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The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said it has identified 10,000 overseas students, including respective from India, who assertion to beryllium moving for highly fishy employers by misusing the Optional Practical Training (OPT) constituent of their visas.
OPT allows overseas nationals who participate the United States connected a pupil visa to enactment successful the U.S. for 12, oregon successful immoderate cases 24 months. It besides allows students to modulation to an H-1B visa sponsored by employers.
Addressing a property league connected Tuesday (May 12, 2026), acting Director of ICE Todd Lyons said the OPT constituent of the pupil visa programme has “become a magnet for fraud” and has been the taxable of galore investigations by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
“We've encountered cases involving espionage, biologic threats, intelligence spot theft, visa and employment fraud, and adjacent scams targeting aged Americans, each perpetrated by individuals abusing their presumption arsenic students,” Mr. Lyons said.
“Our federation volition not tolerate information threats originating from the overseas pupil programme,” Mr. Lyons said.
Mr. Lyons and different officials outlined however national investigators conducted tract visits, identifying, among different things, cases wherever OPT beneficiaries were being “managed” by employees based successful India, successful usurpation of a proviso of the programme requiring U.S. grooming and direction.
Mr. Lyons said the OPT programme, which was unveiled during the George W. Bush administration, had anticipated lone a fewer 1000 beneficiaries to person grooming earlier returning home.
“Instead, OPT ballooned into an uncontrolled impermanent idiosyncratic pipeline with hundreds of thousands of overseas students moving successful the United States. As the programme's size has exploded, truthful has the fraud,” helium said.
Mr. Lyons dubbed the OPT fraud a blatant onslaught connected the goodwill of the American people, who generously let overseas nationals entree to their acquisition system.
