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."

CBP "Self-Deportation" Program Ends After Only Two Months

A U.S. pilot program, operated by Customs and Border Protection ("CBP") designed to deport illegal immigrants by flying them to Mexico City will operate for only two months this year and involve 20 flights, a significant scaling-back of what was billed as a humanitarian effort to avoid deporting people to violent border regions, or the Romney "Self-Deportation" Plan.

The first flight, which carried 131 immigrants, on October 2012, landed in Mexico City, six months after the originally scheduled start date of the program. Slated to run from April through November, the Interior Repatriation Initiative will operate only in October and November.

When the program was announced in February, Mexico's interior secretary, Alejandro Poire, said the flights would improve border security and make it easier for illegal immigrants to return to their hometowns by taking buses from the capital.

Deportees also would no longer be "systematically placed at the mercy of criminal groups in border areas," Poire said in a statement. The flights serve U.S. interests by making it harder for deportees to cross back into the U.S.

Under terms of the agreement, the U.S. pays for the flights, which depart from El Paso, and the Mexican government provides bus fares for the migrants' trips home.

U.S. and Mexican officials did not give specific reasons for the initiative's delay and limited duration.

"Given the complexities and logistics involved with this initiative, the length of time needed to launch the inaugural flight was not unreasonable," the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

The Mexican Interior Ministry confirmed the arrival of the first flight at Mexico City's international airport in October, and said the program would continue through Nov. 29, transporting more than 2,400 people.

"Once in national territory, they will be given food and ground transportation to their communities of origin and-or residence in Mexico," the ministry and the National Migration Institute said in a statement. It said the arriving Mexicans would be given a list of social services available to them and allowed to request medical attention, as well as a phone call to their families.

If there are outstanding criminal charges in Mexico against any of the passengers, they will be investigated for possible prosecution, the ministry said.

Repatriating illegal immigrants has become problematic in recent years as deportations reach record highs and besieged border areas struggle to provide security and housing for people who often arrive penniless and without any contacts.

In the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, where deportations have surged fivefold in recent years, criminals prey on deportees, sometimes abducting them from streets, bus stations and migrant shelters. Many are held for ransom, and others are recruited into criminal networks that have seized control of much of the region.