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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 30, 2025 / 17:54 pm (CNA).
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has released a report showing widespread fraud in its permanent residence program for unaccompanied minors, which has led to a backlog in the issuance of visas to foreign-born priests and religious, whose visas fall under the same category.
According to a report published on July 24, USCIS has identified widespread age and identity fraud among applicants to the Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) visa program intended for unaccompanied immigrants under 21 years old.
USCIS revealed that of the 300,000 SIJ applicants it reviewed from 2013 to 2024, most SIJ petitioners were over the age of 18. In 2024 alone, 52% of applicants were 18, 19, and 20 years old. One-third of all SIJ applicants were males over the age of 18. The vast majority of applicants, 73.6%, originated from El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras.
Typically, SIJ petitioners must submit evidence that they were "declared dependent on a state juvenile court" or that they had been committed in some way to a state agency or court-appointed entity or individual.
To obtain consent for SIJ classification, they must provide the "factual reasons why the state court found the alien was abused, neglected, or abandoned by one or both parents, and why it is in the alien's best interests to remain in the United States," along with "evidence that a state court either granted or recognized some form of relief from parental maltreatment."
Applicants committed fraud in various ways, including falsifying their age, name, and country of citizenship on official documents. In some cases, over-18 applicants to the SIJ program entered the U.S. without inspection and "filed court state petitions requesting other adult aliens who also recently entered the United States without inspection be appointed their guardians so they can file SIJ petitions."
How does this impact foreign-born priests and religious?
News of widespread fraud in the juvenile program comes months after it was revealed that an influx of minor visa applicants resulted in an unprecedented backlog in the employment-based fourth preference (EB-4) visa category — the same category used by foreign-born priests and religious.
"Demand for SIJ immigrant visas creates significant pressure on the EB-4 category," the USCIS report states. "These immigrant visas are numerically limited and allocated based on country of origin. Other special immigrants rely on visas from the EB-4 category. This results in significant wait times for other special immigrants in the United States."
The report noted "ministers of religion" are among the other special immigrants who draw visas from the EB-4 category.
According to data trends in the report regarding wait times for EB-4 visas, increasing demand in the category began to escalate in 2016. However, it wasn't until March 2025 — a little over a year after the Biden administration added juveniles to the category — that the wait time for the category extended to five years and seven months.
Each year, Congress decides how many green cards — visas that grant permanent residence in the U.S. — may be made available per year. These green cards are divided into categories based on various factors, including employment or relationship status to U.S. citizens.
"The process to obtain permanent residence status, to get permanent residency, which a couple of years ago could probably be done in somewhere between 12 to 24 months, now is going to take significantly longer," Miguel Naranjo, director of religious immigration services at the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, told CNA in March.
"There's a huge demand in the EB-4 category," Naranjo continued, saying that religious workers had not been previously affected by the surge in unaccompanied minors until the past year and a half, after the State Department designated the whole category as "subject to backlog" due to the sheer rise in demand across the category.
The rise came after the Biden administration's addition of minors to the category in March 2023, leading to the program distributing all available green cards in the category well before the end of the 2023-2024 fiscal year. More green cards will not be made available till the start of the next 2025-2026 fiscal year in October.
Due to the backlog, many priests and religious who are trying to remain in the U.S. to continue their ministries are in danger of being forced to leave the country before their green card application has been processed for at least one year.
Typically, religious workers enter the U.S. on R-1 visas, which have a five-year limit. In the meantime, religious workers hoping to stay in the U.S. apply for visas in the EB-4 category. However, the influx of minor applicants has caused a major backlog in the category, meaning that many religious workers will be forced to leave the country when their R-1 visas expire.
"It makes me feel sad and betrayed," said Father Paschal Anionye, a priest from the Diocese of Warri in Nigeria who works in New York, in reaction to the USCIS findings, "especially as my hopes — and those of many Nigerians and Africans in general — to live safely and to study and serve in a multicultural, multiethnic, and diverse environment are crushed."
Anionye further described the situation faced by foreign-born priests and religious as "disheartening," given the needs of Catholic dioceses across the U.S.
The Nigerian priest, who is in the U.S. on an R-1 visa issued in April 2023, is planning to file for his green card after his visa is renewed in October.
He told CNA: "I'll feel terrible, horrified, and disappointed" should he be forced to return to Nigeria before his green card application is processed, "as I came to the U.S. not only to seek a safe environment from Christian persecution in Nigeria ... but with a genuine intention to serve as a missionary, as has always been my desire from my early days in the seminary."
He further expressed fear of putting his mother and siblings at higher risk, saying his return would not only make him a target but also would renew threats against them. "I lost a cousin to kidnappers in 2015 and continue to carry trauma related to safety concerns," he added.
Criminality among SIJ applicants
Troubling data in the report also identified a subset of 18,829 of the older applicants to the program were "engaged in significant criminality," with records showing 36,920 law enforcement encounters among these individuals, indicating multiple arrests for some.
According to the report, at least 120 petitioners were arrested for murder, and 200 approved petitioners convicted of sex offenses and required to register in the National Sex Offender Registry. Other SIJ petitioners were arrested for additional grave offenses including attempted murder, assault, rape, child molestation, possession and distribution of child sex abuse material, domestic violence, carjacking, and drug trafficking.
Over 500 SIJ applicants approved for SIJ classification since 2013 were known or suspected members of violent gangs.
In some instances, the report notes, these gang members, who obtained lawful permanent residence status as SIJs, were "wanted by foreign law enforcement authorities for murders they allegedly committed before entering the U.S. without inspection and filed [SIJ petitions]."
Although the number is relatively small, the report also identified known or suspected terrorists filing SIJ petitions, including "an alien from Tajikistan suspected of plotting an Islamic State (IS) terrorist attack in the United States."
"Criminal aliens are infiltrating the U.S. through a program meant to protect abused, neglected, or abandoned alien children," said USCIS spokesman Matthew J. Tragesser, who criticized "activist" judges and the Biden administration's open border policies.
Congress has introduced bipartisan legislation to help keep religious workers, including Catholic priests and religious, in the country by extending their visas instead of sending them back to their home countries amid the backlog in the EB-4 category.
