'Can They Do That?': Andy Biggs Asks Witness About Marriage Fraud Detection In Visa Applications

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In a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) asked Codias Law Managing Attorney Cody Brown about marriage fraud.

Transcript

00:00All right. You're back. Without objection, thank you. And now the gentleman from Arizona,

00:07the great Mr. Biggs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In May, not one illegal alien was released into

00:14the United States. So, Mr. Nowrista, do you consider that to be a successful month?

00:22Yeah. Good. Good. I'm always looking for accommodation and comedy. So we have some

00:27comedy right there. I think we have more than that, sir. I don't know. We'll find out. The most

00:33recent Congressional Border Security Caucus, we had the ICE director, acting ICE director,

00:39Mr. Todd Lyons, come in. Mr. Lyons was describing visa overstays. So I'd ask the panel, are you all

00:47familiar with the term visa overstays, Mr. Brown? You need to ask it out loud. Yeah. It's like a

00:53court of law. You've got to answer it out loud. Very familiar. Okay. Mr. Nowrista? Yes. Mr. Hankinson?

00:57Yes. And Ms. Vaughn? Yes. So let's talk about one visa overstay. I'm thinking of the Egyptian fellow

01:05who went on a rampage, an anti-Semitic rampage, and attacked people in Boulder, Colorado.

01:15Did you know that he was a visa overstay, Ms. Vaughn? Yes. And what type of visa did he have?

01:23Before he overstayed? I don't think I have seen it confirmed. I believe it was a visitor visa,

01:30B1, B2. That's what's been reported anyways, that it was a visitor visa. And how many,

01:36Mr. Hankinson, how many visa overstays are there in the country right now? Roughly.

01:44Microphone. Maybe a half a million a year

01:47total overstays, but not all of those are permanent. The figures are a bit difficult to

01:54parse. Okay. So when we look at visa overstays, I want to go back here now to Mrs. Vaughn for a sec.

02:04Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9-11 attack, said that marriage fraud is a, quote,

02:09fantastic mechanism for terrorist operatives to acquire valid documents. Close quote. But rather than you,

02:14we'll go to Mr. Brown. Do you agree with that? Absolutely. And can you, you've given in your

02:20opening statement, you talked about how marriage fraud enterprises work. How would you describe

02:25DHS's process for detecting marriage fraud, Mr. Brown? Do they do that? Can they do that?

02:31Their process is virtually non-existent. When I refer to the deliberate dismantling of anti-fraud

02:37safeguards, this is a great example. For example, under the last administration, one of the key

02:43fraud safeguards that Congress enacted in the Immigration Marriage Fraud Amendments Act of 1986

02:49was interviews. They started waiving all the interviews. When our clients reported fraud,

02:55you know what they got back? Silence. Nothing. And I want to make this point.

03:00We have obtained internal data from USCIS. And from 2016 to 2019, a little subset, you know what

03:13their fraud denial rate was for the marriage-based cases? Zero percent rounded to the nearest whole

03:19number. This is, this is not accidental. Something is deeply, deeply wrong with our immigration system.

03:26And there's a lot of innocent Americans who are suffering. Thank you for that. Mr. Hankinson,

03:32what's the process like for vetting student visa applicants?

03:36Well, it's as good as we can make it. The interviews take just a couple of minutes,

03:41and most of the information that they provide can't be immediately verified. So we probably get it right

03:48most of the time. So we have a nice, the acting nice director told us the other day that

03:52in re-looking at some of these student visas, they had a student from China who was entering his 13th year

04:01of a baccalaureate degree program for a bachelor's degree. That seems, I don't know. I've put kids

04:10through college, and thank goodness none of them ever took 13 years to get through college.

04:13And if they, if, Mrs. Vaughn, if a student commits a crime or otherwise becomes, does something that

04:25would disqualify them for continuing on the student visa, how is that, how does that get reported to ICE or the

04:34school? Well, if they are arrested for a state or local crime, ICE will get that information

04:43through the Secure Communities program. But ICE is not necessarily going to prioritize it because

04:51that, as a student visa holder, they are entitled to more due process than, for example, someone who's

04:59in the country illegally and commits the same crime. So what, what the director told us is that

05:04they're, it's not often that they're notified, and the school is rarely notified as well. Yeah,

05:11the school wouldn't necessarily be notified. So as I, as my time expires, I pre, what I would point out to

05:16the, my committee members that there's been some suggestions by Mr. Brown, Mr. Hankinson,

05:20Mrs. Vaughn, on some ways to fix the visa system. I think it's worth reviewing. And then I've got

05:26a couple of unanimous consents. This one's called what we know about the visa obtained by Egyptian man

05:32who injured a dozen people in Colorado. Another one by Mr. Hankinson, actually. Commentary on the borders,

05:40on border security. And then a letter that we sent to Secretary Mayorkas just a few months ago asking

05:47for information about marriage fraud with regard to visa status. Thank you. Without objection.

05:55Thank you, Mr. Biggs. And now Mr.

05:57Rapp.

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