ICE arrests 90 more students at fake university in Michigan

[Aquaria]

16. Here's the illegal activity committed by the "students" that was omitted:

"While 'enrolled' at the University, one hundred percent of the foreign citizen students never spent a single second in a classroom. If it were truly about obtaining an education, the University would not have been able to attract anyone, because it had no teachers, classes, or educational services."

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Rampeesa arrived in the U.S. legally a few years ago on a student visa and earned in 2016 a master's degree in computer science at Northwestern Polytechnic University. But the university later lost its accreditation, which put his immigration status in jeopardy. He had spent $40,000 in tuition and fees for his studies at the university.

"He was desperate to find a way to stay in the United States," Rampeesa's attorney, Cal, wrote in his sentencing memo. He wanted to get a Ph.D. in computer science, she said.

Rampeesa then met Sama, who recruited him to attend the University of Farmington and told him he could get tuition credits if he recruited other students, Cal said.

Sama and Rampeesa were working with people they thought were university officials, but were actually undercover agents for the Department of Homeland Security.

"My client has no other criminal history, not even a traffic ticket," Cal said in court last week.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Baker said in court that Rampeesa was "aware it was completely fake," that "it was just for maintaining status."

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So it was a little more complicated than the big bad government luring students to a fake university. That this so-called school never held any classes, offered no instruction and had zero professors of any kind was a huge honking signal that it was a fake. The people who kept paying "tuition" did so to maintain their student visas, even though they weren't students.

And that is illegal.

Yes, some people did get lured in and left the school when they realized it was a scam, only to get slammed by ICE for being here on illegitimate (at the time) student visas--and that part of the sting is wrong. But the college's recruiters and people who stayed on despite the scam? They knew what the score was, and played along, anyway, for their own selfish reasons.

ICE deserves much of the criticism it gets, but this is one occasion when it's not entirely warranted. Scams like this fake university go on all the time to provide a fig leaf of being here for a legit reason. It's not fair to the innocents who get lured in by these fake colleges, only to get ripped off. They pay good money to be in school here, and deserve to get the education they pay for, rather than used for some assholes to stay here on illegitimate visas.