Status · Bill Introduced
Bill · H.R. ___
Congress · 119th · 2d Sess.
Sponsor · Roy (R-TX)
Filed · 04 · 22 · 2026
New Legislation · 119th Congress · April 22, 2026

The U Visa Is a Fraud Machine. Congress Has a Bill to End It.

Today Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) introduced the End U Visa Abuse Act, which repeals the statute that built the crime-victim visa program. Below, more than sixty documented cases — federal indictments, guilty pleas, USCIS-led investigations — explain why.

By Cody M. Brown, Esq. · Managing Attorney, Codias Law. Codias Law represents U.S. citizen victims of immigration fraud in federal matters nationwide.

Contact Your Representative See the Evidence Browse Cases
Sources USCIS DOJ GAO DHS OIG Federal Indictments Congressional Record
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Pending U visa applications and beneficiaries in the backlogUSCIS, cited in H.R. ___ findings
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Share of U visa applicants who entered the U.S. in lawful statusUSCIS FDNS report, March 2020
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Share of U visa applicants who committed fraud on their applicationUSCIS FDNS report, March 2020
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Documented U visa fraud cases catalogued in this reportCodias Law tracker, 2010–2026

What the Bill Does

Repeal, Not Reform.

The End U Visa Abuse Act repeals INA §101(a)(15)(U) and the conforming provisions that carry the U visa through every other corner of the immigration code. This is the clean-kill approach that DHS oversight and law-enforcement veterans have recommended for years.

The End U Visa Abuse Act — Structural Summary

Short title: End U Visa Abuse Act. Introduced: April 22, 2026 by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX). Bill: H.R. ___, 119th Congress, 2d Session.

  • § 3(a)Repeals INA §101(a)(15)(U), the statute creating the U nonimmigrant classification.
  • § 3(b)Strikes the U visa references from INA §§204, 212, 214, 237, 239, 245, and 248.
  • § 2 FindingsDocument 17 specific failures, including USCIS-confirmed fraud rates and federal indictments.
  • EffectCuts off the backdoor-amnesty pipeline at its source. Does not affect T visas (trafficking) or VAWA.
“
The U visa program is rife with fraud. Aliens routinely stage crimes, fabricate injuries, and coach fake witnesses in order to obtain lawful status. Federal prosecutors have charged or convicted defendants in at least a dozen separate conspiracies.
— H.R. ___, § 2 Findings (paraphrased)

I · The Case for Repeal

Ten Reasons the U Visa Cannot Be Fixed.

The U visa program's defects are not administrative. They are statutory, structural, and self-reinforcing. The ten reasons below summarize why the End U Visa Abuse Act repeals the classification rather than regulating it.

01

Unnecessary.

Law enforcement already has every tool it needs to secure cooperation from immigrant witnesses. The S visa exists for informants and was designed specifically for that purpose. Deferred action, parole, federal witness protection, and prosecutorial discretion round out the toolkit. The U visa added a permanent benefit — lawful status, work authorization, and a path to a green card — that no federal investigator ever asked for and no federal witness-protection statute had ever required.

02

Fraud Magnet.

The statute conditions permanent immigration status on an applicant being the “victim” of a qualifying crime. That single architectural choice converts every triggering crime into a currency. Federal prosecutions now span at least eleven states and include staged armed robberies, coached sexual-assault accusations, fabricated kidnappings, and police-chief-led certification rings. The program has no built-in antifraud check — USCIS’s own FDNS directorate has said so in writing, and GAO confirmed in 2022 that no antifraud strategy has ever been developed.

03

No Due Process.

The person most affected by a U visa application — the U.S. citizen accused of committing the predicate crime — is given no notice, no hearing, no right to respond, and no standing to challenge the certification. A fabricated accusation can result in years of pretrial detention, permanent reputational damage, and (in at least one documented case) $30 million in downstream immigration fraud. The accused has fewer procedural protections than a defendant in a small-claims dispute.

04

Unmanageable by USCIS.

The program’s statutory cap is 10,000 principal visas per year. The backlog exceeds 300,000 cases and continues to grow. Processing times run five to seven years — during which applicants hold deferred-action status, receive work authorization, and are functionally unremovable. USCIS cannot adjudicate its way out; the cap makes that impossible by design.

05

No Proven Benefit to Law Enforcement.

Twenty-five years after enactment, neither DHS nor DOJ tracks prosecution outcomes attributable to U visa recipients. No federal report has ever identified a case that would not have been solved absent the program. The 2022 GAO report found the outcome data does not exist; the 2017 DHS OIG report (U Visa Program: Helpful But Limited) found the program’s law-enforcement benefit is marginal at best.

06

Ideologically Driven Origin.

The U visa was drafted inside the Battered Immigrant Women Protection Act / Violence Against Women Act of 2000 by advocacy organizations whose mission was expanding immigration benefits, not closing criminal cases. Antifraud provisions were stripped during drafting on the theory that safeguards would “chill victim cooperation.” The program launched without baseline integrity rules and has operated that way ever since.

07

Hijacked by Sanctuary Jurisdictions.

California’s SB 672 converts the I-918B certification from a discretionary law-enforcement judgment into a ministerial obligation — officers, prosecutors, and judges must sign if minimum formal requirements are met, whether or not the underlying crime occurred. States hostile to federal enforcement are now using the U visa as a legalization channel their own legislatures could never have authorized directly.

