How to report immigration fraud: A comprehensive guide
Introduction
Reporting immigration fraud is a serious matter with potentially life-changing consequences for the perpetrator. An effective fraud report can result in the perpetrator facing criminal charges, deportation, and/or fines. If the perpetrator is the recipient of immigration benefits, your report has the potential to destroy their opportunity to live and work in the United States forever.
When deciding whether to report immigration fraud, beware that you can face consequences for improperly filing a fraud report. For example, reporting parties have been known to unwittingly report information that incriminates themselves in fraudulent activity.
In other cases, a haphazard or sloppy fraud report can lead investigators to conclude that you’ve made inconsistent and/or contradictory statements. At best, this undermines the credibility of your report. At worst, investigators may scrutinize your role in the alleged fraud. After all, knowingly filing a false fraud report is, itself, a federal crime.
For these reasons and others, consider seeking the advice and assistance of a competent immigration attorney before sending your report to the federal government.
Step 1 – Identify your goal
Your first step in reporting immigration fraud is to clearly identify your goal. In other words, what is the outcome you want to achieve as a result of your fraud report?
Common goals may include:
Preventing the adjudication of fraudulent immigration benefits
Deporting a foreign national to protect the citizenry
Securing a criminal conviction to hold the perpetrator accountable
Protecting taxpayer and government resources
Preserving the integrity of the immigration system
Reforming laws to make immigration fraud more difficult
This seemingly simple step will determine the entire course of your fraud report – from what to prepare, how to prepare it, and who to share it with.
Step 2 – Understand the law
Your second step is to ensure that you research and understand the law as it relates to the type of immigration fraud at issue in your case.
The term “immigration fraud” is not defined in federal statutes or regulations. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) defines immigration fraud as encompassing two categories of fraud, including document fraud and benefit fraud. Immigration Customs and Enforcement uses a similar framework, occasionally substituting “identity fraud” for “document fraud”.
Since Congress has never addressed immigration fraud in comprehensive manner, the term “immigration fraud” is colloquially used by subject matter experts to refer to a mish-mash of statutory provisions spread across multiple titles of the U.S. Code. Here is a brief selection of the statutory provisions commonly considered different types of immigration fraud:
Title 8 – Aliens and Nationality
Fraudulent statements for alien registration – 8 U.S.C. § 1306(c)
Document fraud – 8 U.S.C. § 1324c
Willful misrepresentation – 8 U.S.C. § 1325(a)
Marriage fraud – 8 U.S.C. § 1325(c)
Entrepreneurship fraud – 8 U.S.C. § 1325(d)
Title 18 – Crimes and Criminal Procedure
Aiding and abetting immigration fraud – 18 U.S.C. § 2
Conspiracy to commit immigration fraud – 18 U.S.C. § 371
False claims to citizenship – 18 U.S.C. § 911
False statements, generally – 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)
False documents – 18 U.S.C. § 1002
False statements – 18 U.S.C. § 1015
Identity fraud – 18 U.S.C. § 1028
False statements, passports – 18 U.S.C. § 1542
Identity fraud – 18 U.S.C. § 1546
Document fraud – 18 U.S.C. § 1546(b)
Title 42 – The Public Health and Welfare
Social security document fraud - 42 U.S.C. § 408(a)(8)
Understanding these statutes, and their derivative regulations, is important not only to keep you out of trouble, but also for practical reasons. Most importantly, these laws determine the “elements of proof”, i.e., what facts are needed to prove fraud. These elements will, in turn, determine what type of evidence is relevant and important for you to collect.
Knowing the law will also help you determine the “standard of proof”, i.e., how much evidence is required to prove fraud, as well as the “burden of proof”, i.e., who has the duty to advance the evidence and under what specific circumstances.
Immigration law is one of the most complex bodies of law in the U.S. Code. The statutes are often confusing, ambiguous, and incomplete. This makes it difficult for lay persons and even the most experienced immigration attorneys to fully understand this body of the law without ongoing research. One seemingly minor fact can make or break a fraud case.
Conducting legal research, itself, can be challenging. Federal statutes and regulations will only take you so far. You also need to understand formal agency policies, informal agency practices, interagency memoranda, binding and non-binding precedent from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Administrative Appeals Office (AAO), the Board of Immigration Appeals, as well as various federal appeals courts which review final agency decisions.
Do yourself a favor, and find a competent immigration attorney who can help you understand the law as it applies in specific cases.
