Federal agents continue to arrest foreign students at the University of Farmington, a fake university created by the Department of Homeland Security in the metro Detroit area, according to a report from the Detroit Free Press.
Since January, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have arrested approximately 250 students through the fake school.
A majority of the foreign-born students were from India, with many of the arrested students being deported to their home country. Some of the students are contesting their removal from the country, however, after being duped by the school that offered graduate programs in technology and computer studies.
From the report:
Out of the approximately 250 students arrested on administrative charges, “nearly 80% were granted voluntary departure and departed the United States,” the Detroit office of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) told the Free Press in a statement Tuesday.
Out of the remaining 20%, about half of them have received a final order of removal; some of them were ordered removed by an immigration judge, and others “were given an expedited removal by U.S. Customs and Border Protection,” said HSI Detroit.
Predictably, attorneys for the students who were arrested believe they were unfairly trapped by the government.
7 of 8 recruiters at the fake school were charged and pleaded guilty.
The Department of Homeland Security has since taken the official website for the University of Farmington offline with a new landing page that simply reads: The University of Farmington has been closed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”
At a time where immigration issues are a major point of focus and top issue in the political landscape, this will reopen the conversation about how unfairly foreign nationals are being treated in the United States and will cause lawmakers to take another look at immigration laws. Changes need to be made, but sting operations at fake universities are not the appropriate way to go.