The Department of Homeland Security has announced that
together with the Departments of Justice, Labor, State and
other agencies it has created joint task forces in 10 major
cites to combat document and immigration benefits fraud.
The task forces will be led by the bureau of Immigrations
and Custom Enforcement and build on existing partnerships to
utilize investigators from numerous agencies, as well as
partner with the U.S. Attorney’s Office to come up with a
strategy to crack down on ineligible beneficiaries, and groups
that carry out document and benefit fraud.
The task forces will be located in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas,
Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Newark, N.J.,
Philadelphia, and St. Paul, Minn.
DHS said they are modeled after an existing benefit fraud
task force in Northern Virginia.
Participants include the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services, inspectors general offices in the Departments of
Labor, State and the Social Security Administration, the
State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, U.S.
Postal Inspection Service, U.S. Secret Service and numerous
state and local law enforcement agencies, according to DHS.
It said a task force approach is needed to combat document
and benefit fraud because the number of related
investigations launched by ICE increased from 2,334 in
fiscal 2004 to 3,591 in fiscal 2005, with criminal
indictments for those cases rising from 767 to 875, arrests
increasing from 1,300 to 1,391 and convictions rising from
559 to 992.
