E, irrryutatmaenr,e ainalemy t ortcor at ar micim aw a wntntend hhe ni a d tl am moorick was assigned response details headquarters and served on the joint task force and acting chief of the investigation division. Mr. Neufeld, Donald Neufeld is associate director of Service Center operations. In his position, mr. Neufeld overseas all activities of the five uscis in texas, vermont, virginia. He has 27 Years Experience of Immigration Services and has held leadership positions at headquarters. Washington, los angeles, miami, nebraska Service Centers. Daniel renod, director of cus m customs and immigration, he has been a federal immigration professional since 1988, joined vermont Service Center as an adjudicate tore and promoted as supervisor. Selected as a branch chief headquarters Field Service op raytive division where he provided guidance to field offi offices. He served as the acting chief Investigator Program and transitioner to the role of deputy operations field director. David donahue is acting Principal Deputy secretary counselor of state and he has been an advisor since 2014 and deputy secretary assistant Counselor Affairs since 2015. He also from 2012 to 2013 served as coordinator inner Agency Principle provincial affairs at the embassy in afghanistan. Id like to ask you if you could rise so i could swear. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god . Thanks to all of you. Well start with mr. Nufeld. Thank you for the opportunity to testify at todays hearing. My name is Donald Neufeld and i am the associate director for the Service CenterOperations Director for u. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Having served under every Administration Since president Ronald Reagan i appreciate and value the role uscs does in insuring the orderly and expeditious flow of legal immigration. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today for the important work as Service Center operati operations. The director is comprised of a headquarters operation in d. C. And fe centers in dallas, texas, california, lincoln, nebraska, arlington, virginia and st. Ail bans vermont. We have 3,600 federal employees and 1800 contractors. The Service Centers are designed to adjudicate cases that do not require facetoface interaction with the public. Our caseload has kones and others. And adjustment of status and multiple forms of humanitarian protection. Service Center Employees proc s processed nearly 5 million of these applications and requests. With respect to visa 1 petiti petitions, someone who wishes to bring his fiance to the u. S. Has to file a form. Immigration Services Officer at one of the Service Centers will review the form and document sub made mitted in place of the petition. It is to show both parties intend to marry within 90 days of the fiances admission of k1 immigrants and within two years of filing the admission. We conduct a background check for security concerns and mcinformation risks on the petitioner and foreign background beneficiary. And background of the adam walsh Child Protection act and int intermarriage regulation act and together these provisions are based on the individuals criminal history and disclosure of previous filings at the time of the individuals interview with the department of state. If eligibility is dem great by a as. By a preponderance of the relationship. It allows department of state to consider issuance of a k1 visa. An approved petition in and of itself does not grant an immigration benefit. The approval does not permit the fiance to travel to the United States nor grant any immigration status or department of state will issue a k1 visa. Having a k1 visa does not grant that it will admit the visa holder to the United States. Recognizing the importance of humanitarian and family reunification and economic goals we strive to do our work with the greatest integrity and efficiency and rely on the fraud director to provide fraud trends and ferreting out fraud. To identify and address safety threats we conduct background checks and closely coordinate with agencies as appropriate. We are fastly committed to show individual benefits are not given to people who pose a Public Safety or soak to defraud the immigration system. In closing on behalf of the acting director, and my colleagues, i think for your interest in our Service Center operation programs and opportunity to share this information with you today. Ill be happy to address any questions or concerns you have. Not only thank you for your testimony but thank you for finishing within the five minutes. Yes. Very good. I should have said to all of you that if you have a longer statement that obviously will be put in the record. We want all the information you can give us, not justhat you can give us within the five minutes. Mr. Dohue. Chairman grassley, Ranking Member feinstein, thank you for inviting me here today to discuss the department of states efforts to detect and prevent marriage fraud for immigration benefits. Im pleased to be on the panel with uscis and i. C. E. , as my colleagues are testifying and as youll hear from me, we use a whole of government approach to tackle this issue. The department has no higher priority than the safety of our fellow citizens at home and fellow citizens at hole and abroad abroad aen the protection of our borders. Were the first