The Biden administration’s program that allows migrants to enter the U.S. without a legal visa has provided fraudsters with a way to steal Americans’ identities, according to an internal audit.

Michael Mayhew, head of the Immigration Records and Identity Services division at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, wrote a 23-page audit about the program, which allows migrants from Ukraine, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter the country with the support of a U.S.-based sponsor, The Washington Times reported.

Mayhew’s audit, which apparently was to be shared only among the agency’s senior leaders, said the process for approving sponsors was filled with loopholes that made fraud easy to perpetrate and tough to spot.

“Since there is little to no barrier to entry to file … there is a lot of fraud, exploitation, and duplicative filings that have occurred,” Mayhew said in the audit, the Times reported.

The audit said gang members and scammers were applying to be sponsors by using dead people’s names.

Also, due to insufficient staffing, the program was unable to detect fraud by which the scammers could “victimize” the migrants and steal Americans’ identities.

One fraudster filed an application using the passport number of former first lady Michelle Obama.

After Mayhew recommended 40 program changes to prevent the fraud, the administration paused the program.

The program then was restarted late last month after agency adopted some of Mayhew’s suggestions.

“Together with our existing rigorous vetting of potential beneficiaries seeking to travel to the United States, these new procedures for supporters have strengthened the integrity of these processes and will help protect against exploitation of beneficiaries,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

Former senior agency leaders, though, said the audit described a doomed program.

“This administration is more interested in putting people through than it is in vetting for the correct individuals,” Emilio Gonzalez, who ran USCIS during the Bush administration, said after the Times shared portions of the internal report.

“Their vocabulary never uses the word ‘stop.’ It’s always ‘process,’ ‘transport,’ ‘house,’ ‘educate,’ ‘bring them through.’ They want to get as many people through the door as possible and then deal with the consequences once they’re on this side of the border.”

Under the program, American citizens, residents, and others in the U.S. with a legal immigration status are eligible to sponsor migrants from those countries, as long as they agree to financially support them, CBS News reported.

Migrants are granted two-year work permits under the humanitarian parole authority.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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