A New Immigration Fraud Ring Busted in Los Angeles - Charges Include Fraud and Bribery

The Los Angeles Time reported yesterday that Attorney Kwang Man "John" Lee was arrested for being the ring leader of an immigration fraud ring. The authorities reported that he was a man who could make things happen — for a price. For a pound of marijuana and $44,000, the Koreatown attorney allegedly said, he could get an immigrant client a U.S. citizenship. "Price is OK for the risk," Lee told an associate, according to federal authorities.

Mr. Lee was a silver-Corvette-driving attorney, also a former Immigration and Naturalization Service agent. He allegedly had associates at various stages of the immigration process willing to take bribes and provide favors for his clients. At Los Angeles International Airport, he had Customs and Border Protection officer Michael Anders, according to prosecutors. At Citizenship and Immigration Services, they alleged, he had officers Jesus Figueroa and Paul Lovingood. At Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he had special agent James Dominguez, according to court documents.

And he apparently had a long list of clients from across the globe, from Japan to Morocco to the Czech Republic, willing to pay the tens of thousands to cut a corner or two in the process for a permanent residency or citizenship in the U.S.

On May 8th, federal prosecutors announced charges against Anders, Figueroa, Lovingood, Dominguez and a client of Lee's, Mirei Gia Hofmann. The current and former immigration officials were indicted May 7th on charges including conspiracy, bribery, fraud and misuse of government seals. Hofmann faces a single count of immigration fraud.

Lee, who became an attorney in 1997, was previously charged in a separate criminal complaint of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government.

According to affidavits filed in the case, Lee plied the officials with lavish gifts and cash bribes in exchange for immigration benefits including forged admission stamps with a false date of entry into the U.S. and rubber-stamping fraudulent permanent residency or citizenship applications. Anders, who at one point lived with Lee, provided the attorney with a specialized security ink used by Border Patrol officials to stamp passports at airports, according to court papers.

In exchange, Lee bought round-trip tickets to Thailand for Dominguez and a 47-inch flat-screen TV and a computer for Lovingood, and gave thousands of dollars in cash to Figueroa, authorities allege. Anders was paid $50 each time he falsified an entry record, according to the indictment.

Lee complained to a confidential informant that he gets "headaches entertaining them, taking them out to dinner," according to an affidavit. He secured illegal immigration benefits for at least several dozen clients over the years, prosecutors said.

"It looks like this goes back at least 20 years," Assistant U.S. Atty. Meghan Blanco said. "By and large, it involves people who entered the country legally and then overstayed their visa."

New Report from Florida International University Finds DHS Secure Communities Not Targeting "Dangerous Criminals" As Directed By Obama Administration

Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in South Florida are failing to abide by an Obama administration directive to focus deportation efforts on dangerous criminals, according to a report Monday by a Miami-based immigration advocacy group and researchers from a Florida university.

A majority of undocumented immigrants detained for deportation in Miami-Dade County under a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) initiative known as the Secure Communities program were not serious criminals, the report by Americans for Immigrant Justice (AIJ) and researchers at Florida International University said.

This is a pattern that is repeated across the country and the San Francisco Bay Area is no exception. Many of the deportations involve people who likely would be covered under proposals for an immigration reform bill currently being thrashed out by members of Congress.

The actions of ICE agents are at odds with guidance issued in June 2011 by the head of ICE, John Morton, who sought to prioritize the removal of convicted undocumented immigrants who posed a danger to national security or public safety, as well as those who game the system by dodging immigration hearings.

In a statement, ICE said it had received guidance restricting the detention of immigrants for minor misdemeanor offenses such as traffic infractions and other petty crimes. The guideline gives ICE discretion on how it is implemented.

See the entire report below.

False Promises: The Failure of Secure Communities

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Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) And Its Allies Profit From the Human Misery In the American Gulag System

CCA directly profits from the human misery involved in the crackdown on "illegal immigrants." CCA is the largest prison corporation and a member of ALEC,American Legislative Executive Council (ALEC), and has negotiated contracts with states that guarantee 90 percent occupancy rates for the length of the contract, some of which are 20 to 30 years. ALEC has been behind laws that allow prison labor at private prisons, paying inmates as little as 17 cents per hour. The demand for prison labor by corporations such as IBM, AT&T and 3M creates a greater incentive to incarcerate. CCA is also known for human rights violations, cutting services to save money and increase profits. On March 27, hundreds of inmates at the Cibola County Correctional Center in New Mexico staged a 12-hour protest over prison conditions. Last year, prisoners in Mississippi violently rioted over lack of health care and abusive conditions, as did inmates at another CCA prison in Texas in 2010. A September 2012 report found private prisons to be unsafe, unnecessary and expensive. This week immigrant activists held protests outside of Senator Chuck Schumer’s (D – New York) office to draw attention to the support he has received over the years from the private prison industry. Schumer is a member of the gang of eight in the Senate, the group that is tasked with crafting an immigration reform bill. He also is the recipient of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the GEO Group and the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Note that one of Schumer’s biggest donors is Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, which lobbies for CCA. Activists are highlighting the Senator’s efforts to prioritize enforcement and punitive measures over policies to unite families. Some of the things that Schumer has done that activists are take issue with include: advocating for more border security at a time when the border is supposed to be the most secure, supporting the implementation of a national I.D. card, and calling the undocumented “illegals.“ The CEO of CCA has even admitted recently to investors that the impact of any immigration reform would be positive because “There’s always going to be a demand for beds.” Just this past Sunday on Meet the Press, Senator Schumer expressed optimism that an immigration bill would be introduced soon, saying, “With the agreement between business and labor, every major policy issue has been resolved on the gang of eight. Now everyone, we’ve all agreed that we’re not going to come to a final agreement until we see draft legislative language and we all agree on that. We’ve drafted some of it already, the rest will be drafted this week. So I’m very optimistic that we will have an agreement among the eight of us next week.” Aside from the protests in New York, there were protests in other cities including Los Angeles outside of a downtown federal building, where protesters held signs that said, “Senator Schumer: you have a Latino problem.”

United States Supreme Court Slams Door Today on Post-Conviction Relief Under Padilla

SCOTUS issued a 7-2 decision today in Chaidez v. United States, Slip Opinion No.: 11-820, from the 7th Circuit holding that their prior decision in Padilla v. Commonwealth of Kentucky 559 U.S. _____, does not apply retroactively under the Teague Rule 489 U.S. 288 (1989).

As the decision states, "We conclude that, under the principles set out in Teague v. Lane, Padilladoes not have retroactive effect." Unfortunately, this means that any decision that was final before Padilla will not have the benefit of that decision. Here is the decision: Chaidez v. United States

Recently Release Report Finds Over 5,000 Children Of Deported Aliens Are Being Placed Into Foster Care

In fiscal year 2011, the United States deported a record-breaking 397,000 people and detained nearly that many. According to federal data released to the Applied Research Center, through a Freedom of Information Act request, a growing number and proportion of deportees are parents. In the first six months of 2011, the federal government removed more than 46,000 mothers and fathers of U.S.-citizen children. These deportations shatter families and endanger the children left behind.

This “Shattered Families” report is the first to provide evidence on the national scope and scale of the problem. As more noncitizens are detained, the number of children in foster care with parents removed by ICE is expected to grow. Without explicit policies and guidelines to protect families, children will continue to lose their families at alarming rates.

Among the Key Finding In the Report:

• That there are at least 5,100 children currently living in foster care whose parents have been either detained or deported (this projection is based on data collected from six key states and an analysis of trends in 14 additional states with similarly high numbers of foster care and foreign-born populations). This is approximately 1.25 percent of the total children in foster care. If the same rate holds true for new cases, in the next five years, at least 15,000 more children will face these threats to reunification with their detained and deported mothers and fathers. These children face formidable barriers to reunification with their families.

• In areas where local police aggressively participate in immigration enforcement, children of noncitizens are more likely to be separated from their parents and face barriers to reunification. For example, in counties where local police have signed 287(g) agreements with ICE, children in foster care were, on average, about 29 percent more likely to have a detained or deported parent than in other counties. The impact of aggressive immigration enforcement remains statistically significant when our research controls for the size of a county’s foreign-born population and a county’s proximity to the border.

