The Biden administration has killed an innovative immigration enforcement program started during the Obama administration, thus giving alien “students” at a nonexistent university legal status in the U.S. when they should be deported.
There can be no question about the guilt of the aliens; they had documents indicating F visa status, despite the fact that there was no university and no classes. And they knew that the university was fraudulent.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) did something very innovative back in 2016. ICE agents created the University of Northern New Jersey (UNNJ) in an office building in the New York suburbs. It was totally staffed by ICE agents pretending to be educators. It put the word out that it would give aliens foreign student credentials, for a fee, but would provide no instruction; in fact, there were no classrooms.
This would seem to give the aliens the right to work legally in the U.S.
Many students, some recruited by crooked middlemen, signed up and got the papers they wanted without ever having attended a class.
A little later, ICE exposed what it had done and closed down the operation.
Subsequently, ICE must have moved against some of the fake students, and the students, in turn, created a class action suit against the government. They enlisted an all-too-successful immigration lawyer from Florida, Ira J. Kurzban, and sued claiming that they had, in effect, been framed by ICE and that they should not be deported for their crimes.
We have previously suggested that the governor of Florida, who is opposed to illegal migration and who wants talented judges, appoint Kurzban to some high-ranking judicial position that involves no migration issues.
Then, the other day, in one of those “sue-and-settle” situations, as reported by my colleague Rob Law, the Biden administration settled with the “students”, deciding that all should be forgiven, or in legalese:
1. Defendants agree that UNNJ enrollment is not sufficient grounds to find that a class member is
- inadmissible (or has failed to establish his or her admissibility) or ineligible for an immigration benefit due to alleged fraud or willful misrepresentation under INA § 212(a)(6)(C)(I) (8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(C)(I)); or
- deportable for failing to continuously maintain lawful status under INA § 237(a)(1)(C)(I) (8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(C)(I)).
So, despite their obvious guilt, the illegal alien “students” are free of any penalties, and the Obama administration’s effective ploy has come to naught as far as the students are concerned. Some middlemen may have been punished, but that cannot be learned from the government’s press release.
For years, under all administrations, ICE’s sleepy Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) has allowed foreign students (complete with work permits) to attend third- and fourth-rate institutions, even though some of these institutions have not been able to get accredited. Now it has lowered the standard further; in this case, the university does not even have to exist.