Biden's open border catastrophe destroyed American communities in ways most people never imagined.
The chaos at the southern border grabbed all the headlines while another invasion happened right under our noses.
And three Latvian men just exposed one massive loophole Biden left wide open.
Biden's Visa Waiver Program Became A Criminal Highway Into America
Texas authorities arrested three illegal immigrants from Eastern Europe this week for running a $14 million gift card fraud operation that targeted stores across multiple states.¹
Kristians Petroviskis, Romunds Cubrevics, and Nurmunds Ulevicus told investigators they hit about 10 stores every single day, seven days a week, since May.¹
The Texas Financial Crimes Intelligence Center caught them with more than 400 stolen gift cards.¹
These weren't desperate migrants sneaking across the Rio Grande.
They flew into America legally under the Visa Waiver Program that lets Latvian citizens enter the United States without a visa for up to 90 days.²
Then they just stayed and built a criminal empire stealing from American families buying birthday presents and Christmas gifts.
The scheme worked exactly how you'd expect from organized criminals who studied the system.
They carefully removed gift cards from packaging at retailers across Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.¹
"The card is removed, and then the material on the back that covers up the numbers to transfer anything or activate the card is then removed so that they can see it," Texas Financial Crimes Intelligence Center Director Adam Colby explained.¹
The criminals programmed those numbers into monitoring software that tracked when someone bought and activated the card.¹
The second an American loaded money onto that card for their kid's birthday or an employee bonus, these thieves drained it.
"As soon as it is activated and money placed onto that card, the criminals are now aware of it, but they now have the ability to transfer the money off of that card and onto another card where it is then cashed out or used to buy high-end merchandise," Colby said.¹
All three face first-degree felony charges for fraudulent possession of gift cards.¹
The Visa Waiver Scam Democrats Won't Talk About
Latvia joined the Visa Waiver Program back in 2008 under the Bush administration.³
The program was supposed to make travel easier for tourists and business people from trusted allied nations.
It lets citizens from 36 countries including most of Western Europe enter America for 90 days without going through the normal visa screening process.⁴
Nobody checks if you have a criminal record before you board the plane.
Nobody verifies you actually plan to leave after 90 days.
The system runs on the honor code with nations we supposedly trust.
Biden spent four years throwing the southern border wide open while professional criminals waltzed through the front door with Visa Waiver Program stamps.
These three Latvians overstayed their 90-day authorization by nearly triple and built a multi-million dollar criminal operation targeting American families.
They hit stores in multiple major Texas cities every single day for more than seven months before authorities finally caught them.¹
How many others are out there doing the same thing right now?
The Department of Homeland Security admits it can't track who actually leaves the country after their 90 days expire.⁵
Federal authorities have been trying to implement a proper exit tracking system for years.
It still doesn't work.
That means criminals from Visa Waiver countries can enter legally, disappear into America, and build criminal enterprises while ICE has no idea they overstayed.
Gift card fraud cost Americans $217 million in 2023 alone, and that's just what got reported to the Federal Trade Commission.⁶
Organized criminal networks from China and Eastern Europe are behind most of these operations, using America's broken immigration system as their entry point.⁷
The Trump administration designated several transnational gangs as foreign terrorist organizations and launched Operation Lone Star 2.0 targeting criminal illegal immigrants.⁸
Texas DPS has identified nearly 6,500 criminal illegal immigrants with active felony warrants just in Texas.⁸
But the Visa Waiver Program stays in place, letting anyone from 36 countries enter America with minimal screening and zero exit verification.
Democrats spent years calling Trump a xenophobe for wanting basic immigration screening.
Meanwhile criminals from Latvia were flying into Dallas and Houston airports, walking right past customs with legal entry stamps, then stealing $14 million from American families buying gift cards at Target and Walmart.
The arrest of these three Latvians happened the same week federal authorities launched a massive fraud investigation targeting illegal immigrant day care operators in Minneapolis.¹
It's all connected to Biden's refusal to enforce immigration law or properly screen who enters America.
Every loophole got exploited.
Every weak point got targeted by criminals who studied our system and figured out how to game it.
Trump's getting handed an immigration disaster that goes far deeper than just the chaos at the southern border.
¹ Louis Casiano, "Illegal immigrants allegedly ran multi-million-dollar gift card fraud scheme hitting stores daily across Texas," Fox News, December 29, 2025.
² U.S. Department of State, "Latvia – Visa Waiver Program," U.S. Embassy in Latvia, March 5, 2025.
³ Federal Register, "Additional Countries Designated for the Visa Waiver Program," U.S. Department of Homeland Security, November 17, 2008.
⁴ Congressional Research Service, "Visa Waiver Program," Congress.gov, 2025.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ Robbie Sequeira, "As consumers lose millions to gift card scams, lawmakers pressure businesses," Maryland Matters, April 16, 2024.
⁷ U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, "Tackling the Rise in Gift Card Fraud," Department of Homeland Security, August 15, 2025.
⁸ Alejandro Serrano, "'Operation Lone Star 2.0': DPS arresting thousands of undocumented immigrants across Texas to aid Trump's mass deportation," The Texas Tribune, September 12, 2025.