08

Divorced from Immigration Policy Goals.

U.S. immigration policy rests on four pillars: family reunification, employment-based merit, humanitarian protection (refugee, asylum, T visa), and diversity. “Alleged victim of a predicate crime” fits none of them. Being the crime victim of your neighbor is not evidence of merit, family ties, persecution abroad, or a humanitarian need the United States can uniquely remedy. The U visa is a classification without a principle.

09

Waste of Local Resources.

Every I-918B certification request consumes paperwork hours at a local police department or prosecutor’s office. Departments handling thousands of requests annually — Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston — devote full-time civilian staff to signing forms that will never affect a criminal case. In sanctuary states, they have been mandated by statute to do so. The burden falls on departments that are already understaffed, for a program whose law-enforcement output is statistically invisible.

10

Irreparable in Design.

The program’s defects are structural, not administrative. The eligibility criterion is victimhood, which cannot be regulated into a meritocratic standard. The fraud incentive cannot be engineered out without eliminating the benefit. The certification requirement cannot be tightened without destroying the feature the program’s defenders say is essential. No executive rulemaking and no USCIS reform project can fix a statute whose core premise is that alleged victimhood of a crime should confer permanent status on a foreign national. The statute must be repealed.

II · Findings → Evidence

Every Finding in the Bill Has a Case Behind It.

The bill's findings are not abstract. Each one maps to federal indictments, guilty pleas, and contemporaneous reporting — many of them catalogued by Codias Law over more than a decade of practice. Below, the bill's core findings paired with the underlying evidence.

01

Corrupt law-enforcement officers have run multi-year U visa fraud rings — undetected by the program's own safeguards.

In central Louisiana, USCIS's Fraud Detection and National Security directorate uncovered a 9.5-year scheme in which three active police chiefs, a marshal, and a former chief allegedly manufactured fake armed-robbery reports in exchange for bribes from a local business owner. Sixty-two federal counts followed. In South Carolina, seven officers were charged in a parallel scheme.

02

Applicants routinely stage violent crimes to manufacture the "crime-victim" predicate the U visa requires.

At least a dozen federal prosecutions since 2019 involve defendants who paid brokers to be "robbed" on camera — at convenience stores, liquor shops, fast-food outlets — then filed U visa applications minutes later. The pattern spans Massachusetts, Illinois, California, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Minnesota, and New York.

03

Fabricated sexual-assault, abuse, and kidnapping allegations are weaponized against U.S. citizens to trigger U visa eligibility.

U.S. citizens — business owners, landlords, ordinary bystanders — have been falsely accused of rape, assault, and kidnapping by individuals seeking U visa certification. Some defendants spent years in pretrial custody before the accuser's motive came to light. One New York immigration attorney alone was ordered to pay $30 million in restitution for coaching clients through these allegations.

04

The program operates as a de facto amnesty — the law-enforcement certification is not a meaningful check, and the backlog has grown beyond repair.

USCIS's Fraud Detection and National Security directorate reported in March 2020 that only about 5% of U visa applicants entered in lawful status. The statutory cap is 10,000 principal visas per year; the backlog is roughly forty times that. GAO found USCIS has never developed an "antifraud strategy," and the I-918B certification is routinely issued — sometimes en masse — without any inquiry into whether the underlying crime occurred.

III · The Record — Government

III

Government & Court Records

12 records

DOJ press releases, USCIS newsroom notices, GAO reports, and Senate oversight correspondence. These are primary sources — indictments, guilty pleas, federal sentencings, and the findings of oversight bodies.

IV · The Record — News

IV

News Reporting

33 records

Contemporaneous reporting by national and local outlets — the New York Times, Daily Mail, New York Post, CBS News, ABC affiliates, regional newspapers — documenting individual cases as they unfolded. Each entry links to the primary news report.

V · The Record — Policy

V

Policy Analysis & Commentary

14 records

Analysis from think tanks, editorial pages, and subject-matter experts — the Center for Immigration Studies, Washington Examiner, Just the News, NPR, Breitbart, and domestic-preparedness publications — tracing how the U visa became a standing invitation to fraud.

VI · Legislative History

VI

Legislative History

Ongoing

The congressional and oversight record behind the End U Visa Abuse Act — the Grassley-Goodlatte probe, the 2022 GAO report, and the bill itself. This timeline will grow with cosponsor activity, hearings, markups, and floor action.

VII · What You Can Do

Support the End U Visa Abuse Act.

The bill will succeed or fail based on whether constituents ask for it. If the evidence above is persuasive to you, the single most useful thing you can do is tell your representative.

Step 1 — Find your members of Congress

Enter your ZIP code and we’ll look up the House member and two Senators who represent you, along with a pre-drafted message asking them to cosponsor the End U Visa Abuse Act.

Two more things that move the needle

  • Share this page.The cases are documented. The links go to DOJ, USCIS, GAO, and major outlets. Send it to one reporter, one staffer, and one ordinary citizen.
  • Report fraud you know about.If you are a U.S. citizen who has been falsely accused in connection with a U visa application, Codias Law represents victims nationwide.
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