The fake university was a magnet for people who didn't want to show up to the classes - the gist of the program was to find student visa users who did not care at all to study; they just wanted to get in the USA.
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[1] started in january of 2016: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/11/27/univers...
"Reddy said, though, that in some cases, students who transferred from the University of Farmington after realizing they didn't have classes on-site, were still arrested."
It sounds like they realized they wouldn't get to attend classes at that university and switched and still got deported.
As a citizen who caucused for Obama, I'm deeply disappointed in his policies surrounding immigration, cowardice on marijuana, broken promises around transparency and whistleblowers, and the exploitation of protected lands for oil and gas the world can't afford to burn. He's not a damned saint and whataboutism is intellectual laziness.