Daily TribuneThe USCIS chief warned: ‘In terms of the people that are perpetrating fraud, stop, because we are going to find you. And even if you’ve already (committed fraud), and you think you’ve gotten away with it, we’re going back.’
A glass is either half-full or half-empty. In today’s environment, however, a US green card holder is hard-pressed to view, with a Pollyannaish mindset, a recent immigration development as a half-filled tumbler instead of a half-empty beaker.
Recently, the Director of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) revealed during a national TV interview that the Trump administration is ramping up its reinvestigation of suspected fraud cases — including green card approvals — processed during the Biden administration.
Issuing a pointed warning, the USCIS chief said: “In terms of the people that are perpetrating fraud, stop, because we are going to find you. And even if you’ve already (committed fraud), and you think you’ve gotten away with it, we’re going back.”
Doubling down via the X platform (formerly Twitter), the official further warned, thus: “At USCIS, we’ve declared a full-scale war on immigration fraud. We’re going back and revetting (sic) cases of people who were granted green cards and other benefits during the Biden administration — when the vetting was lax. There’s rigorous vetting now and we’re reopening these old cases.”
It was further revealed that the Trump administration had uncovered fraud in more than half of the cases referred to and pursued by USCIS investigators.
Since early 2025, according to USCIS records, approximately 33,000 fraud referrals were made to the agency’s Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate, which was a 138-percent increase vis-à-vis the average yearly referrals during the previous administration.
Of this total, 21,000 cases were fully investigated, resulting in a finding of fraud in about 65 percent of the cases. Moreover, over 7,000 site visits were conducted and more than 26,000 social media checks were initiated to ferret out fraud and national security and public safety concerns.
However, based on previous official announcements and policy actions of the Trump administration, the focus seems to be geared more towards specific types of cases and certain groups of immigrants rather than the immigrant population as a whole.
Among those facing potential re-vetting and revocation are green card holders and political asylees from so-called “countries of concern” such as Afghanistan, Burundi, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, and Yemen.
Understandably, every US green card holder, including those originating from the Philippines, has reason to be anxious given the current administration’s unrelenting campaign against both legal and illegal immigration that leaves even naturalized US citizens vulnerable.
However, based on the tenor of the USCIS Director’s pronouncements and for practical considerations, including manpower limitations, it is generally anticipated that the impact will be limited to certain types of cases such as family-based green cards resulting from the Biden-era humanitarian parole and family reunification programs, marriage-based cases approved sans interview during the pandemic period, cases approved without undergoing strict vetting under the public charge criteria, as well as asylum-based green cards issued to people from “countries of concern.”
Of course, it is always possible that more cases will be investigated in the ongoing re-vetting campaign. However, for the sake of their own mental health, US green card holders, especially those whose cases were processed long before the Biden era, should watch things unfold through a half-filled glass of optimism rather than a half-empty goblet of despair.
