ICE’s Fake College Defrauded Students, Then Deported Them | Hacker News Reader

ICE’s Fake College Defrauded Students, Then Deported Them

reason.com

The article is intentionally misleading. It leaves out the intention of the "students". It appears they paid so as to stay in the country, but never actually took any classes. I wonder what would have happened if any of them showed up to the university to study. Sure it looks like entrapment, but except for the part where ice kept the money they took from each of the students, I cannot find fault with this. Keeping the money has parallels with asset forfeiture..

A number of students did show up to the university to study.

> The government says everyone who paid tuition knew what they were doing, that they were illegally paying to stay, not attend school. People who work in the building where the university was located contradict that.

> Steven Jeffers said some came with backpacks, asking about classes.

https://www.wxyz.com/news/students-detained-after-feds-use-f...

IANAL, and you are right generally, that law enforcement entrapment is not fraud because the suspect is engaged in criminal activity, but that doesn't quite seem to be what happened here according to the article:

Though Farmington enrollees came to the U.S. on legal student visas—with some even transferring to the college from real universities—all were ordered to leave.

>Keeping the money has parallels with asset forfeiture..

Not really. Hardly proceeds of crime. More like a fine collected via fraud.

If this is true, then the former students will lose their lawsuits. Surely it is better for this to be aired in court than for the government to claim sovereign immunity.

There are videos of the enrollment process.

https://youtu.be/_varp0OTApU

They make it clear to each prospect student that it is not a bona fide institution, and that there will be no classes or teachers involved, and that the only purpose of the institution is to commit visa fraud. Then the "students" reply that that's exactly what they're looking for.

I do not see any problems here. People will be deported, which sucks, but they are acting in bad faith and they are aware of it.

There are many controversies involving ICE/CBP that are legitimate reasons to oppose them, but I do not think this is one of them.

Yeah, there's been a lot of misleading reporting on this, from much more mainstream publications than Reason - especially back when Trump was in office for obvious reason. The press has a narrative they want to push and they didn't let little details like the fact that the entire reason to sign up for this was because it was a fake school which let people fraudulently apply for educational visas without having to go to classes get in the way of that.

OK, I can believe that ICE took care to make sure they had a good legal case - presumably, they're not stupid. It still could be entrapment though. This is a very grey legal area.

It would be entrapment if the accused never had the idea of committing visa fraud, and ICE somehow persuaded them and convinced them of doing it. That wasn't the case.

This is equivalent to undercover cops waiting for people to solicit for an illegal product or service. It's an easy, cheap way for people to admit to a crime on tape.

It seems like that's exactly what they did though. Maybe and that's a big maybe, they at the enrolment asked all students that they want a fake school (reports say some people transferred from other unis and actually showed up looking for classes). However even then this is the equivalent of a e.g. opening a pharmacy and advertising legal drugs and the when somebody comes in trying to sell them some heroin with their Tylenol.

If these fake schools are such a problem, why are ICE not going after the schools? Obviously because it's much easier to daemonize immigrants than some American "entrepreneurs" who make money of foreign students by creating these fake schools.

> "I think I told you this. This is not legal. So has to stay between us, right?" > "That's what I understand" > "You understand that, right? We can't get in trouble"

> "If immigration were to find out that you guys are not going to classes, we'd be in trouble for this, so it's important that we keep this between us, right?" > "Sure sure" > "You know, that's the most important thing"

That, uh, seems not great for their lawsuit. Unless the lawsuit is more along the lines of, you should have immediately deported us for attempting to stay illegally, instead you took 15k from us, let us stay for a year and then made us leave.

Other recordings from ICE suggest that at least for some students, the "university" did not tell students there would be no classes until they had already enrolled. It was only after they had phoned in to ask about the class schedule that the confused students were told there would be no classes.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/01/07/ice-fak...

This is not entrapment, it is a honeypot.

pro level trolling from ICE.

and shameful attitude by the Biden/Trump admins.

Haha, it's funny trolling when it happens to someone who isn't us. Hilarious.

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