line of defense in border security. Embassies and consulates around the world play an Important Role in that. Marriagebased immigrant visas are important to many u. S. Citizens who find a spouse or fiance overseas. In a small percentage of cases, however, we find evidence that a Foreign National is trying to gain permanent resident status by marrying a u. S. Citizen with no intention to honor the marriage. My written statement lists robust measures the department has in place to detect and prevent fraud in these categories which i will summarize for you today. The departments role in marriagebased visa application process begins when our National Visa center, or nvc, receives an approved petition directly from uscis. For every k1 fiance petition, nvcs Fraud Prevention unit, fpu, reviews the case for potential fraud indicators. Should fraud indicators be found, the fpu will conduct further indepth review of the publicly available information, department of state records and commercial databases. Nvc provides results of the results to overseas consular adjudicators who ultimately determine whether or not the applicant is qualified for a visa. Once nvc has reviewed the case, the applicant interviews with the consular overseas. Consular adjudicators are trained to detect fraud. They receive ongoing training on local fraud trends, cultural norms particularly regarding marria and relationships and the sial and economi conditions in their host country. Many of our adjudicate aerls co come po post with Extensive Knowledge of the local laj wang. Evaluate qualifications for the visa category, identify any fraud indicators and review information pertaining to possible ineligibilitieneligibi. That includes any information provided by our partners, uscis, or by the National Visa center. If an adjudicator determines the relationship used as a basis for the visa petition is fraudulent, adjudicator will return the petition to uscis for reconsideration and possible revocation. Most u. S. Embassiies and consulates have a dedicated Fraud Prevention unit. If fraud is suspected, the visa application is sent for further assessment. Many integrate Diplomatic Security agents into their teams. These teams improve our ability to prevent and detect fraud at post by liasing with local Law Enforcement, conducting investigations and preparing cases for the prosecution in court. In fiscal year 2016, for example, integrated Diplomatic Security agents worked with consular officers and Law Enforcement to disrupt human smothering networks in china, the Dominican Republic and romania. These safeguards work. In 2016, the department of state partnered with uscis to conduct a review of five years of data on k1 visa recipients to term if visa holders complied with the terms of their visas and properly adjusted to lawful permanent status or departed the United States at the end of the period of admission. The vast majority o k1 recipients, 98 , use their visas proecht appropriately. Every visa decision is a National Security decision. Our Fraud Prevention officers efforts complement the multifaceted security process we and our Partner Agencies built to screen all visa applicants. This includes a sophisticated Global InformationTechnology Network that shares data among the department and federal Law Enforcement and intelligence agen agencies. No visa can be issued unless all relevant concerns are fully resolved. Mr. Chairman, senator feinstein, and i want to thank the panel members, we spoke earlier. I thought they provided some moving testimony that will certainly inspire us to do more. Our efforts to detect and prevent fraud marriage continue. We strive to increase our effectiveness to seek more opportunities to collaborate with our partners including you to address this important and urgent issue. I appreciate your feedback and suggestions and look forward to your suggestions. Thank you very much. No n chairman grassley, Ranking Member feinstein, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify at todays hearing. My name is daniel renaud. Sorry, i pronounced your name wrong. Thats quite all right, sir. I learned in an early age the important of public service, both my parents served the federal government and i, too, chose it as a career path. For over 28 years i dedicated my career to serving this country by balancing the importance of immigration with the need to ensure that those who are not entitled to a benefit under the law do not receive one. For me, these two missions are not incongruent. Im honored and privileged to lead the field and its team of 6,000 federal employees hard at work as we speak operating the largest Immigration Service in the world while upholding the uscis core values of integrity, respect, innovation and vigilance. The dedicated employees of the Field Operations directrate understand the significance of the work we do and upholding th. These are not benefits we grant lightly. National security and Public Safety are always at the forefront of everything we do. Let me be clear, for as long as ive been in this line of business, there have always been individuals trying to obtain immigration benefits through fraud. Today, we will explain how uscis is aligning its workforce, its technology and its processes to identify fraud, understanding that as one avenue of fraud is shut down, perpetrators