the number of recommended policy, 

procedural and regulatory changes. DHS agreed that additional output and 

outcome based performance goals and measures are needed but did not 

specify what action(s) they were planning to take. 

Regarding our recommendation that DHS develop a strategy for 

implementing a sanctions program, DHS agreed to study the costs and 

benefits of an administrative sanctions program though DHS believes that 

the process it has established to place aliens determined to have 

committed immigration fraud in removal proceedings is an effective 

deterrent. While this process may deter aliens from committing 

immigration fraud, this process does not impact citizens who may commit 

fraud and therefore a sanctions strategy for citizens is still needed. 

DHS stated that with regard to two of our recommendations, it has already 

take actions that are consistent with these two recommendations. 

Regarding our recommendation that USCIS implement a mechanism to 

feed back information uncovered during the course of its normal 

operations and those of related agencies about fraud vulnerabilities, DHS 

stated that it believes such a feedback loop already exists within the 

process. DHS stated that FDNS is currently developing its back-end 

processes, which include sharing information/lessons learned from routine 

operations and addressing shortcomings. For all major conspiracy cases, a 

report is to be prepared summarizing among other things, factors that lead 

to fraudulent applications being approved. USCIS also stated that based 
Page 43 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

upon meetings that FDNS leadership had with a U.S. Attorneys Office 

regarding vulnerabilities in the asylum process, USCIS is developing a plan 

of action to respond to the recommendations made by the U.S. Attorney’s 

office. DHS also stated that USCIS is developing regulatory changes to 

mitigate vulnerabilities identified during the religious worker fraud 

assessment. Although these are all positive efforts, USCIS does not yet 

have policies and procedures that specify how information about fraud 

vulnerabilities uncovered during the course of normal operations—by 

USCIS and related agencies—is to be gathered—from which internal and 

external sources—and the process for evaluating this information and 

making decisions about appropriate corrective actions. Therefore, we 

continue to believe that USCIS needs to institutionalize through policies 

and procedures a feedback mechanism. 

Regarding our recommendation that USCIS clearly communicate the 

importance of USCIS’ fraud-prevention activities, DHS stated USCIS 

leadership clearly advocates balancing objectives related to timely and 

quality processing of immigration benefits. DHS stated that creation of 

FDNS and the recent move of FDNS to a new directorate that reports 

directly to the Deputy Director of USCIS allowing FDNS to provide focus 

and guidance to all USCIS operations as support that USCIS is focused on 

the integrity of USCIS’s data and processes. Although USCIS management 

believes these efforts demonstrate the importance of fraud prevention, our 

interviews with adjudicators in service centers and district offices indicate 

that this message may not be reaching USCIS’s adjudications staff. 

Therefore, we continue to believe that more is needed to clearly 

communicate the importance of fraud prevention and more specific 

guidance on how USCIS staff are to balance the fraud prevention and 

service oriented objectives. DHS disagreed with our recommendation that 

USCIS and ICE establish a mechanism for the sharing of information 

related to the status and outcomes of USCIS fraud referrals to ICE. DHS 

provided us a February 2006 memorandum of agreement between ICE and 

USCIS that establishes a mechanism for the sharing of information related 

to the status and outcomes of fraud referrals; therefore, we withdrew this 

recommendation. 

We are sending copies of this report to the Secretaries of Homeland 

Security, State, and Labor; the Attorney General; and other interested 

congressional committees. We will also make copies available to others 

upon request. In addition, the report will be available at no charge on 

GAO’s Web site at http://www.gao.gov. 
Page 44 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

If you or your staff have any questions concerning this report, please 

contact me at (202) 512-8777 or Jonespl@gao.gov. Contact points for our 

Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the 

last page of this report. Key contributors to this report are listed in 

appendix III. 

Paul L. Jones 

Director, Homeland Security 

and Justice Issues 
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology 

Page 45 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

To examine the extent and nature of immigration fraud, we reviewed the 

results of the Office of Fraud Detection and National Security’s (FDNS) 

ongoing fraud assessments. Regarding the fraud assessments, we 

interviewed the FDNS managers responsible for administering the 

assessment, reviewed documentation outlining the assessment’s design, 

implementation and initial results from two fraud assessments. To better 

understand the nature of immigration benefit fraud and to identify 

common fraud patterns, we analyzed examples of fraud case histories for 

several petition types planned to be assessed by FDNS. In addition, we 

analyzed information contained in fraud bulletins prepared by U.S. Citizen 

Immigration Services’ (USCIS) California Service Center that contained 

reports by various State Department overseas consular posts on 

immigration fraud these posts had uncovered. We also analyzed USCIS’s 

Performance Analysis System (PAS) data to determine trends in the 

volume of applications being processed, approved, and denied. We 

assessed the data derived from PAS and determined that these data were 

sufficiently reliable for the purposes of this review. We interviewed 

adjudications staff and field managers to evaluate the extent to which 

internal controls and practices for detecting fraud were incorporated into 

USCIS policies, procedures, and tools. We met with headquarters officials 

from USCIS operations and FDNS, as well as officials from the 

Departments of Labor and State responsible for fraud detection efforts. 

