Massive Student Visa Fraud Uncovered: Are Californian's Tired of Being Ripped Off Yet?
Student visas are supposed to open doors bringing international students to American campuses, strengthening cultural ties, and giving young people a chance to learn, grow, and contribute.
Instead, programs are being used to once again, rip off American taxpayers!
At today’s press conference, federal officials revealed widespread fraud inside the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, a system meant to let foreign students work in the U.S. after graduation. Instead, ICE says more than 10,000 students were tied to fake or highly suspicious employers.
Agents found:
Empty offices and locked buildings where hundreds of students were supposedly working, multiple companies using the same address with no leases or staff, private homes listed as worksites for hundreds of OPT students, employers with offshore “managers,” tax liens, and no real operations.
Some students fabricated jobs; others were funneled through shell companies acting as illegal labor brokers. In one case, a Texas employer claimed 3 students while paperwork showed 500. A New Jersey company listed 150 workers but had only one on site.
ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons said investigators are uncovering “organized fraud that spans national and international borders,” warning that the scheme undermines immigration integrity and harms legitimate students and employers.
The OPT program was originally intended for a limited number of students. But under the Obama administration, the number of foreign students authorized to work under OPT ballooned to 418,781, a scale that critics say overwhelmed oversight systems and created fertile ground for fraud.
Today’s findings echo a pattern Americans have seen before:
Massive fraud in Minnesota’s social‑service programs
California’s $20 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims
COVID‑era relief scams across the country.
Whenever oversight is weak and billions of dollars or immigration benefits are at stake, organized networks move in. No wonder Democrats were screaming to shut down investigations into fraud like this. Every time oversight agencies dig deeper, they uncover more abuse, more loopholes, and more taxpayer dollars being siphoned away. The American people are being ripped off, and it has to stop.
Here in California we are uncovering a tremendous amount of fraud and this is just the beginning.Will you vote differently this time? Or will you vote to keep the status quo and allow the same people in power to keep looking the other way while Californians get ripped off?
