A serious, indeed venerable educational institution. This impression should be conveyed by the website of the "University of Farmington". Striving students looking into their books, along with a coat of arms and a Latin university motto: "Scientia et Labor" - knowledge and work.
Who visits the website today, finds a seal of the US Department of Homeland Security between the insignia of the supposed university. The homepage was removed by the ministry, more precisely by its immigration and customs authority ICE.
universityoffarmington.edu
The website of the "University of Farmington" has been shut down by the border guard ICE
The border guards themselves launched the facility in the state of Michigan in early 2016, not for educational purposes, but as part of a sophisticated police operation. The result: 250 foreign students, mostly Indians, have since been arrested. The report several US media, citing the authority.
The arrests took place between January and July, most of them in February. The ICE operation became known at the end of January in the wake of a dishonor of court records.
Almost 80 percent of the 250 detainees had left the US in the meantime, after they had been granted the "voluntary departure," according to the ICE reports. Of the remaining persons, about half received a final deportation order; the other half is legally against the deportation.
The arrested persons had entered the US legally: with a so-called F1 visa for students. This they had received after they had been admitted to real studies at real colleges.
Deception of the authorities or deception by the authorities?
Her subsequent enrollment at Farmington University, the accusation of investigators and prosecutors, would serve only one purpose: to get a matriculation certificate to continue living and working in the US with a student visa. They were never concerned with actually studying.
The large sums that the foreign students paid - $ 8,500 per year or $ 11,000 for graduates - were therefore not tuition fees, but the purchase price for the right to stay. They knew from the outset that the whole thing was a scam. As a justification, the prosecution points out that there were no lessons or teaching staff at the supposed university.
Chris Carlson / AP
ICE officials in Los Angeles (early 2018): Trump raves about the border guards, many leftists want to abolish the authority
In addition to the students, the authorities arrested eight middlemen in January. The accusation: they had recruited the former, given them shelter and forged documents to enrich themselves. Seven of them have pleaded guilty and been convicted. According to the prosecutor, the recruiters collected more than $ 250,000 for their work - though not knowing that the money came from undercover agents from the immigration department.
ICE officials praise the peculiar tactic: "Undercover colleges" uniquely revealed how "students and recruiters" abused the visa system, the Washington Post quoted from an agency statement.
Attorney Rahul Reddy, who represented some of the arrested students, speaks of a trap in which one enticed his clients. The students are victims of officials who have "hunted for them," he told the "Detroit Free Press." According to Reddy, some of the students were arrested even though they had left Farmington University after realizing there were no classes taking place there.
ICE and the Trump presidency
As pugnacious as the method is, it is neither new nor an expression of a tightened immigration policy under Donald Trump. In the state of New Jersey, undercover investigators had once founded a fake university and subsequently arrested more than 20 people. That was 2016, before Trump took office. The undercover action in Michigan was also launched during the Obama presidency.
The news of the arrests, however, falls at a time when the role of ICE is fiercely contested.
Erik McGregor / LightRocket / Getty Images
Protesters in New York (September 2019): "Get rid of ICE"
On the one hand are Trump and his supporters: The President had made the protection of borders and the fight against irregular immigration in 2015/16 his central election promise. To this day, he prefers to fall back on hardly any topic to whip his base. When Trump talks about ICE officials, it is usually in a tone of worship: they are "strong" and "great," "heroes" and "patriots."
In the camp of the Trump opponents, the immigration police, however, hated a few. This aversion also shows in the case of the Undercover University. ICE calls fake universities into a trap to lure students into tying Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Democratic congressman, a favorite of the party left, had compared the ICE detention centers on the US border in Mexico with concentration camps in the summer. The operation in Michigan prompted her to call for the abolition of the authority again.
Abolish ICE. https://t.co/9uMtKmyEI1
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 27, 2019The case has also arrived in the presidential campaign of 2020: Elizabeth Warren, one of the promising candidates for the Democrats, criticized the action of the immigration police. This was "cruel and horrible," wrote Warren on Facebook.