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BREAKING: Our team at @atheists.org has just sued the US Citizenship and Immigration Services for failing to respond to our oversight requests seeking information about abuses of the R-1 "religious workers" visa program.

After multiple stories broke showing how the government has failed to supervise this program, we sought information from USCIS. This visa program is supposed to be for faith leaders and other religious workers. Instead, it's been used to traffic and exploit vulnerable people.

In 2021, a group of Indian nationals sued BAPS, alleging that the group used R-1 visas to bring them to the U.S., confiscated their passports and documents, and forced them to build its Robbinsville temple while paying them just $1.20 an hour.

New York Magazine ran a story a short time later exposing how Scientology was engaging in similar behavior, allegedly paying people just $25 a week to perform "arduous physical labor, including digging trenches, cleaning toilets and dumpsters, and landscaping."

Obviously, we want to know how USCIS is engaging in oversight to ensure these visas are not being abused and to ensure workers are being protected. With this program, it's clear they aren't. And their refusal to provide even basic transparency here is par for the course for this administration.

We're suing to get access to these records so we can ensure this program is being administered fairly and in compliance with the law. We have no reason to believe that it is and the government's stalling only reinforces that belief.