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| | ==Immigration fraud== | | ==Immigration fraud== |
| | + | In October 2010 Sen. [[Chuck Grassley]] made a complaint to DHS Secretary [[Janet Napolitano]] based on [[whistleblower]] allegations. The allegations accused Mayorkas of heavy-handed pressure on career employees to turn out more asylum approvals for the agency's "customers", while undermining [[fraud]] and ineligibility detection efforts. Grassley's office interviewed seven employees, examined hundreds of pages of supporting documents, and presented the results to Napolitano. Grassley noted, |
| | + | {{quotebox-float|"Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that Director Mayorkas is fostering an environment that pressures employees to approve as many applications as possible and condones retaliation against those who dissent."}} |
| | + | Among the inquiry's chief findings: |
| | + | *Mayorkas had become "visibly agitated" during a visit to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) California offices when told employees there wanted to root out fraud. "Why would you be focusing on that instead of approvals?" he reputedly demanded. A witness said "his message was offensive to a lot of officers who are trained to detect fraud." |
| | + | *At a management conference, Mayorkas directed top officials to find ways always to "get to yes" regarding "customer" immigrants who filed visa applications. He told his subordinates to "look at petitions from the perspective of the customer" and that the goal was "zero complaints", implying that approvals were the means to that end. |
| | + | *At a conference in Landsdowne, Va., Mayorkas said there were some "managers with black spots on their hearts" who can't see their way to grant benefits and that he was "dealing" with them and also subordinates "too close" to them, with immediate involuntary re-assignments. |
| | + | *The California USCIS office was told to abandon an important anti-fraud measure that checked for high-risk applicants on a government database, and fraud specialists had to stop investigating such applications. |
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| | + | A damning December 2015 [[GAO]] report found that the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) asylum fraud prosecutions rarely, if ever, occurred during the Mayorkas years. It found that half of the eight USCIS field divisions had referred either one fraud case to U.S. attorney's offices from 2010 to 2014 or none at all. One office reported that not a single referral had been accepted in the prior two years. Another reported that its U.S. attorney had accepted no asylum fraud referrals since 2010. |
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| | + | Besides strong-arming USCIS employees to "get to yes" instead of valid denials or fraud investigations, during Mayorka's 2010-2013 USCIS years the FDNS directorate was never allowed to refer cases to [[prosecutor]]s, [[subpoena]] witnesses, or even carry [[gun]]s. |
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| | ==Huawei scandal== | | ==Huawei scandal== |