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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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 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. 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.