House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) today pressed Attorney General Loretta Lynch on the Department of Justice’s refusal to combat rampant asylum fraud.
A report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on December 2, 2015, found that DOJ’s component agency, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) failed to develop policies and procedures across the agency to detect and prevent asylum fraud. That same report indicates that immigration judges granted asylum to 3,709 aliens who were connected to attorneys and document preparers convicted as a result of a multi-agency criminal investigation headed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into fraudulent asylum claims in New York City, labeled Operation Fiction Writer.
The Department of Justice recently reported to the House Judiciary Committee that EOIR has taken no action to review the cases of 3,709 asylum applicants who were granted asylum by immigration judges, despite EOIR’s knowledge that the cases likely involve fraud.
In the letter, Chairman Goodlatte calls on the Justice Department to take swift action to review and reopen each of the 3,709 cases referenced in the GAO report to determine if fraud is present and to pursue revocation of asylum in those cases where fraud is established.
The signed copy of the letter can be found here.
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