U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has been the subject a series of security breaches and mistakes over the last three years. One of the most recent episodes concerns security related to green cards.
Over the past 36 months, USCIS issued at least 19,000 green cards containing incorrect information or duplicates, stated the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General’s report. Thousands of other green cards went missing.
Electronic system errors caused as many as 19,000 cards to be issued as duplicates or with incorrect information like dates of birth, names, photos, and gender, the report said.
A report on ABC news said USCIS did not issue any green cards to people who were not eligible for them. The number of cards containing errors was just a “tiny percentage” of the total amount issued every year.
The Inspector General stated:
“In the wrong hands, green cards may enable terrorists, criminals, and undocumented aliens to remain in the United States.”
Although no cards were sent to people not entitled to receive one, the error may allow some people to remain in the U.S. after the cards should have expired.
In certain cases, green card applicants who should have been sent a card good for two years were issued one valid for 10 years.
Errors with Green Cards Included Sending of Duplicates
In 2015 and 2016, USCIS inadvertently sent more than 6,000 duplicate green cards to people who applied for them.
USCIS committed a series of errors over the last few years. Incomplete fingerprint records allowed USCIS to grant citizenship to hundreds of illegal aliens. They were meant to be deported, The New York Times reported. More than 850 people who were slated for removal benefited from the mistake, we noted on this blog.
It also incurred significant cost overruns while updating its computer systems. USCIS spent $1.2 billion on a project originally slated to cost $536 million, media reports suggested.
The series of errors illustrates why you should not take a USCIS declaration or decision at face value. Mistakes are made more commonly than many people think. For example, your green card may have been sent to the wrong address. Your application for citizenship may have been erroneously rejected.
If you are fighting a government agency over an immigration issue, it can be daunting to take on officials alone. Call our Travis County immigration attorneys today at (512) 399-2311.