State Department officials have suspended a program that allows refugees in the U.S. to bring family members into the country after an investigation revealed widespread fraud in the system.

Since the 1980's, the State Department has granted refugee family members who are left behind in war-torn countries priority-3 access to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program on a case-by-case basis.

After suspicions of fraud were raised last year – often involving unrelated children being claimed as family – the State Department conducted DNA testing of 3,000 applicants to the program, to see if they were actually related to the family members they claimed.

In more than 80 percent of the cases, the applicants either refused to take the tests or were discovered to have DNA that didn't match their reported family members.

'We were alarmed that the rate was so high,' a State Department official – who spoke on condition of anonymity as a matter of departmental policy – told the Washington Post. 'In fewer than 20 percent of cases did the applicant take the test and it checked out.'....