Immigration Policies Invite Robberies, Visa Fraud with Dangled Work Permits

Illegal migrants are staging robberies at their own illegal workplaces to get work permits and the life-changing bonanza of green cards and U.S. citizenship.

The latest example emerged in Massachusetts where prosecutors have arrested two Indian-born men who were hired to conduct fake robberies of Indian illegal workers at roughly 19 workplaces so the claimed victims could get U Visas and work permits from a federal program for crime victims.

“This is a common practice — mainly among Indians — to qualify for a U Visa,” said Jay Palmer, c0founder of The Forced Labor Project and a former immigration adviser to President Donald Trump’s administration.

Palmer works with many Indian migrants, and told Breitbart News:

They’ll hire someone to rob them at gunpoint — and even cause physical violence against them — with a witness. Sometimes the witness is a family member. Then family members — who are normally illegal too — will file [for a visa] claiming emotional distress or for a T Visa for [people who are] helping the police solve a crime.

Many want to be harmed, physically harmed, in order to get a hospital report. Many times, they’ll go to the emergency room where there is an Indian doctor there that relates to them. Sometimes the doctors are … coerced into overstating or exaggerating the injuries.

Once they apply for it, they can get biometrics [identity documents] and an Employment Authorization Document … [for] up to five years. They’re buying time to be legal to work in the United States while hoping and praying for some type of mass amnesty — and this comes straight from Indians — or some type of immigration reform that will make people who have been over here illegally or have overstayed their [temporary visa] welcome … to get some path to citizenship.

Even the application for a U Visa helps illegals evade deportation, Palmer said. “It’s like a parole [status] and if you get stopped [while driving] and you get questioned, you’ve got a case number and [when the cop] enters the case number into the databases it shows as ‘Case pending.'”

Many illegals also invent a story to explain why they are in the country, Palmer said:

The typical story goes like this: “I came over and my passports were stolen. I was scared to report the robbery because I was scared I would be immediately deported and I didn’t have all my information. So I stayed here and I got thrown into labor trafficking and I worked at so-and-so’s hotel, or I worked in a’ convenience store, then I was robbed at the convenience store. And I’m looking for a visa because I’ve been a victim twice.”

Migration fraud is commonplace because the potential payoff is huge for the illegals, their employers, and participating lawyers — but also because officials and local police have little incentive to fight the problem.

For example, successful fraud allows ambitious young men and women to leap from their impoverished and backward home countries into a wealthier life in the United States. The fraud also allows them to win citizenship for all of their future descendants, provide citizenship to many other people in their home countries, and skyrocket their social status in their home district.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is run by a pro-migration zealot, Alejandro Mayorkas. He has appointed like-minded advocates throughout the agencies, and since 2021, they have been using the U Visa program to sneak lucrative work permits to illegal migrants who claim to have been victims of crime. By September 30, more than 340,000 migrants had filed for U Visas even though only 10,000 U Visas are distributed each year.

Mayorkas also pushed the same pro-fraud policy when he was a top official in President Barack Obama’s DHS.

In January 2022, the Inspector General at the Department of Homeland Security reported that the DHS’ U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office showed little interest in countering the fraud:

First, USCIS did not fully address U visa program fraud risks. We identified 10 USCIS approved petitions with forged, unauthorized, altered or suspicious law enforcement certifications. USCIS also did not track outcomes of U visa program fraud referrals. As a result, individuals may be discouraged from reporting suspected fraud and USCIS may miss opportunities to address fraud risks in the program.

The newest example was revealed on December 29, when the Department of Justice announced that two “New York men” were paid to stage eight robberies so that the supposed workplace victims could win work permits and green cards from Mayorkas’ Department of Homeland Security:

According to the charging documents, starting in March 2023, [Rambhai] Patel [born 1987] and his co-conspirators, including at times [Balwinder] Singh [born 1984], set up and carried out staged armed robberies of at least eight convenience/liquor stores and fast food restaurants across the United States, including at least four in Massachusetts. It is alleged that the purpose of the staged robberies was to allow the clerks present to claim that they were victims of a violent crime on an application for U nonimmigration status (U Visa). A U Visa is available to victims of certain crimes who have suffered mental or physical abuse and who have been helpful to law enforcement in the investigation or prosecution of criminal activity.

In the course of the alleged staged robberies, the “robber” would threaten store clerks and/or owners with an apparent firearm before taking cash from the register and fleeing, while the interaction was captured on store surveillance video. The clerks and/or owners would then wait five or more minutes until the “robber” had escaped before calling police to report the “crime.”  The “victims” are alleged to have each paid Patel to participate in the scheme. In turn, Patel allegedly paid the store owners for the use of their stores for the staged robbery.

