The federal government has unleashed a new stunner: There is “uncontrolled” fraud in a special program set up to help student workers.
Todd Lyons, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said investigators have documented more than 10,000 foreign students that have been linked to “suspect employers” who are part of the federal STEM Optical Practical Training extension program.
And that’s just the “tip of the iceberg,” he confirmed at a news conference.
The program is an immigration plan that allows international students on F-1 visas to work temporarily in the U.S. in jobs related to their field of study.
Created under the George W. Bush administration and expanded by Barack Obama, the expectation was that there would be few thousand foreign students who would get training, then later return home.
What happened, though, was that the program exploded “into an uncontrolled guest worker pipeline” involving “hundreds of thousands of foreign students.”
📺WATCH: New ICE HSI data shows rampant foreign student fraud — ICE director says these probes are only the beginning.
➡️We’ve identified over 10,000 foreign students who claim to be working for highly-suspect employers.
➡️We’ve discovered empty buildings and locked doors at… pic.twitter.com/RS51VLKM1V
— U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (@ICEgov) May 12, 2026
Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons announced that his agency had identified 10,000+ cases of fraud in the OPT Visa program so far.
This is not a “student program.” It is a backdoor foreign labor pipeline that has been abused for decades while American graduates, American workers,… pic.twitter.com/lTSFeiLeMa
— Mark Lynch for U.S. Senate (@MarkLynchSC) May 13, 2026
“Problematic” worksites were found in Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, Texas and other places.
A report from Fox News said Lyons described how as the program exploded in size, “So has the fraud.”
He confirmed the identification of “over 10,000 foreign students who claim to be working for highly suspect employers, and that’s just among the top 25 OPT employers. This is only the tip of the iceberg.”
Lyons revealed investigators found “phantom employees” as well as “empty buildings and locked doors at addresses where hundreds of foreign students are allegedly employed.”
Hundreds more foreign students were working from residential addresses, he said.
Sites investigated also were in New York, New Jersey, North Carolina and Florida.
Lyons confirmed, “In many places multiple OPT employers claim to operate from the same address, but none actually lease the facility.”
He said at locations investigators visited, sometimes there would be someone there to open the door, but “they claim no knowledge of the business.
“This is deliberate, coordinated and criminal,” he warned.
Vice President JD Vance, President Donald Trump’s “fraud czar,” said the White House “will not tolerate foreign nationals abusing our visa system at the expense of the American people.”
