Immigration Reform 2016: Were Green Cards Sent To Wrong People? Security Risk Reported In Application Process

Although the Department of Homeland Security has moved the immigrant application process online in recent years, the department’s inspector general said in a report released Tuesday that the system hasn’t been fully modernized, leading to immigration documents like green cards possibly being sent to the wrong people, ABC News Radio reported. The immigration application processing may have led to a security risk, Inspector General John Roth said, even though the moving of the process online was a safeguard to make sure terrorists couldn’t get immigration benefits.

Roth said some documents have been mailed to wrong addresses and previous addresses, and some have been printed with incorrect names. This may have led to these documents, which can’t be accounted for, falling into the wrong hands.

“Unauthorized individuals ... might sell or use them fraudulently for profit,” Roth said in his reported. He also said that only two immigration services can be applied for online, even though the services — applications for replacing permanent resident documentation and the ability process fees for immigration visa packets — make up only 10 percent of what the agency offers.

“With ISIS and other terrorist groups active around the world and committed to attacks on our country, our national security depends on our systems for screening visa and immigration applications working effectively,” Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., reportedly said of Roth’s findings.

Authorities in the U.S. have made arrests of people with ties to ISIS. While some lawmakers have expressed concerns that ISIS — also known as the Islamic State group — was present in Mexico and that some ISIS fighters have crossed the border into the United States, many who have made these claims haven’t provided much in the way of evidence.

“The suggestion that individuals who have ties to ISIL have been apprehended at the southwest border is categorically false and not supported by any credible intelligence or the facts on the ground,” the U.S. State Department said, referring to ISIS by another acronym.