Step 3 – Collect your evidence
Your third step is to collect relevant evidence to prove each element of immigration fraud. When it comes to immigration fraud, mere allegations of fraud are not enough. You need to prove it. Evidence is the means by which you prove it. The more evidence you collect, the more likely you are to achieve your goal.
In general, evidence can take a variety of forms, including, but not limited to:
Documents (immigration filings, emails, messaging apps, DMs, etc.)
Testimony (affidavits, statements, etc.)
Photographs
Video
Audio
The type of evidence you need to collect will depend upon the facts in your particular case, and the nature of the fraud at issue. For example, let’s assume you want to report a foreign national for misrepresenting prior unauthorized employment on a I-485 adjustment of status application. In this scenario, relevant evidence might include a recording of the foreign national admitting to working without authorization, or a statement made by a prior coworker attesting to the prior unauthorized employment.
Keep in mind that, in the immigration context, the evidence you collect is not bound by restrictions set forth in the Federal Rules of Evidence. In other words, you can submit any credible evidence, including hearsay evidence.
To improve your chances that the government will take action based on your report, make sure the evidence you collect is relevant to the elements of proof. Technically, evidence is relevant if it tends to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence, and the fact is of consequence in determining the fraud.
For purposes of generating government action in response to your fraud report, you should also consider evidence relevant if it makes it more likely than not that the government will actually open an investigation as a result of your report. This is often half the battle.
You’re not legally required to submit any evidence as part of your fraud report. You may submit reports that contain mere suspicions of fraud. However, for reasons described below, these types of reports are unlikely to result in any meaningful action.
If you don’t currently have evidence of fraud, an experienced immigration attorney can assist you in conducting a professional investigation to uncover and collect additional evidence of fraud.
Step 4 – Organize your evidence
Your fourth step is to logically organize your evidence to enable your attorney and/or a federal investigator to easily identify, understand, and navigate the evidence you’ve collected.
Organizing your evidence involves saving files in accessible file formats, naming files, and creating folders on your local hard drive. While there are many ways of organizing evidence, choose a single organizing convention or principle and stick with it. Consider the following approach:
File formats: Use file formats that are easily accessible and compatible for most users. When it comes time to share your file with either your attorney or federal investigators, this ensures a seamless handoff. Examples of common file formats include:
Documents: doc, pdf, txt
Spreadsheets: csv, xls
Audio: mp3, wav
Video: mp4, mov
File naming: Choose a consistent approach for naming your files to make it easy for anyone to understand the date, topic, and description of a file by merely looking at the filename. Including the date at the beginning of the filename also makes it easy to sort files within folders in chronological order.
Convention: [yymmdd]-[topic]-[description].[extension]
Example: 221201-immigration-form-i485.pdf
Folder naming: Folders are typically best organized by topic. For example, consider creating a top-level folder named “Evidence”. Inside this top-level folder, create subfolders organized by subtopics. These subtopics will depend upon the evidence you’ve collected. Common subtopics often include “Immigration”, “Communications”, “Financials”, etc.
Shareable drive: If you have retained an attorney to assist you, you’ll also need a way to share your evidence with your attorney. Consider uploading the entire contents of your “Evidence” folder to a private cloud-based service like Google Drive or Dropbox, and then simply share the link. Importantly, make sure the privacy setting for your folder is limited to you and your attorney! Depending on the size of your file folders, as well as the sending limits of your email provider, you may also convert your “Evidence” folder into a Zip file and email it directly to your attorney.
Step 5 – Prepare your report
The fifth step is to prepare an effective fraud report for dissemination to appropriate federal officials. This is your opportunity to make a first impression and trigger appropriate federal action.
Before you begin, let’s distinguish between preparing a fraud report and preparing an effective fraud report. The reality is that the federal government receives thousands of fraud reports each year. The vast majority of these reports resulted in no action. For example, between 2016 and 2021, USCIS received 67,640 reports through their public tipline. Only 3,840 of them – or 5 percent – resulted in USCIS actually opening an investigation.
In some cases, certain government agencies may not take action for reasons outside of your control, such as internal policies and/or resourcing decisions related to the fact pattern of your case. However, in the vast majority of cases, the reason a fraud report dies is because the report itself is defective in some fundamental way.
To illustrate this, let’s consider the fraud unit inside USCIS. When the fraud unit receives a report, they generally consider three questions when evaluating whether to conduct further investigation:
Articulable: Is the report supported by sufficient evidence?
Actionable: Is the report within our scope of responsibility?
Determinable: Can the suspected fraud be determined through further investigation?
