ICE director says foreign student program is 'magnet for fraud' after 10,000 potential cases uncovered

By Samantha Kamman, Christian Post Reporter Thursday, May 14, 2026

U.S. immigration officials say they have uncovered more than 10,000 potential fraud cases related to a foreign student program that allows international students to work in the United States, a finding that Acting ICE Director Todd M. Lyons says is “only the tip of the iceberg.”

During a Tuesday press conference, Lyons announced that, over the past year, immigration officials have “aggressively targeted” what he described as “rampant fraud” within the foreign student and exchange visa programs.

“Today, our focus is on the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, which has become a magnet for fraud,” the ICE director warned. 

OPT is a program that allows F-1 students to work in the U.S. for up to 12 months — or 24 months for students pursuing STEM degrees — to work in roles related to their field of study before or after completing their course requirements.

The program, established in 1992, was later expanded in 2008 under the Bush administration and in 2016 under the Obama administration. According to Lyons, the DHS initially anticipated that only a couple of thousand students would receive training approval through OPT before returning home. 

“Instead, OPT ballooned into an uncontrolled guest worker pipeline with hundreds of thousands of foreign students working in the United States. As the program size has exploded, so has the fraud,” Lyons said during the press conference. 

“Today, we are announcing that we have identified over 10,000 foreign students who claim to be working for highly suspect employers. And that's just among the top 25 OPT employers,” he added. “This is only the tip of the iceberg. ... Over the past year, we've dramatically expanded our oversight of OPT and can report that we've found fraud nationwide." 

Lyons said that officials have visited what he described as “problematic” OPT work sites in various states, such as Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina and Florida. 

Officials visited the addresses of multiple businesses that claimed to employ hundreds of foreign students, only to find “empty buildings and locked doors.” At other locations, officials reportedly found small residential houses listed as work sites for hundreds of foreign students, but no employees were present. 

Other issues include what Lyons referred to as “financial red flags,” saying that many alleged employers “display clear fraud indicators including tax liens, civil lawsuits, collections and breaches of contract.” Officials have also noticed “suspicious financial transactions moving cash across multiple countries,” according to the ICE director. 

“While we can't share details of ongoing investigations, I can assure you that more information is forthcoming and that we are taking this fraud very seriously,” Lyons declared. 

In October 2025, ICE issued a press release announcing that the agency’s Homeland Security Investigations directorate visited employers in Northern Virginia that hire F-1 students. 

“ICE officials discovered evidence of noncompliance and potential fraud, including evidence of nonfunctional or staged worksites and supervisors who lacked knowledge of laws and regulations related to employing foreign students while visiting local IT services companies,” ICE stated last year. 

“In one instance, ICE investigated an employer after discovering its reported place of business was a home in the Virginia suburbs that supposedly employs dozens of foreign students via the Optional Practical Training program."

Opponents of OPT argue that the program makes it harder for American students to find jobs in certain industries that instead employ OPT permit holders.

In an April letter to President Donald Trump, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., expressed concern that OPT permits are harming the job prospects of young Americans. He added that the OPT program creates a “serious national security risk” by allowing students from China to work in the U.S. 

Scott asserted that the “OPT program should not exist,” adding that “it is a purely regulatory creation with no statutory basis.”

Advocates for the OPT program claim that it ensures businesses and research institutes have the talent they need to grow, and that it helps the U.S. attract international students who might otherwise take their skills to other nations. 

Earlier this year, Reps. Sam Liccardo, D-Calif., Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., and Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., introduced the bipartisan Keep Innovators in America Act, which would codify the OPT program.

“We have a choice: educate the best and brightest students in the U.S. to help America succeed, or send them home to China, India, and other rivals to launch companies to compete against us,” Liccardo asserted. “Only by cultivating the expertise grown here can we keep the U.S. competitive, so I’m proud to work with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to sustain the OPT program for years into the future.”