ICE Sting Enraging Liberals Was Actually Started Under Obama
Here’s a pro tip for any liberal about to type out a rage-tweet about some perfidy committed by the Trump administration against immigrants: Check if it originated under Trump.
If it does, great. Knock yourself out. Get your thesaurus app running and look up synonyms for “disgrace.” See where you can throw some references to white supremacy in. Good times, right?
If it didn’t, just go back to Netflix. Trust me, I’ve seen how this ends, and it’s usually not well.
Remember “caging children?” Remember that heart-rending photograph of a child behind a chain-link fence who was being detained after illegally coming into the United States? Yes, it turns out that photo was actually from the Obama administration, which is somewhat of an issue if you’re going to get yourself in a lather over this.
The same thing happened when liberal luminaries across Twitter were incensed at a Wednesday report that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement sting had involved a fake university offering to extend student visas.
According to the Detroit Free Press, the sting involved individuals who had arrived in the United States on student visas and wanted to stay — but weren’t engaged in study. Instead, they were enrolled at a sham university called the University of Farmington in metropolitan Detroit, which purportedly offered graduate programs in technology and computer studies but was actually just a “pay to stay” farm.
The only problem, of course, was that it was run by ICE. The sting has ended with roughly 250 people being arrested, 90 in recent months.
The Detroit office of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations said that of those arrested, “nearly 80% were granted voluntary departure and departed the United States.”
Seven of the eight individuals who would recruit the people to the university have also pleaded guilty.
Here’s a short Twitter roster of exactly who you might think would blindly tweet their outrage over something like this blindly tweeting their outrage over this:
This is cruel and appalling. These students simply dreamed of getting the high-quality higher education America can offer. ICE deceived and entrapped them, just to deport them. https://t.co/t6kQLiV5oh
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) November 27, 2019
Earlier this year, Congress rushed to approve BILLIONS more $ for ICE + CBP.
I saw members voting YES w/o even a summary of the bill. Nobody cared then how we’d pay for it.
Now ICE is setting up fake universities to trap students.
Yet we were called radical for opposing it.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 27, 2019
Abolish ICE. https://t.co/9uMtKmyEI1
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 27, 2019
OH MY GOD.
ICE has arrested about 250 students who were enrolled at a fake university set up by ICE to lure in students.https://t.co/2P8iZtnMGB
— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) November 27, 2019
Trump & ICE have a lot in common… racism, heartlessness, fake universities… https://t.co/2WbVDmjmCY
— Brent Toderian (@BrentToderian) November 28, 2019
So ICE created a fake university, lured foreign students to attend, deported everyone, but kept the tuition money. This is after posting on the Department ot Homeland Security website that the university was real and getting it accredited by a real accreditation body. Entrapment.
— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) November 27, 2019
Leave it to the Trump administration to use a fake university—this time, to trick immigrants into forking over cash for fake classes and invalidating their legal visas in the process. They ended up arrested by ICE. How is this anything but entrapment? https://t.co/O5JnXwB0Mw
— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) November 28, 2019
So, yeah, you’ve probably guessed the kicker here — this started during the Obama administration, not under Trump:
ICE began this outrageous fake college entrapment scheme in 2015. ICE did the same thing to over 1,000 students in New Jersey in 2016 (they opened the fake New Jersey college in 2013). #ThanksObama https://t.co/ZMUIID9qri
— Ben Spielberg (@BenSpielberg) November 28, 2019
That’s activist Ben Spielberg, noting the case of the University of Northern New Jersey.
UNNJ was created by ICE, just like the University of Farmington. According to BuzzFeed News, the sting began in 2013 and led to 21 individuals who acted as brokers and middlemen being charged.
In addition, the “students” all had their visas terminated and flagged for fraud — a problem if they ever wished to return to the United States.
At the time, Louis Farrell, then the director of ICE’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program, said students “should be wary of any recruiter who promises they can work without restrictions while attending school.”
Yes, this made news, but it didn’t cause outrage. The Democratic Party didn’t have its knives out for the Obama administration or Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Yet, now it’s “cruel and appalling,” according to a front-runner for the Democratic nomination.
In the University of Farmington case, assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Helms said in a sentencing memo for one of the recruiters that the nature of the sham was clear to everyone involved.
“Their true intent could not be clearer,” the memo read. “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.”
And while the University of Farmington case is making headlines now, even that particular sting operation appears to have Obama-era origins.
“Records filed with the state Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) show that the University of Farmington was incorporated in January 2016,” the Free Press reported.
Unsurprisingly, none of this was ever mentioned in one of those tweets above. Curious, that.
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