Today, Explained - ICE University

Episode Date: December 2, 2019

Immigration and Customs Enforcement created a fake university with no teachers and no classes. Then they arrested the students who signed up. Vox’s Nicole Narea explains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to the show after a holiday weekend. It's now December, I'm told. KiwiCo makes things that you could get people in the month of December. They're projects that help your kids or even adults learn about science, math, art, engineering, technology. KiwiCo is offering you the chance to get your first month for free. To redeem the offer, go to kiwico.com slash explained. So imagine that you're a foreign student, perhaps from India, and you're looking for a program in the U.S. that's focused on business or STEM, also known as science, technology, engineering, and math. And you come across an ad for a university in Michigan called the University of Farmington. The brochure looks great. It says, it's located in the heart of the automotive and advanced manufacturing center of southeast Michigan. The University of Farmington provides students from throughout the world a unique educational experience. Our dynamic business administration

and STEM curriculum allows its students to rapidly apply their knowledge, preparing them to succeed in an ever-globalizing economy. The school is accredited, which means that it's a legitimate program

that would qualify you for an F-1 student visa that allows you to study and remain in the U.S. You apply, you get your visa, that's great, and you'll pay costs to the university, maybe $2,500 per quarter for graduate programs plus an average $1,000 a month in fees.

You're ready to go, but then one day you get a knock on your door. It's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE. And you find out that the whole thing's fake. The university doesn't actually exist. It has no curriculum, no classes. It's all just been a scheme to weed out fraud. And now you might be deported. Nicole Nerea, you cover immigration at Vox. What exactly went down at the imaginary University of Farmington in Detroit? So we've known about this scheme since last January when a series of indictments came out. But the Detroit Free Press reported last week that there were over 100 new arrests of students in connection with the scheme.

So that brought the total up to about 250 students who have been arrested now. The university was listed on the Department of Homeland Security website as an approved accredited school, making it apparently legit. But it was actually undercover ICE agents who advertised the university on a now defunct website. And their objective was to weed out students who might be trying to obtain student visas fraudulently. And to do so, they worked with recruiters who were basically paid to attract over 600 students to the school. And all these students transferred from previously accredited schools. So they were in legitimate programs prior to arriving at the University of Farmington. So that means that these students were here on legitimate visas. Everything was above board? Yes, up until the point that they arrived at the University of Farmington.

Who's getting caught up in this scheme? So it was primarily students from India studying at the graduate level. They were coming on F1 student visas, and they were coming from accredited universities previously in the U.S. Do we know if all these students thought this was a real school? Some of the students thought that this was a legitimate program, or at least that's what their attorneys are saying right now. So they say that they've been duped by the Department of Homeland Security. Hello, you have reached the Office of Admissions for University of Armington, an innovative

career college. It's easy to see how an outsider could mistake the fake university for a real one. It was listed on the Department of Homeland Security website. Okay, so some students may not have known that this was a fake school, but others may have been into that idea? So there's no way to tell how many fraudulent actors were actually a part of this scheme. Some students might have seen this as a pay-to-play scheme where they were essentially paying the tuition fees and the other fees that are associated with

enrolling in the university in order to obtain a student visa that would allow them to go in and out of the country freely as they pleased. Is that like a popular scheme? According to the Department of Homeland Security, it is. But we don't have really hard numbers on how many students are abusing the system. But this is a thing that happens, that students will sign up for classes at a school that won't actually make them come to class. Yes, that's what happens. How exactly did this whole thing work? What along the way were the signs that some students may have picked up on and others didn't? The university didn't have any physical classrooms, no teachers,

no curriculum, no classes. So ICE argues that it should have been obvious to the students that they weren't actually enrolled in a university that would have allowed them to maintain legally their student visas. But some of them even made attempts to verify that this was a legitimate program and the administrators told them that it was. So in that sense, if you're being told that this is an accredited university, the administrators are telling you that, then they have no reason to think that it shouldn't have been legitimate. But to be clear here, students were signing up for a university that didn't have classes. Presumably, yes. But maybe perhaps foreign students aren't totally clear on how American universities work,

