By Jack
Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it has identified more than 10,000 foreign students who claimed to be working for “highly suspicious” employers under the Optional Practical Training program, a federal work authorization pathway for foreign students that has quietly grown into one of the largest temporary labor pipelines in the country.
ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit announced the findings on May 12, saying investigators discovered empty buildings and locked doors at addresses connected to the probe. Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons called the investigations “only the beginning.”
The scale of the suspected fraud is staggering, and the details ICE has released read like a blueprint for organized immigration fraud on American soil.
📺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
The announcement follows a formal warning that the Student and Exchange Visitor Program sent to school officials in March. A publicly posted copy of that broadcast message laid out what SEVP and HSI investigators found during site visits to employers participating in the STEM OPT extension program.
The findings were damning.
The SEVP broadcast message detailed what investigators encountered:
SEVP and HSI site visits found unoccupied and unused business locations, personal residences listed as on-site employment locations with no employees present, offshore human resources and payroll personnel, employer officials with little knowledge about the companies they claimed to represent, contradictory statements from employer representatives, students claiming STEM OPT employment who never showed up for work, and inoperative telephone numbers.
The broadcast warned designated school officials that employers and foreign students engaged in suspected fraud risk referral for administrative or criminal investigations by HSI and the Department of Justice. SEVP also told school officials to watch for vague employer websites, job duties that do not match what was reported to the school, worksites that do not match Form I-983 addresses, unfamiliar employers hiring large groups of students, and work conducted remotely or through apps such as WeChat. SEVP flagged IT recruitment, consulting, and staffing firms as common areas of concern.
Read that list again. Empty offices. Locked doors. Home addresses pretending to be corporate worksites. Offshore payroll. Company officials unable to explain the companies they supposedly ran. Students who were authorized to work but never actually showed up. Phone numbers that did not even ring.
The findings point far beyond a few bad apples slipping through a bureaucratic crack. They suggest organized exploitation of a federal program, and ICE is signaling it intends to keep pulling the thread.
To understand how this fraud works, you need to understand OPT itself.
The Congressional Research Service provides essential context: