ICE arrests 90 more students at fake university in Michigan

[demmiblue]

About 90 additional foreign students of a fake university in metro Detroit created by the Department of Homeland Security have been arrested in recent months.

A total of about 250 students have now been arrested since January on immigration violations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of a sting operation by federal agents who enticed foreign-born students, mostly from India, to attend the school that marketed itself as offering graduate programs in technology and computer studies, according to ICE officials.

Many of those arrested have been deported to India while others are contesting their removals. One has been allowed to stay after being granted lawful permanent resident status by an immigration judge.

The students had arrived legally in the U.S. on student visas, but since the University of Farmington was later revealed to be a creation of federal agents, they lost their immigration status after it was shut down in January. The school was located on Northwestern Highway near 13 Mile Road in Farmington Hills and staffed with undercover agents posing as university officials.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/11/27/ice-arrested-250-foreign-students-fake-university-metro-detroit/4277686002/

Link to tweet

[MineralMan]

1. It's impossible to understand the motivation for this.

So, lure foreign students to apply to a face university so you can then deport them? How does that make any sense at all?

[mopinko]

5. i dunno. kinda evil genius, i think. now they should do-

a hedge fund to hide your money overseas.

or you could do a maternity practice that catches those having anchor babies at trump properties.

[Dream Girl]

6. I don't get it eirger. What's the point?

There most be something missing.

[MineralMan]

9. I remember hearing about this earlier, and couldn't understand it.

So, some foreign students wanted to study in the US? Yeah, we knew that. So why entrap them just so you could deport them?

There's some sort of massive logic flaw involved with this.

[cagefreesoylentgreen]

12. Ban them from returning to America for life?

Or at least a minimum of 10 years, giving them lots of incentive to get an education and settle somewhere else that can benefit their intellect? All hail the Idiocracy.

[tblue37]

21. Look a what autocorrect did to "either" in your post. When I tried to write "afford," autocorrect

turned it into "aff or pood." All the time autocorrect turns my perfectly good words into bizarre gibberish like that. Why does the autocorrect gremlins think "aff or pood" is so much more likely to have been intended than "afford"? Or why you must have meant "eirger" rather than "either"?

Oh, and though I've supposedly turned it off, it doesn't turn off.

[dewsgirl]

29. I was correcting someone that kept mistaking Assange for Snowden.

Here I am, dickishly correcting them and damned autocorrect turned it into Arrange. I looked like a illiterate dick.
Autocorrect also doesn't like the word unredacted and I wasn't paying attention spelled it wrong in two threads, had to go back and correct it.

[Cartaphelius]

27. The missing con-nection

is the name Devos. As in Betsie

[tblue37]

20. And of course traveling to the US costs those students a lot of money they probably can

ill afford. Not to mention whatever fees they paid the fake university.

[G_j]

33. Absolutely

derailing their lives, I’m sure.

[customerserviceguy]

34. The same principle

applied in a different way is called a mousetrap.

[Nature Man]

2. Kafkaesque

[lunasun]

3. Wtf ?.????

The U.S. "trapped the vulnerable people who just wanted to maintain (legal immigration) status," Rahul Reddy, a Texas attorney who represented or advised some of the students arrested, told the Free Press this week. "They preyed upon on them."

The fake university is believed to have collected millions of dollars from the unsuspecting students. An email from the university's president, named Ali Milani, told students that graduate programs' tuition is $2,500 per quarter and the average cost is $1,000 per month.

"They made a lot of money," Reddy said of the U.S. government.

[atreides1]

4. Question

How much money did DHS/ICE receive in tuition payments...and did they return or keep that money???

[demmiblue]

7. ...

Emails obtained by the Free Press earlier this year showed how the fake university attracted students to the university, which cost about $12,000 on average in tuition and fees per year.

The U.S. "trapped the vulnerable people who just wanted to maintain (legal immigration) status," Rahul Reddy, a Texas attorney who represented or advised some of the students arrested, told the Free Press this week. "They preyed upon on them."

The fake university is believed to have collected millions of dollars from the unsuspecting students. An email from the university's president, named Ali Milani, told students that graduate programs' tuition is $2,500 per quarter and the average cost is $1,000 per month.

"They made a lot of money," Reddy said of the U.S. government.

No one has filed a lawsuit or claim against the U.S. government for collecting the money or for allegedly entrapping the students.

[atreides1]

11. Thank you

ICE, they're just like the Gestapo...taking people's money and filling their own pockets!!!!

[triron]

22. We have come to this???!!!

[eShirl]

8. prioritizing the dangerous criminals, I see

[CrispyQ]

10. We entice them over here with a fake university, make them pay a ton of money,

& them bust them & send them back? My taxes are paying for this shit? I have no words.

No one has filed a lawsuit or claim against the U.S. government for collecting the money or for allegedly entrapping the students.

Attorneys for ICE and the Department of Justice maintain that the students should have known it was not a legitimate university because it did not have classes in a physical location. Some CPT programs have classes combined with work programs at companies.

"Their true intent could not be clearer," Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Helms wrote in a sentencing memo this month for Rampeesa, one of the eight recruiters, of the hundreds of students enrolled. "While 'enrolled' at the University, one hundred percent of the foreign citizen students never spent a single second in a classroom. If it were truly about obtaining an education, the University would not have been able to attract anyone, because it had no teachers, classes, or educational services."

In the memo, federal prosecutor Baker said the case raises questions about the U.S. "foreign-student visa program."

But we took their money, and a lot of it!

[zaj]

16. Technically, they got what they payed for... (see my other post below)

They were paying $2500 per quarter merely to qualify for a student visa, while not being expected to attend school.

[politicaljunkie41910]

36. How would they have known there were no physical classrooms before they arrived there?

I would not consider this one of the U.S.'s finest moments. We are better than this. These people were probably very desperate in the first place. For the U.S. gov't to play a role in ripping them off for trying to get an education says volumes about who we are putting in charge of governmental agencies these days. My guess is that this was someone's idea of a joke perpetrated on some of the most vulnerable people, and for what? An f'ing joke? It takes a truly ignorant person to pull a joke like this on someone. Sounds like something that Pompeo and Trump thought up. I hope they rot in hell.

[OhNo-Really]

13. Whose brain cooked this up? I want to know!

[zaj]

14. At first I was "WTF??" too, but Wikipedia helped...

... more than the article did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Farmington

"The University of Farmington was a fake university set up in 2015 in Michigan by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to expose student visa fraud in the United States.[1] The sting operation,[2][3] which was code-named "Paper Chase", was overseen by the United States Department of Homeland Security. Over 600 individuals were identified in the operation, many of whom face deportation from the United States for visa violations.[4]
...

According to the prosecutors, the students enrolled in the university solely to maintain their student-visa status and lengthen their stay in the U.S.,[8] despite being aware "that they would not attend any actual classes, earn credits or make academic progress towards an actual degree."[2]

Still not sure what underlying problem they were targeting. Were they trying to gain access to a national network of visa fraud? Or were they just creating one out of thin air?

And if there was some larger movement of student visa fraud, where are the arrests of those people?

Unless I'm missing something, it seems like

1) Create a fake university
2) Hire unwitting, innocent people to be recruiters, direct them to break the visa law
3) Recruit unwitting, innocent students and trick them into breaking the law
4) Arrest everyone but the people "at the top" who created the scam as a trap
5) and...

6) Why were they trying to trap these people to begin with??

And this started under Obama, so it's not like this was some Stephen Miller clown-car sting operation. There was some "goal" that's not clear to me yet.

[LeftInTX]

25. Thanks for the research!

The Obama Admin also created another fake school!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Northern_New_Jersey

The operation was created in September 2013 by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a directorate of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).[3][1][4]

The fake university had an extensive internet presence, including an elaborate website[a] with a .edu domain name, a crest (bearing a remarkable similarity to that of Princeton University) with a Latin motto, and a Facebook presence led by the university's "president"—a "carefully crafted character" named Dr. Steven Brunetti who had a LinkedIn page.[5] The sting included a fictitious campus at 25 Commerce Drive, Cranford, New Jersey.[c][6] With the end of the operation, the rented space at 25 Commerce Drive was vacated and the web site is down.[6]

The fake university was recognized by the State of New Jersey and was accredited by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges (ACCSC).[5] The director of the ACCSC stated that it had accredited the "university" to cooperate with the federal investigation.[7]

In April 2016, Paul J. Fishman, the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, and Sarah R. Saldaña, the director of ICE, announced that the sting operation had ended with the arrests of 21 people.[3][1] Federal agents posed as university officials and worked with the 21 arrested individuals, who were brokers who recruited international students, mostly from China and India, to go to UNNJ.[1] According to federal authorities, the brokers knew that UNNJ did not offer real classes yet "charged the students in a scheme that allowed them to maintain their student visas and stay in the country" and in some cases illegally arranged for jobs and work visas.[1] According to Saldaña, the brokers arranged student visas for 1,076 people, most of whom will have their visas revoked.[1] The authorities described the brokers as engaging in illicit "pay to stay" visa scam.[1][2][6]

One reason this was created the expose and discourage student visa fraud. I can see going after those who are recruiting students fraudulently. Should the students lose their student visas? Yes. Should the students be penalized? No. Should they get their money back? Yes

If the students went to enter the US on a legit visa they should be allowed back in.

[treestar]

31. Probably there was an actual fraudulent school

like this, they were caught and so the government got the idea to create such a school to catch those who would do this. So they have to prove the would-be student knew it was fraud and that they would not be attending school but would have legal student status.

Otherwise it would not make sense.

[rzemanfl]

15. I am so fucking proud to be an American these days.

[NightWatcher]

17. Quite possibly the World's Biggest Dick Move

He's actively trying to get us attacked by terrorists.

[jberryhill]

18. That's insane

[Initech]

19. This is a whole new level of evil.

[Roland99]

23. What in THE hell was the point?? Just to F with people?!

Sick f’n bastards!!

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

24. This is right up there with

undercover FBI agents encouraging would-be terrorists to start plotting to blow up something so they can arrest then and point out how many terrorist plots they've averted.

Makes you so proud to be an American, doesn't it?

I don't understand why entrapment isn't illegal. Shouldn't the entrappers be brought up on charges related to the crime they are trying to get someone to commit?

[superpatriotman]

26. tricky and probably not legal

The U.S. "trapped the vulnerable people who just wanted to maintain (legal immigration) status," Rahul Reddy, a Texas attorney who represented or advised some of the students arrested, told the Free Press this week. "They preyed upon on them."

[Volaris]

28. I'm sorry, how is this legal?

You GAVE THEM VISAS, just so you could get them here so you could arrest them?
Why, because trump needed a bigger number than Obama?

[X_Digger]

30. That's not the case (and this started under Obama).

Students already in the US whose visas were expiring were approached by shady brokers (the actual primary targets of the investigation) who promised them that they could on paper "attend" this school to keep their student visas active.

The students knew they wouldn't actually have to attend.

[Volaris]

32. Got it

Thank you for the clarification.

[Roland99]

35. ICE is rogue