We conducted site visits or contacted staff at all four USCIS services 

centers—we visited three USCIS service centers in Laguna Niguel, 

California; Dallas, Texas; and St. Albans, Vermont; and conducted 

telephone interviews with USCIS staff at the Lincoln, Nebraska, service 

center. We also interviewed 59 adjudicators at the four USCIS service 

centers and two USCIS district offices with responsibility for and 

familiarity with adjudicating different types of applications in a group 

setting, which allowed us to identify points of consensus among the 

adjudicators. We also visited USCIS district offices in Dallas and Boston 

responsible for coordinating their fraud referrals with two of the four 

service centers we visited. USCIS service center and district office officials 

selected the adjudicators we interviewed based upon our request that we 

meet with adjudicators that had responsibility for and familiarity with 

adjudicating different types of applications. We also interviewed FDNS 

staff assigned to work with the four service centers and two district offices 

we visited or contacted. We also interviewed staff from Immigration and 

Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) Identity and Benefit Fraud Unit in 

Washington, D.C., and those agents assigned to Benefit Fraud Units (BFU) 

in California, Texas, and Vermont. As we did not select a probability 

sample of USCIS staff and ICE Office of Investigations agents to interview, 

the results of these interviews cannot be projected to all USCIS staff and 

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology 
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology 

Page 46 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

ICE Office of Investigations officials nationwide. In addition, we reviewed 

efforts by the Department of Labor’s Inspector General to determine the 

extent of immigration fraud in the Permanent Labor Certification Program. 

We also met with the CIS Ombudsman to discuss his fiscal year 2004 and 

fiscal year 2005 reports. 

To determine what actions USCIS has taken to improve its ability to detect 

immigration benefit fraud, we reviewed USCIS’s efforts to improve its 

fraud detection capabilities, including resources devoted specifically to 

detecting fraud by FDNS. We also reviewed USCIS’s policies, adjudication 

procedures, and fraud detection processes as well as the tools used by 

adjudicators to detect fraudulent immigration benefit applications. To 

determine what actions have been taken to sanction those who commit 

fraud, we interviewed USCIS and ICE attorneys, identified the 

investigative resources that ICE had made available for immigration fraud 

investigations, and determined how USCIS and ICE coordinate the 

investigation of potential fraud. In addition, we examined fraud 

investigation and prosecution statistics, and analyzed USCIS statistics 

about the amount of fraud identified by its adjudicators. We also 

determined how ICE investigative efforts are coordinated with the U.S. 

Attorneys Offices and how their priorities affect the investigation and 

prosecution of immigration benefit fraud schemes of various types. For 

this portion of our review, we met with headquarters officials from ICE, 

and interviewed agents in four ICE field offices based in Boston, Dallas, 

Los Angeles, and San Antonio. We also interviewed representatives from 

the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and the 

Executive Office of the U.S. Attorneys within the Department of Justice. 

Finally, we examined the current sanctions for those who commit 

immigration benefit fraud and reviewed proposed fraud regulatory 

changes. To evaluate DHS efforts to detect and sanction immigration 

benefit fraud, we used the Standards for Internal Control in the Federal 

Government and with best practices advocated by the American Institute 

of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and by the United Kingdom’s 

National Audit Office (NAO). 

We conducted our work between October 2004 and December 2005 in 

accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 
Appendix II: Comments from the Department 

of Homeland Security 

Page 47 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

Appendix II: Comments from the Department 

of Homeland Security 
Appendix II: Comments from the Department 

of Homeland Security 

Page 48 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 
Appendix II: Comments from the Department 

of Homeland Security 

Page 49 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 
Appendix II: Comments from the Department 

of Homeland Security 

Page 50 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 
Appendix II: Comments from the Department 

of Homeland Security 

Page 51 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 
Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments 

Page 52 GAO-06-259 Immigration Benefits 

Paul L. Jones (202) 512-8777 

In addition to the above, Joel Aldape, David Alexander, Jenny Chanley, 

Frances Cook, Michael P. Dino, Nancy Finley, Carlos Garcia, Kathryn 

Godfrey, Larry Harrell, and David Nicholson were key contributors to this 

report. 

Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments 

GAO Contact 

Staff 

Acknowledgements 

(440361) 
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