If your report fails to answer any of these questions in the affirmative, your report will likely die on the starting line. According to the fraud unit, the majority of reports they receive simply do “not contain actionable information.” As a result, these reports routinely get closed immediately. This is completely unnecessary and an unforced error by reporting parties.
When you prepare your fraud report, make sure it is not only articulable, actionable, and determinable, but also persuasive. Tell a story. Make the government want to learn more about your case. Here is an example of how to construct an effective fraud report:
Summary: Tell your story in a short and persuasive way. Draft a beginning, middle, and an end. Give the government a reason to take interest in your case. Explain why your case is important, why the government should care, and how they can proceed.
Parties: Include background information about relevant parties and witnesses. Make sure to include contact information (phone, email, social media), as well as any alien numbers so federal investigators can easily research relevant parties and contact them for additional information.
Evidence: Include a list of relevant evidence, organized by topic and/or chronology that makes the job of an investigator as easy as possible and allows them to corroborate your story. This also helps to build credibility, and distinguish your report from all the rest.
Timeline: Include a chronological timeline of events, with citations to relevant evidence. Ideally, every fact included in your timeline should be sourced and cited to a particular piece of evidence. If there is no document to cite to, add one or more witness affidavits that contain the relevant statements of fact and cite to the relevant paragraph(s) within those affidavits.
Analysis: Include legal analysis that applies the law to the facts and evidence in your case. In essence, give the government an open-and-shut fraud case on a silver platter. Then step back and let them take credit, while you achieve the goal(s) you set out to accomplish.
Exhibits: Include relevant evidence as exhibits to the end of your fraud report. With exhibits included, it is not uncommon for fraud reports to run over 100 pages or more.
If writing is not your strong suit, or if you simply do not have the time to invest, find a competent immigration attorney to help you prepare your report.
Step 6 – Share your report
The sixth and final step in reporting immigration fraud is to determine which government agency to contact. This is not always as easy as it ought to be. In most cases, your goal will tend to determine the appropriate recipients of your fraud report.
A. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
If your goal is to prevent the adjudication of fraudulent immigration benefits, USCIS is frequently the best agency to contact.
In 2002, in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Congress passed the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to establish the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Within DHS, Congress created a “Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration” which assumed the adjudicatory functions of the legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service. In 2004, the agency was renamed the “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.” Today, USCIS is the agency primarily responsible for adjudicating immigration benefits.
You may submit a fraud report to USCIS in three primary ways:
1. USCIS Online Tip Form
You can submit a fraud report to USCIS through their online Tip Form at https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud/uscis-tip-form.
The USCIS Tip Form will ask you for data pertaining to, among other things, your contact information (anonymous tips are allowed), the type of fraud or abuse, the perpetrator’s information, and a summary of the fraud or abuse (4,000 characters or less). The form currently does not allow evidentiary uploads, a testament to the dysfunction of the USCIS.
The Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) manages these online tips. FDNS is the office within USCIS that detects, deters, and administratively investigates immigration-related fraud. FDNS currently tracks online tips through the “FDNS – Data System” (FDNS-DS) (this system is scheduled to be replaced with a new system in 2023).
FDNS staff refer tips that warrant further investigation to the relevant FDNS office. The FDNS office then makes a decision on whether to open a fraud case. If a fraud case is opened, FDNS will investigate the fraud and communicate their findings to adjudicators in a written memo with a determination of “fraud found” or “fraud not found”. Although FDNS does not conduct criminal investigations themselves, they do refer cases to law enforcement.
2. USCIS/FDNS Mailbox
In some cases, sending a fraud report to FDNS by snail mail can be a good option for submitting long-form fraud reports and/or physical evidence that cannot be submitted through the online tip form due to unfortunate technical limitations of USCIS. This is a lesser known option that is not well advertised by USCIS. You can do this by sending certified mail to the FDNS mailbox located at:
USCIS FDNS / Attn: Fraud Division
111 Mass Ave NW, Suite 7002
Mailstop 2280
Washington, DC 20529
The downside to this approach is that it involves a manual intake process by FDNS. There is a risk that your correspondence may get lost in-transit. You can mitigate this risk by sending correspondence using certified mail with tracking to ensure delivery. Even if delivered, there is a possibility that your correspondence may be misplaced or overlooked inside FDNS. If this happens, unfortunately, you will have no way to know. Remember, USCIS is a bureaucracy with one-way communication when it comes to U.S. citizens.
