Free Republic

Congress has created several programs to allow illegal border crossers claiming to be minors to remain in the U.S. Despite years of documented abuse of the programs, Congress continues to fund them to the tune of billions of dollars. One is the failed unaccompanied minor program, with decades of documented reports of abuse and neglect of children ... Another is the Special Immigrant Juvenile Petition (SIJP) program that allows illegal foreign national minors already involved in the juvenile court system to remain in the U.S. and obtain a pathway to citizenship. For decades, the SIJP has been exploited by criminal...

A recent U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) report highlighted critical national security failures in its Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) program that allowed approximately 800 known or suspected gang members to enter the United States.The report, titled “Criminality, Gangs, and Program Integrity Issues in Special Immigrant Juvenile Petitions,” examined more than 300,000 SIJ petitions submitted from fiscal year 2013 through February 2025, according to a USCIS press release on Thursday.The report found that 198,414 SIJ petitions were approved between fiscal year 2020 and 2024, and that half of SIJ petitioners in 2024 were over the age of 18 when they...

A defense contractor and top campaign contributor to House Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY) is in the running to get a contract to print millions of IDs and other government documents associated with the president’s planned executive amnesty, Breitbart News has learned exclusively. The contractor, General Dynamics, is on the list of “interested vendors” for a draft solicitation that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), sent out to vendors in October. If the president goes through with an executive amnesty for millions of illegal aliens and General Dynamics gets...

Certain F-1 students who receive science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees may apply for a 24-month extension of their post-completion optional practical training (OPT). If you are an employer who wants to provide a practical training opportunity to a STEM OPT student during their extension, you must: Be enrolled in E-Verify, as evidenced by either a valid E-Verify company identification number or, if the employer is using an employer agent to create its E-Verify cases, a valid E-Verify client company identification number. Remain a participant in good standing with E-Verify, as determined by USCIS. Have a valid Employer Identification...

In the final weeks of President Joe Biden’s administration, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is announcing a jobs giveaway for newly arrived migrants with work permits. On Tuesday, Mayorkas announced a final rule from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that will allow millions of migrants, many of whom have been released into the U.S. interior by the Biden administration, to keep their work permits for up to 540 days when they seek a renewal. Migrants previously could renew their work permits for 180 days. For years, Democratic mayors had lobbied DHS to extend such...

A CIA Officer/former FBI official is on an undercover video boasting about using the might of the federal government to ‘jail anyone’ by ‘setting them up.’ Gavin O’Blennis, a Contracting Officer for the CIA told an undercover journalist with Sound Investigations that the FBI “can put anyone in jail…set ’em up!” “We call it a nudge,” O’Blennis said, adding the FBI can put “problematic” right-wing journalists like Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones in jail. O’Blennis said of Infowars founder Alex Jones: The FBI “took his money away,” and ‘chopped his legs off.’ Gavin O’Blennis said at least 20 undercover FBI...

We have revised Form N-400, Application for Naturalization, to provide a third gender option, “X,” defined as “Another Gender Identity.” We are also updating guidance in the USCIS Policy Manual accordingly to account for this form revision and other forthcoming form revisions that will add a third gender option; see the Policy Alert (PDF, 344.77 KB). The 04/01/24 edition of Form N-400 will be the first USCIS form to include the X gender option. Applicants filing this edition of Form N-400 on or after April 1, 2024, will have X immediately available as a gender option on their form. Applicants...

Homeland Security’s legal immigration agency put an employee on leave Wednesday after being confronted with her history as an operative for the Palestine Liberation Organization and a more recent series of pro-Hamas social media posts. Nejwa Ali had been hired at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services as an asylum officer in 2019 and is now serving as an adjudication officer, according to her LinkedIn profile. That profile is also used to highlight her time as a public affairs officer for the PLO, an umbrella group that advocates for Palestinians and has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S....

President Joe Biden’s United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has officially reopened legal immigration to foreign nationals with a history of using American taxpayer-funded welfare benefits. In early 2020, the Trump administration finalized a federal regulation known as the “public charge” rule that made it less likely for foreign nationals to secure green cards to permanently reside in the United States if they had previously used welfare programs like food stamps, Medicaid, or taxpayer-funded housing programs. Almost immediately after taking office, Biden threw out the finalized public charge rule imposed by the Trump administration, blowing open the door for...

It's no secret that the Biden administration has failed to address the illegal immigration crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border, and at every turn has taken what seems to be the worst action available to them. Rather than addressing the border crisis, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) changed their mission statement on Wednesday to seemingly institutionalize Joe Biden's open-borders agenda by removing mention of "lawful immigration," "protecting Americans," or "securing the homeland." As of today, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has a new mission statement. Under Biden, USCIS removed mention of "lawful immigration," "protecting Americans," or "securing the homeland" and...