• Immigrant victims of domestic violence and other forms of gender-based violence are at particular risk of losing their children. Approximately one in nine of the stories recounted to ARC in interviews and focus groups involved domestic violence. As a result of ICE’s increased use of local police and jails to enforce immigration laws, when victims of violence are arrested, ICE too often detains them and their children enter foster care. Many immigrant victims face an impossible choice: remain with an abuser or risk detention and the loss of their children.

• ARC has identified at least 22 states where these cases have emerged in the last two years. This is a growing national problem, not one confined to border jurisdictions or states. Across the 400 counties included in our projections, more than one in four (28.8 percent) of the foster care children with detained or deported parents are from non-border states. Whether children enter foster care as a direct result of their parents’ detention or deportation, or they were already in the child welfare system, immigration enforcement systems erect often-insurmountable barriers to family unity.

Immigration Judge Granted Withholding to Our Mexican National Client

Great win for our client in the San Francisco Immigration Court. The IJ granted withholding for a Mexican National based upon membership in a particular social group, namely kinship.

The sticking point for the DHS Assistant Chief Counsel was safe relocation within Mexico. We argued that the client could not safely relocate anywhere in Mexico that her persecutor would not be able to locate her. Our office retained two wonderful expert witnesses that gave testimony and provided written declarations to the Court explaining why the persecutor could find her anywhere inside of Mexico.

DHS has reserved appeal and we will need to wait the 30-days to see what the Service is going to do. I am optimistic that we can prevail on any appeal because the record before the Court is so strong.

DHS Secretary Napolitano Announces Final Rule in Permitting Aliens With Unlawful Presence to File I-601 Hardship Waivers Before Leaving US

WASHINGTON—Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano today announced the posting of a final rule in the Federal Register that reduces the time U.S. citizens are separated from their immediate relatives (spouse, children and parents), who are in the process of obtaining visas to become lawful permanent residents of the United States under certain circumstances. The final rule establishes a process that allows certain individuals to apply for a provisional unlawful presence waiver before they depart the United States to attend immigrant visa interviews in their countries of origin. The process will be effective on March 4, 2013.

One of the more contentious aspects of this Final Rule involves aliens who are in removal proceedings. As written, anyone in deportation is not eligible for having their I-601 Hardship Waiver adjudicated before having to leave the U.S. to complete consular processing unless their case is administratively closed. Given the lack of action under the Prosecutorial Discretion guidelines by DHS local counsel, relief for aliens in removal under this Final Rule may be illusory.

Provisional Unlawful Presence Waivers of Inadmissiblity

“This final rule facilitates the legal immigration process and reduces the amount of time that U.S. citizens are separated from their immediate relatives who are in the process of obtaining an immigrant visa,” said Secretary Napolitano.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received more than 4,000 comments in response to the April 2, 2012 proposed rule and considered all of them in preparing the final rule.

“The law is designed to avoid extreme hardship to U.S. citizens, which is precisely what this rule achieves,” USCIS Director Mayorkas said. “The change will have a significant impact on American families by greatly reducing the time family members are separated from those they rely upon.”

Under current law, immediate relatives of U.S. citizens who are not eligible to adjust status in the United States to become lawful permanent residents must leave the U.S. and obtain an immigrant visa abroad. Individuals who have accrued more than six months of unlawful presence while in the United States must obtain a waiver to overcome the unlawful presence inadmissibility bar before they can return to the United States after departing to obtain an immigrant visa. Under the existing waiver process, which remains available to those who do not qualify for the new process, immediate relatives cannot file a waiver application until after they have appeared for an immigrant visa interview abroad and the Department of State has determined that they are inadmissible.

In order to obtain a provisional unlawful presence waiver, the applicant must be an immediate relative of a U.S. citizen, inadmissible only on account of unlawful presence, and demonstrate the denial of the waiver would result in extreme hardship to his or her U.S. citizen spouse or parent. USCIS will publish a new form, Form I-601A, Application for a Provisional Unlawful Presence Waiver, for individuals to use when applying for a provisional unlawful presence waiver under the new process.

Under the new provisional waiver process, immediate relatives must still depart the United States for the consular immigrant visa process; however, they can apply for a provisional waiver before they depart for their immigrant visa interview abroad. Individuals who file the Form I-601A must notify the Department of State’s National Visa Center that they are or will be seeking a provisional waiver from USCIS. The new process will reduce the amount of time U.S. citizen are separated from their qualifying immediate relatives