how these programs should be administered. Maybe they thought they would be eventually allowed to sign up for online classes. It's unclear exactly how they thought that this could have been a legitimate university. People who worked in the buildings, these students constantly asked how to talk to someone about classes they paid for. I feel sad for them because I know some of them didn't even know. So what's going to happen to the people who were sort of caught up in this scheme? So at this point, a lot of them have been given the opportunity to leave the country voluntarily. All of their student visas have been revoked in connection to the scheme. Even if people realized amid the scheme that they were

being duped, they might have transferred out of the university, but those people have still been arrested by ICE. So the ultimate effect of this could just be that they'll have to leave the country. They may be out several thousand dollars in tuition that they may have paid to the University of Farmington. It's now in the Department of Homeland Security's coffers. We don't know what's happening with that money. And any chance that they might have at coming back to the U.S. might be stymied at this point because this deportation or voluntary departure, as they call it, which doesn't involve you necessarily being escorted on a plane by ICE agents, but does involve you leaving the country,

would basically prejudice any further attempt they would make to reenter the U.S. Does ICE do a lot of policing of people who are here on student visas? Is this like a large batch of their focus? Because these aren't the stories we typically hear about ICE going after undocumented immigrants. And these students aren't undocumented technically because they have student visas. Right. So in recent years, about 500,000 students have been landing these visas annually. It's not a huge batch of the legal immigrants that are coming here annually. And it hasn't historically been a population that ICE is deciding to go after, particularly because these people are here

temporarily just to go to school. But the Trump administration, for whatever reason, has decided to make this an enforcement priority for them. So they've been trying to kind of crack down on people who might be using the system fraudulently. But in this scheme, there's really no way of telling who was a fraudulent actor and who was just sort of an innocent bystander. So ICE here has set up an entire fake university, named it the University of Farmington, got it accreditation through the Department of Homeland Security, let students enroll, let students pay even, and is now, at least in some cases, deporting students for not figuring out that this was a fake situation.

That's the whole scheme here? That's how it looks, yeah. Is this the first time ISIS tried something like this, made a whole fake school? So it's actually not the first time, and it's certainly not the first administration to carry out these kinds of policies. Under Obama, a similar scheme was set up in 2013, a university called the University of Northern New Jersey. And as part of that scheme, which was set up by ICE, the visas of over a thousand students were revoked. And there were also indictments of 21 other middlemen who were involved. So we've seen schemes like this before, but with increased attention on ICE and movements like Abolish ICE, which are also part of a larger scheme to corner immigrants.

And some policies that have been carried out under the Trump administration have really furthered that goal. More after the break. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained. Michael from Toronto, we've had you on the show a few times now talking about your KiwiCo subscription that you got from your daughter Jillian, who went to KiwiCo.com slash explain where you can try KiwiCo out for your first month for free. Your first crate was a pinball machine. What was your second crate? Second one was a coin sorting machine. Nice. The booklet that comes with it gives a little more history into coins and structures and how the machine actually works. This is one that has a, it's battery run,

so it's got a little motor that comes with it. And when it's all together, it uses a different type of logic. It goes into a whole description of conditional logic. That's how it's based and how that ties into the digital age we are now in. So it's based and how that ties into the digital age we are now in. So it's really, really quite impressive. Yeah, and maybe more practical for you than your grandkids this time because you have adult money. Yeah, I can use the sword coins, not just them. But no, I just, I was looking at the book right now on the coin sorting machine,

and I don't see any reference to age at all. Just a timeless little construction. Michael, I think you should work for KiwiCo. Do you want to come out of retirement to go work for them? You could be their ambassador. I'm not looking for work, but certainly

these kinds of things to occupy a bit of time and play with the grandkids is really great. Nicole, I think we hear a lot about ICE arresting immigrants, undocumented immigrants, but less about these sort of unorthodox tactics. What are the other ways ICE is sort of cornering people and even deporting them? Historically, ICE hasn't been allowed to enter places that are deemed sensitive locations, and that includes places like schools, churches, courthouses. But there have been some changes in policy where we're seeing ICE agents show up at places like courthouses

or at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, where people are going for interviews to gain lawful status. So you're saying that someone might be in the process of becoming a documented immigrant at a USCIS office, and ICE might show up, what, while they're standing in line somewhere and arrest them? Yeah, they could be face-to-face with a USCIS officer and be arrested in that circumstance. So, for example, people that I've come across have usually been unauthorized immigrants who may be married to a U.S. citizen and can apply for a green card, which would allow them to stay in the U.S. permanently. But in those situations, they've showed up to their interviews for their green cards at USCIS

and have been arrested by ICE. And ultimately deported in some cases? In some cases, yes. What are the effects of arresting people who are trying to do this the legit way? You don't want to create a distrust in law enforcement. And a lot of experts that I've talked to say that the practice of showing up at courthouses and arresting people at their appointments with USCIS will foster that kind of distrust. You want people to show up when they are trying to make themselves legal immigrants. The Farmington thing happened in Michigan.

