The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced a major crackdown on an immigration program that allows international students to work temporarily in the country. Calling the OPT program a 'magnet for fraud', ICE director Todd M Lyons said the agency uncovered irregularities involving nearly 10,000 foreign students participating in the federal government’s Optional Practical Training program. When the OPT was created under the Bush administration and expanded under the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security anticipated only a few thousand foreign students would receive training approval before returning home, Lyons said, giving a background of the program.
But instead of what was expected, OPT ballooned into an uncontrolled guest worker pipeline with hundreds of thousands of foreign students working in the United States, the director said in a press conference Tuesday. "As the program size exploded, so did the fraud. During the first Trump administration, we uncovered thousands of foreign students claiming employment at work sites that did not exist, blatantly fabricating information provided to DHS. Under the Biden administration, the fraud escalated even further," he said.