Judicial Watch Sues Justice Department for Records of Ashli Babbitt Killing President Trump Keynotes Judicial Watch Roundtable in Miami U.S. Gives “Immigrant-Serving Organizations” $10 Million Under Obama Program Judicial Watch Sues Justice Department for Records of Ashli Babbitt Killing January 6 has become a touchstone in the uneven application of justice aginst those who lean conservative. In particular, the obviously political secrecy and stonewalling in the police killing of Ashli Babbitt is undermining the rule of law. Undaunted by the obstacles thrown our way, we filed a FOIA lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for records related to...

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Friday released a letter that he sent to his colleagues in the Senate urging them to oppose the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, saying he “has shown a repeated disregard for the rule of law.” Cruz claims that Mayorkas, the former deputy secretary of DHS who also served as Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, committed “a long list of ethical, legal, and policy failures,” during his career, including “abuses of power that provided special government favors to benefit well-connected Democrats, such as securing an EB-5 visa...

While we were sleeping, President Trump's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the US Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) gave H-1B and other visa holders a full 240 day extension to stick around and take new jobs for US citizens. When everyone was laid off or even fired over the past month, visa workers had 60 days to find new work or leave. Visa employers and groups pushing them as cheap alternative to American workers have been asking for 180 day extensions. The Trump administration just gave them 240 days! So much for the HIRE AMERICAN in Buy American, Hire...

Nearly 80,000 immigrants approved for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which shields those who came to the country illegally as minors from deportation, have an arrest record -- including arrests for violent or sexual offenses. The data released Saturday by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) shows only arrests or apprehensions for a criminal offense or an immigration-related civil offense and does not take into account whether there was a conviction, acquittal, dismissal or a lessening of charges. The report finds that of the nearly 889,000 applicants for the DACA program, 110,000 had arrest records. Of the...

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issues policy guidance on “residence” requirements for acquiring citizenship Introduction Our latest update to the USCIS Policy Manual defines “residence” as it relates to citizenship for children of certain U.S. government employees and members of the U.S. armed forces who are employed or stationed outside the United States, to conform with the definition of residence in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). This guidance rescinds previously established USCIS policy, which stated that certain children who were living outside the United States were considered “residing in” the United States. As a result, it changes the...

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is revising the current naturalization test with improvements to ensure it continues to serve as an accurate measure of a naturalization applicant’s civics knowledge and that it reflects best practices in adult education assessments. The goal is to create a meaningful, uniform, and efficient test that will assess applicants’ knowledge and understanding of U.S. history, government and values. This spring, the former USCIS director signed the Revision of the Naturalization Civics Test Memorandum (PDF, 202 KB). This memorandum announces the revision of the naturalization test and formalizes a decennial revision schedule of the naturalization...

FULL TITLE: Watch–Ken Cuccinelli: ICE Ready to Deport Approximately 1M Illegal Aliens with Final Deportation Orders Acting United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ken Cuccinelli says the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is ready to deport about a million illegal aliens who remain in the country despite having final orders for deportation. During an interview with CBS News on Sunday, Cuccinelli said despite a delay of mass deportations by President Trump two weeks ago, ICE agents are ready to detain and deport the roughly one million illegal aliens who have been ordered deported from the country. Cuccinelli...

Sunday morning's network talking head shows yielded one eye-popping statement. "They're ready to just perform their mission, which is to go and find and detain and then deport the approximately one million people who have final removal orders," Acting USCIS Director Ken Cuccinelli said on "Face the Nation" on Sunday, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) branch charged with removal operations. Cuccinelli, an immigration hardliner who took the helm of the agency last month, said it is within ICE's discretion to determine who among those with final orders of deportation will be...

The head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is stepping down from his post next month per the request of President Trump, ... Cissna’s job was in jeopardy last month as the agency coped with a surge of migrants crossing the border and a new caravan assembling. But Republicans including Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa went to bat for Cissna, and he did not leave with former Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen.

The Trump administration has revised training guidelines for asylum officers in ways that could make it harder for migrants seeking refuge in the United States to pass an initial screening. The revisions to a lesson plan used by hundreds of asylum officers suggest the Trump administration is finding new ways to narrow who can access asylum as bolder policy proposals with that same goal have been blocked by federals courts, said former government officials and immigration experts who reviewed the internal plan that was shared with Reuters. The changes could potentially lead to more denials and deportations before migrants’ full...