If you do nothing else this weekend, PLEASE  go over and check out the CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES website. This organization does some amazing work to shine a light on illegal immigration and the poorly managed visa program. Here’s just one of so many stories of fraud and corruption that puts all Americans at risk:

Syrians and Palestinians managed to buy illegal citizenship documents from Honduras then tried to use them to enter the U.S., a Honduran newspaper reported over the weekend, exposing a scheme that analysts say could post a danger to the U.S. visa system.

La Prensa uncovered a criminal network that paid Honduran officials to illegally register foreigners as legal residents, which gave them access to documents that could then be used to gain broader access to the western hemisphere.

The La Prensa report was highlighted Friday by the Center for Immigration Studies, which said the network appeared to be a favorite for those of Arab origin — particularly Syrians and Palestinians — who were looking for a way to enter the U.S.

The criminal network managed to get names registered in Honduras’s national registration of persons (RNP). That meant they could obtain passports and official birth certificates, on RNP paper and stamped by the agency director, that they could then take to the U.S. embassy to try to earn a visitor’s visa, the report said.

The pattern of operation, as laid out by La Prensa, is as follows:

Contact: The foreigner contacted the smuggler who transacted the Honduran identity card that would allow [the foreigner] to go to the US Embassy to apply for an entry visit to the United States, and [the smuggler] would contact a RNP official to get the identity.

Alteration: The RNP official managed with his contact in the municipal registry of Siguatepeque to alter the data of a living or deceased person, whose family had not submitted the death certificate so that their ID number would be assigned.

Changes: The employee used his access key to the system and opened the database, taking the profile of the person or another that had never gotten an ID; they changed the name and printed the birth certificate with the number of the identity.

Process: With the illicit certificate in hand, the client or the smuggler went to another municipal registry, in this case Comayagua, and there processed his ID. Then [he] went to the Honduran embassies or Migración to apply for a Honduran passport.

Read more: WT

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