3. USCIS Adjudicators
If the alleged fraud relates to a pending immigration benefit, and if you have a copy of the receipt number provided by USCIS via Form I-797C (Notice of Action), you can mail correspondence to the “USCIS Office Address” located at the bottom of the Form I-797C. This is typically the USCIS office that is currently adjudicating the benefit, such as the National Benefits Center, a local field office, or a regional service center.
When you send correspondence to USCIS, it is advisable to prominently display the following information in a cover letter to help USCIS staff properly route your correspondence:
Alien Name
Alien Number (identification number for foreign nationals)
Receipt Number for the active application or petition
The benefit of this approach is that your correspondence goes straight to USCIS adjudicators who are actively reviewing the benefit being sought, bypassing initial screening by FDNS staff that may otherwise cause delays and/or other roadblocks.
B. U.S. State Department
If your goal is to prevent the adjudication of fraudulent immigration benefits, and if the benefits were processed by a consulate abroad or if the fraud involves passports, you may also want to contact the U.S. State Department.
Aside from diplomatic responsibilities in U.S. foreign policy, the State Department also plays a prominent role in certain immigration matters through the Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA). Not only does CA issue passports and conduct visa interviews abroad, they operate the National Visa Center which helps prepare immigrant visa applications for consular officers to review and adjudicate.
You may submit a fraud report to the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security by sending an email to PassportVisaFraud@state.gov.
C. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
If your goal is to initiate a criminal investigation into the alleged fraud or to trigger deportation proceedings, you should consider reporting your fraud not only to USCIS, but also to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
When Congress created DHS, it created a “Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement” which assumed the law enforcement functions of the legacy INS. In 2007, the agency was renamed “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” Today, ICE is responsible for enforcing U.S. immigration laws.
Within ICE, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) is the office that conducts criminal investigations into immigration fraud. You may submit a fraud report to ICE/HSI in three primary ways.
1. ICE Online Tip Form
You can submit a fraud report to ICE/HSI through their online Tip Form at: https://www.ice.gov/webform/ice-tip-form.
The ICE Tip Form will ask you for data pertaining to, among other things, your contact information (anonymous tips are allowed), the suspected crime, the location of the criminal activity, the perpetrator’s information, and a summary of the criminal activity (1,000 characters or less). Like the USCIS form, the Ice Tip Form currently does not allow evidentiary uploads.
The HSI Office of Intelligence manages these online tips. HSI Tip Line analysts refer tips that warrant further investigation to the relevant ICE/HSI field office. The HSI field office then determines how to proceed with the tip.
2. ICE Phone Tip Line
You can also submit a fraud report to ICE by calling their 24/7 toll free Tip Line at 866-DHS-2-ICE (866-347-2423). HSI Office of Intelligence also manages the phone Tip Line.
When you call the Tip Line, you will be presented with general information about HSI, including the fact that your call will be recorded, that you can submit tips anonymously, and that if you choose to provide your contact information it may be disclosed as part of a future administrative proceeding or criminal trial.
You will eventually be asked to select the subject matter of your call. ICE provides two options as it relates to immigration fraud – a specific category for immigration marriage fraud, and a second category for more general incidents of document and benefit fraud.
Notably, if you select the immigration marriage fraud option, you will be asked to specify whether you are calling to report a single incident of marriage fraud, or whether you are calling to report individuals or groups that are arranging fraudulent marriages. For single incidents of marriage fraud, ICE will direct you to contact USCIS/FDNS, indicative of the low priority that ICE places on individual cases of immigration marriage fraud, absent noteworthy fact patterns or opportunity for deterrence.
3. ICE/HSI Field Office
You can also contact your local HSI field office directly by phone or mail.
HSI is a massive agency with over 10,400 employees, including 6,800 special agents. Most of these special agents are assigned to one of 30 Special Agent in Charge (SAC) offices in the United States. SACs are the highest ranking criminal investigators within particular regions.
You can find the HSI office near you at https://www.ice.gov/contact/field-offices (use the filter to narrow by state and office type).
D. U.S. Department of Justice
If your goal is to secure a criminal prosecution, you should consider reporting your fraud not only to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, but also to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ is the department responsible for not only criminal prosecutions of immigration fraud, but also for enforcing immigration laws in the United States.
1. U.S. Attorneys
To trigger prosecutorial interest in your case, particularly if there is a larger public interest at stake, you may want to consider reporting immigration fraud to a U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) near you.
The U.S. Attorney General is the nation’s chief law enforcement officer for the federal government and leads the DOJ. The Attorney General delegates prosecutorial authority to U.S. Attorneys within DOJ to prosecute federal crimes, including immigration fraud. U.S. Attorneys are assigned to one of 94 federal judicial districts across the United States. The day-to-day work inside USAOs is carried out by Assistant U.S. Attorneys – commonly called “AUSAs”.
