ICE Uncovers 10,000 Foreign Students Tied to Suspect Employers in OPT Fraud Probe

Acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons announced that federal investigators uncovered more than 10,000 foreign students connected to suspect employers in a fraud scheme targeting the federal STEM Optional Practical Training extension program.

Lyons made the announcement during a news conference on Tuesday. He described the cases found so far as just the tip of the iceberg.

The OPT program allows international students on F-1 visas to work temporarily in the United States in jobs related to their field of study. Lyons said the Department of Homeland Security expected only a few thousand foreign students to receive training approval before returning home when the program started under the Bush administration and expanded under the Obama administration.

Instead, Lyons said, OPT ballooned into an uncontrolled guest worker pipeline with hundreds of thousands of foreign students working in the United States. He added that fraud grew as the program expanded.

Today we are announcing 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, Lyons said. This is only the tip of the iceberg. We’ve dramatically expanded our oversight of OPT and can report that we found fraud nationwide.

Homeland Security Investigations officers visited problematic OPT worksite employers in Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina and Florida, Lyons said. Many of the suspicious employers are nongovernmental organizations.

Investigators discovered empty buildings and locked doors at addresses where hundreds of foreign students are allegedly employed, he said. They also found hundreds of foreign students listed as working out of residential addresses.

In many places, multiple OPT employers claim to operate from the same address, but none actually lease the facility, Lyons continued. When someone does open the door, their statements are inconsistent, or they claim no knowledge of the business.

The ICE director said investigators uncovered phantom employees, foreign students who obtained work authorization through OPT but never actually showed up for work at the sites they claimed.

This is not accidental, Lyons said. This is deliberate, coordinated and criminal. He added that this fraud is not victimless, calling it a blatant attack on the goodwill of the American people.

Vice President JD Vance, whom President Donald Trump appointed fraud czar, celebrated the discovery in an X post as another great win for our fraud task force. Vance wrote that the administration will not tolerate foreign nationals abusing our visa system at the expense of the American people.