The complaint notes, “Investigators have learned that this scheme is not unique. In at least two other jurisdictions, within the past few years, individuals have staged armed robberies, with the consent of the apparent victims, so that the “victims” could later apply for U-visas.”

The complaint says:

In early 2023, PATEL hired CW-1 to do construction at PATEL’s home in New York, which CW-1 did. Soon thereafter, PATEL told CW-1 that he had a job that would pay $1,500. PATEL explained to CW-1 that he would be going into stores to commit robberies and that the people inside the stores would be aware that they were going to be robbed. Furthermore, PATEL advised CW-1 that some of the people who acted as victims did not work at the store and traveled from out of state to take part in the staged robbery. CW-1 explained that those people posing as victims were doing so to “get papers” to allow them to stay in the country. PATEL told CW-1 that the victims would not call the police when CW-1 committed the robberies, but CW-1 later saw on the news that victims were in fact calling police after the robberies. At least initially, CW-1 had not expected the police to be called at all.

CW-1 said that each victim paid PATEL $10,000 to take part in the staged robberies for the purpose of receiving “papers.” PATEL knew the store owners and the store owners allowed their respective stores to be used for the staged robberies. CW-1 understood that the store owners were fully aware of the robberies. PATEL paid each owner $1,500 to $2,000 to use the store for a robbery.

CW-1 said that during most of the robberies, CW-1 communicated with PATEL via a Bluetooth headset. During the staged robberies, PATEL would be in contact with the target store’s owner or an employee who would notify PATEL when the store was empty. PATEL would in turn instruct CW-1 to go inside to “commit” the robbery.

…

Furthermore, investigators believe that PATEL had direct access to a store insider and/or the store’s video surveillance system to coordinate the timing of the prospective robbery.

Federal agents monitored text messages between the supposed robbers and the business owners in October 2023:

[Cooperating Witness] CW-1 to Patel: “When go tell me”

Patel to CW-I: “Ok.”

CW-1 to Patel: “No one inside how many people”

CW-1 to Patel: “Check that”

Patel to CW-1: “One old lady and 1 guy inside”

CW-1 to Patel: “Soon they leave tell me”

Patel to CW-1: “Lady leaving”

Patel to CW-1: “Ok”

Patel to CW-1: “Leaving soon both”

The criminal complaint provided a list of the confirmed robberies:

However, the complaint also noted that “there are an approximately 11 additional robberies, beyond those listed, under investigation as potentially being linked to the SUBJECT PERSONS and the scheme outlined herein. ”

If convicted on the fraud charges, the two current defendants can be jailed for up to five years and be fined up to $250,000.

The number of fraud cases is also rising because Biden is admitting many illegal migrants on temporary status who have the incentive and U.S. wages to organize citizenship fraud. For example, Mayorkas has admitted roughly 200,000 Indian migrants and 100,000 Chinese migrants since 2021. There is no official evidence that significant numbers of those migrants have been sent home.

Biden is also admitting many legal migrants who then import illegal migrants to work for low wages at their businesses. For example. this illegal hiring is common among foreign managers who are imported with low-cost E-2 visas to run franchised hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and corner stores.

The result is a rapid growth of Indian illegal migrants throughout the United States. The population is expected to soon reach 1 million as Indian smugglers send more migrants along semi-legal “donkey routes” to the United States, Europe, and Australia. The population flow is so large that Bollywood is making movies about the movement:

The migration has created a growing number of foreign-run business islands inside the United States, said Palmer. The islands are growing because the foreign firms cooperate with each other, often ignore laws, and share cheap foreign employees under foreign workplace practices, such as a reliance on tax avoidance and foreign banking systems, he said.

The U Visa fraud occurs within these Indian economic islands, said Palmer. “A lot of these people are convenience store owners and hospitality and hotel owners who’ve come over on [temporary] F-1 [student] visas or B-1 [visitor visas] and overstayed their welcome,” he said. “It is widespread.”

Lawyers for the supposed victims in seven of the eight robberies filed paperwork for green cards, the charging document notes, saying “the PATEL PHONE was in contact with a telephone number that record checks indicated was associated with that attorney.”

Many of the foreign migrants are being used or imported to operate foreign-owned criminal enterprises, such as marijuana farms and telephone scams.

These expanding foreign economic islands overcome nearby law-abiding American companies who are disadvantaged by their compliance with tax laws and federal safety, health, and employment regulations, he said.

The economic islands also exile U.S. workers and American managers, partly because each of the foreign firms cannot survive an American whistleblower.

The government-supported migrant inflow is so unpopular among ordinary Americans that half of the public regards it as an “invasion” that burdens and threatens Americans and their society.