The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Migrants seeking U.S. sponsors find questionable offers online
Pedro Yudel Bruzon was looking for someone in the U.S. to support his effort to seek asylum when he landed on a Facebook page filled with posts demanding up to $10,000 for a financial sponsor.
It’s part of an underground market that’s emerged since the Biden administration announced it would accept 30,000 immigrants each month arriving by air from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti. Applicants for the humanitarian parole program need someone in the U.S., often a friend or relative, to promise to provide financial support for at least two years.
Bruzon, who lives in Cuba, doesn’t know anyone who can do that, so he searched online. But he also doesn’t have the money to pay for a sponsor and isn’t sure the offers — or those making them — are real. He worries about being exploited or falling prey to a scam.
“They call it humanitarian parole, but it has nothing to do with being humanitarian,” said Bruzon, who said he struggles to feed himself and his mother with what he makes as a 33-year-old Havana security guard. “Everyone wants money, even people in the same family.”
It’s unclear how many people in the United States may have charged migrants to sponsor them, but Facebook
groups with names like “Sponsors U.S.” carry dozens of posts offering and seeking financial supporters.
Several immigration attorneys said they could find no specific law prohibiting people from charging money to sponsor beneficiaries.
“As long as everything is accurate on the form and there are no fraudulent statements it may be legal,” said lawyer Taylor Levy, who long worked along the border around El Paso,
Texas. “But what worries me are the risks in terms of being trafficked and exploited. If lying is involved, it could be fraud.”
Attorney Leon Fresco, a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, said charging to be a sponsor is a “gray area” and the U.S. should send a forceful message against the practice.
Kennji Kizuka, an attorney and director of asylum policy for the International Rescue Committee, which resettles newcomers in the United States, said this type of thing happens with every new U.S. program benefitting migrants.
“It looks like some are just going to take people’s money and the people are going to get nothing in return,” Kizuka said.
Levy said such exploitation surrounding a similar U.S. program for Ukrainians prompted the government to publish an online guide about how to spot and protect against human-trafficking schemes.
One common scheme is known as notario fraud and involves people who call themselves “notarios públicos” charging large sums. In Latin America, the term refers to attorneys with special credentials, leading lead migrants to believe they are lawyers who can provide legal advice. In the U.S., notaries public are merely empowered to witness the signing of legal documents and issue oaths.
In another scheme, someone poses as a U.S. official asking for money. The U.S. government notes: “We do not accept Western Union, MoneyGram, PayPal, or gift cards as payment for immigration fees.”
The Department of Homeland Security says 1,700 humanitarian parole applications were accepted as of Jan. 25 from Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans, plus an undisclosed number of Venezuelans. A lawsuit seeks to stop the program, which could allow 360,000 people a year to enter the U.S. legally.