USAOs can request federal agencies to investigate violations of federal law, including immigration fraud. USAOs may also request the assistance of the DOJ Criminal Division, which enforces federal criminal laws. Ultimately, USAOs will decide whether to pursue criminal prosecution of a foreign national for immigration fraud.
You can find a USAO near you at https://www.justice.gov/usao/find-your-united-states-attorney.
2. Executive Office for Immigration Review
To report immigration fraud involving immigration court proceedings, you may also consider reporting immigration fraud to the Fraud and Abuse Prevention Program operated by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).
EOIR is an office within the DOJ, established in 1983, that conducts immigration court proceedings under the leadership of a Chief Immigration Judge who leads 600 immigration judges in 68 immigration courts and three adjudication centers across the United States.
EOIR considers appeals from immigration courts and certain decisions made by DHS through the Board of Immigration Appeals, consisting of 23 Appellate Immigration Judges, including a Chief Appellate Immigration Judge. EOIR also adjudicates certain types of cases mandated by statute through administrative law judges operating under the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer.
By regulation, EOIR’s General Counsel is required to designate an anti-fraud officer to, among other things, serve as a point of contact relating to concerns about possible fraud upon EOIR, and to coordinate with federal investigative agencies. Although EOIR’s Fraud and Abuse Prevention Program website claims to be “a centralized place to make complaints about issues of fraud”, their scope is limited to matters before the EOIR. In fact, their website instructs the public to contact USCIS with complaints about suspected immigration benefit fraud and abuse related specifically to applications and petitions before USCIS.
Therefore, reporting fraud to EOIR is unlikely to be useful for most U.S. citizens unless and until the perpetrator comes before the immigration courts. If this occurs, you can file a fraud report with EOIR in three ways:
Phone: Call 1-877-388-3840
Email: Send an email to EOIR.Fraud.Program@usdoj.gov
Form EOIR-44: If the fraud relates to an attorney or accredited representative, download and submit Form EOIR-44, following the instructions set forth in the form.
E. U.S. Congress
If your goal is to change the law to make immigration fraud more difficult, you should contact your federal representatives in the legislative branch, as well as congressional committee staff with jurisdiction over immigration law.
Remember, the U.S. Congress is responsible for the rampant immigration fraud that is occurring in the United States. They write the laws and punt responsibility to executive agencies. If you want to direct your displeasure anywhere, consider inundating Congress with your complaints.
However, if your goal is to do more than complain by getting new legislation passed, you will need to play a leadership role. It will be a marathon, not a sprint. Ideally, you should prepare a legislative pitch deck that outlines the problem you’re trying to solve, provides evidence that the problem exists, and proposes a legislative solution to fix the problem.
As you go through this process, you want to build allies with legislative staffers inside Congress. Your initial goal should be to secure a call or meeting with lead staffers responsible for immigration law inside these offices. Building rapport and credibility with these staffers will be key to any legislative victories. These staffers are located in the following offices:
U.S. Representatives: There are 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, elected every two years, who serve the interests of districts within each state. The number of districts are determined based on population. You can find your representative here: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
U.S. Senators: There are 100 members of the U.S. Senate, elected every 6 years in staggered terms, who serve the interests of states. Each state is represented by two senators. You can find your senators here (select your state): https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
U.S. House Judiciary Committee: Within the U.S. House of Representatives, the Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over immigration law. The committee consists of a Republican Party staff and a Democratic Party staff. You can contact the House Judiciary Committee here: https://judiciary.house.gov
U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee: Within the U.S. Senate, the Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over immigration law. The committee consists of a Republican Party staff and a Democratic Party staff. You can contact the Senate Judiciary Committee here: https://judiciary.senate.gov
Eventually, you will need to build a coalition of support with likeminded people and other stakeholders. Through these conversations, you will continue to refine your pitch deck and legislative solutions.
As your pitch deck stabilizes, consider contacting traditional and alternative media outlets, YouTubers, Substackers, and others who have audiences that are interested in your ideas. This can help build awareness and credibility for your cause.
Conclusion
If you are serious about stopping immigration fraud, do yourself a favor and invest the time, money, and effort into preparing an effective fraud report. You’ll increase your chances of success, and help expose the nefarious schemes that so many foreign nationals perpetrate on the U.S. citizenry. Make sure to keep a record of your fraud report. It may come in handy at a later date.