There was this New Jersey case that was similar from a few years ago. Where are these USCIS things happening? Is that all across the country or one specific city or what? Yeah, it's happening all across the country. I think there might be some differentiations in terms of how individual offices try to tackle this issue, but for the most part, it seems to be allowed nationwide. Is there a place where you're more at risk of becoming sort of duped by ICE or are people, for example, in so-called sanctuary cities safe from this kind of stuff? Sanctuary cities try to limit the local community's contact with ICE. And in some cases, they've been successful in doing that. But the problem is, is if ICE wants to carry out an

enforcement sweep where they're trying to weed out undocumented immigrants or show up at courthouses, there's a limit to how much the state can do to kind of prevent those situations. For example, in Oakland, there was an enforcement sweep that the Oakland mayor had been alerted to, and she consequently told everyone in the community about it so that they could make sure to make the necessary preparation. But due to the reliability of my sources and the fact that I received this from multiple sources, I felt that it was my duty to share the information. We will continue to dispel the ugly myth that many are perpetuating about our immigrant community.

So there are these cases of states and municipalities trying to really combat these kinds of extraordinary enforcement actions. And in fact, some states have really tried to pass laws that would enshrine that kind of protection in law. So in California, for example, we've seen over the last year or so them implementing a few sanctuary state laws that would have prevented ICE agents from accessing, for example, the private areas of a business that would make it more difficult for them to arrest people in those places. But there's a limit to how much states can do. And is the Trump administration pushing back on that law that California passed? Yes. So the Trump administration has filed a lawsuit challenging those series of laws, but so far has been pretty much unsuccessful. I imagine some people hear about these situations with the University of Farmington and say someone's showing up to present their case at a USCIS office or at a hearing and being arrested and think, that sounds like entrapment. That sounds like they were

tricked. What legally counts as entrapment? Are these approaches legal? So we would, I think, have to wait for the outcome of any particular lawsuits that might be filed by students who have been implicated in this scheme to really understand whether this is legal or not. But the legal definition of entrapment is basically the government has to induce someone to commit a crime when they weren't previously disposed to commit a crime. And the students are arguing that that's exactly what's happened to them here. What about in the case of, say, showing up to present your case at a USCIS office and then being arrested? Could that be deemed entrapment or some sort of trick? The ACLU, which has been arguing a case in connection to those arrests at USCIS offices, has classified this as a form of entrapment, but it's not

immediately clear how legally that will play out. But these cases have not been decided? No, they haven't. So you mentioned that both this Farmington situation in Michigan and people showing up at USCIS who are trying to attain documentation, they're both examples of ICE sort of policing legal immigration. Do we have any idea how those approaches and schemes, if you will, are affecting legal immigration? Yeah, this is part of a larger concerted effort to clamp down on legal immigration. And we don't have really hard numbers on the USCIS arrests, but we do know that over the last two years, we've seen a consistent decline in the number of foreign students

who are choosing to enroll in U.S. universities. So I think we can draw some pretty direct parallels there between policies like creating these fake universities and also other sort of roadblocks on student visas and the decline in the number of foreign students. So if the Trump administration's goal here is to deter legal immigration, it's working. We're seeing some sort of systemic roadblocks to legal immigration here. And all of these enforcement actions are parts of that. And that's largely informed by the policies of Stephen Miller and some right-wing restrictionist immigration groups who have been lobbying for these kinds of systemic roadblocks for a long time. So this is really a realization

of what they've been calling for for years. Thanks for listening to the show today. Thanks to KiwiCo for supporting the show today. Thanks to Michael for his love of coin sorting and his KiwiCo crates and his grandchildren and his daughter Jillian. KiwiCo is offering you the chance to get your first month of KiwiCo for free. To redeem that offer,

go to KiwiCo.com slash explained.