Federal immigration policies led to thousands of fraudulent applications being submitted when 774,000 noncitizens were granted parole from May 2022 through September 2024, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The humanitarian parole program, under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which was led by Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas from 2021 to 2025, granted noncitizens temporary permission to stay in the United States if they had a sponsor.

However, thousands of applications and their sponsors were tied to crime or had counterfeit documents that used information by unwitting—and sometimes dead—U.S. citizens, the report showed.

“The findings are unsurprising and confirm that [President] Joe Biden’s open border policy prioritized aliens—including many fraudsters and violent criminals—over the safety of the American people,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) spokesman Matthew J. Tragesse said in a statement to The Epoch Times on Dec. 18.

“His catch-and-release policies and lax screening enabled rampant fraud and jeopardized the safety of our communities and the integrity of our nation’s immigration system. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will not rest until this mess is cleaned up.”

More than 1,400 people arrived in the United States with their sponsors listed as dead, the report found.

Applications even used information such as the Social Security numbers and photos of celebrities.

Fraud agents discovered “multiple applications” where people used the Social Security number of music icon Elvis Presley, who died in 1977.

One person used an image of former CBS journalist Connie Chung on their passport, while another created a driver’s license with a photo of actress Coté de Pablo.

More than 3,000 sponsor applications were accompanied by images of fraudulent U.S. passports.

“USCIS reviewers generally confirmed these supporter applications because they did not have the ability to verify information about U.S. citizen supporters who did not have a prior USCIS filing history,” the report said.

The report showed that USCIS acknowledged there were gaps in the vetting processes, which were introduced in 2022 and 2023 to provide an alternative to illegal immigrants arriving at the southern border, such as not having an automated way to detect potential fraud.

Migrants mentioned in the report came to the United States as part of three programs: Uniting for Ukraine, Family Reunification Parole, and “CHNV migrants,” who came from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

Data showed 531,307 people were processed as CHNV migrants, 230,227 were processed under the Uniting for Ukraine program, and 12,268 were part of the Family Reunification Parole.

Some applications were flagged after fraud agents confirmed supporters were tied to illegal narcotics, money laundering, assault, and human trafficking. One person was wanted for murder by Haitian authorities.

Approval or denial for the flagged applications was decided based on a risk assessment of each case. Out of around 1.2 million applications from April 2022 through September 2024, USCIS did not approve around 210,000 supporter applications—about 17 percent. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol also denied or canceled around 61,000 requests for travel authorization for beneficiaries.

Former immigration judge Andrew Arthur, who serves as an analyst with the Center for Immigration Studies, reacted to the report in a Dec. 16 statement on the research organization’s page.

“Various administrations ... have abused that parole authority to allow in other classes of inadmissible aliens, but none held a candle to what Biden did,” Arthur wrote.

The report even had a section labeled “clearly irrelevant evidence,” which featured documents people uploaded, such as stock landscape images and the U.S. flag, as documentation.

“Who designed these ‘humanitarian parole’ application systems? The Mob?” Arthur asked. “I hope this is malfeasance, because if not, it’s criminally inexcusable ignorance.”

GAO recommended that the director of USCIS develop an internal control plan to mitigate fraud risks in a new program or a change to an existing program, such as a new immigration benefit application.

It suggested the secretary of Homeland Security, who is now Kristi Noem, assess and document lessons learned from the supporter-based parole processes that are relevant to other ongoing operations and apply those lessons learned, even though she was not in this position for the reported period of fraud.

Noem and the Trump administration have cracked down on unfettered and illegal immigration since Trump was sworn in in January 2025.

Earlier this year, under Noem, the DHS terminated temporary protected status (TPS) for people from Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Haiti’s TPS designation was set to terminate on Sept. 2, 2025, but due to litigation, it will remain in place until Feb. 3, 2026.

Ukraine’s TPS designation is set to expire in October 2026.

USCIS announced on Dec. 12 that it was terminating family reunification parole (FRP) programs for people from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras, and their immediate family members.

“The desire to reunite families does not overcome the government’s responsibility to prevent fraud and abuse and to uphold national security and public safety,” DHS announced in a press release on Friday.

“The FRP programs had security gaps caused by insufficient vetting that malicious and fraudulent actors could exploit to enter the United States, which posed an unacceptable level of risk to the United States. DHS is prioritizing the safety, security, and financial and economic well-being of Americans.”