ICE flagged thousands of OPT filings as fraudulent, and immigration attorney Charles Kuck’s reaction was that the enforcement itself is legitimate. The pressure that drives the fraud is the problem. The trigger is the 90-day rule: an F-1 on post-completion OPT who goes more than 90 days without qualifying employment falls out of status. That deadline pushes some students into a very bad decision.
mic What the Attorney Says
“Some kids are desperate and they made really terrible decisions and they paid people to say they were going to work there.”
Listing an employer you do not actually work for, to run out the 90-day clock, is misrepresentation. If USCIS or ICE finds it, the consequence is bigger than a lost work card. It can be a fraud or misrepresentation bar under INA 212(a)(6)(C) that follows you into every future application. Kuck’s warning is blunt.
mic What the Attorney Says
“And if you think that paying somebody to give you a job is how you get to stay here, that’s not how the system works.”
Some students in these schemes were themselves defrauded by people selling fake job placements, but that does not erase the record their SEVIS account now shows. If you are on OPT and the 90-day clock is running, the honest options are real employment (including qualifying unpaid or volunteer roles that meet SEVP rules), a timely transfer or change of level, or departing before you fall out of status. A paper employer is not one of them.
The same rule punishes those who report work that was not authorized or accurate, a problem that resurfaces later, as in unauthorized OPT work surfacing at the adjustment interview and day-one CPT built on a hidden employer. It also lands during the same stretch when the new F-1 fixed-date rules are tightening the timeline.