of fraud will seek alternate avenues to exploit. We train immigration officers early on and throughout their years on fraud indicators and how to detect and deter fraud. In every field office across the nation, today and every day, the primary concern immigration officers is ensuring that the wrong person does n obtain an immigration benefit. Uscis continues to provide current and effective training to our workforce in issues related to fraud. For example, we recently completed credibility training in each of our district offices to better prepare officers to take and evaluate oral test testimony. Field operations, facetoface interviews are a tool we regularly use to assess eligibility and evaluate fraud risk. Recently, additional questions aimed at preserving the integrity of the immigration system have been added to our forms to better determine risk and assist with vetting. We continue to evaluate our processes to ensure that we are collecting the most critical information and that we are conducting our interviews in the most effective manner. From a systems perspective, uscis does a number of security checks. These security checks include screening against biographic and biometric holdings of u. S. Department of Homeland Security and other u. S. Government partners. These checks include text checks on both the applicant, fbi name check, fingerprint checks against fbi criminal holdings, dhs ident checks at time of interview and checks against texts are repeated again, just before final decision. Protecting the integrity of the u. S. Immigration system is not a topic i take lightly and instill isees who serve in this direct r dire dire dire directerate. I dont hesitate to take immediate action that no benefit is provided until the questions are resolved and questions than with made with confidence in the integrity of the immigration system. When i learn certain naturalization cases proceeded to adjudication without historical fingerprints, i created a special adjudications unit dedicated exclusively to reviewing these cases and. The highlight of my career has been administering the oath of allegiance to new citizens at hundreds of naturalization ceremonies conducted each year throughout the country. Im proud to welcome new citizens to this country knowing that the uniform rule of naturalization envisioned by the framers of the constitution has been applied to detect and deter fraud and protect the security of this nation. In closing, on behalf of acting director and my colleagues, i thank the chairman, Ranking Member, for the opportunity to share this information concerning the Field Operations dire directerate with you. I appreciate you holding this hearing today, i believe we share the desire to ensure the integrity of the immigration system and finding improved ways to preventing and protecting abuses to the system. I look forward to answering your questions. Thank you, mr. Renaud. Now mr. Emirate. Chairman grassley, Ranking Member feinstein, and distinguished mbers of the committee, thank you for your interest in the subject of immigration fraud and i also thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is matthew emrich, im the associate director of the fraud dex National Security direct rat with u. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. As the associate director of fdns, i have oversight responsibility for fraud detection and National Security efforts. Uscis created the fraud detection National Security office in 2004 and the office grand with a handful of employees. In 2010, former director prov e promoted fdns to to help safeguard our nations security and protect the integrity of the lawful immigration system. A further illustration of this prioritization is the gross of the fdns corps which numbers nearly 1,000 onboard employees located in uscis field offices, Service Centers, asylum offices and other locations worldwide. In addition to serving as a primary conduit for information sharing and collaboration with our Law Enforcement and Intelligence Community partners, fdns officers also conduct administrative investigations focused on the detection of immigration benefit fraud. Ill begin with a summary of the authorities and a general overview of the type of work fdns immigration officers conduct. The secretary of Homeland Security has Broad Authority to administer and force the immigration and nationality act and other laws pertaining to the naturalization and immigration of aliens. Uscis officers have authorities delegated to them by the secretary including the authority to investigate alleged civil and criminal violations of the immigration laws, interview aliens, administer oaths, take and consider evidence and fingerprint and photograph aliens. Uscis verifies information applicants and petitioners submit to uscis to ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations before uscis makes a decision in a case. Fdns officers conduct administrative investigations that establish and document findings that uscis adjudicative staff may use to determine an individuals eligibility for an immigration benefit. These investigations are aimed at verifying circumstances and relationships that support that purport to form the basis of immigration benefit. The findings identify violations of relevant sections of the immigration and nationalit