US busts illegal immigration racket, 10 Indians held

US authorities on Tuesday announced the arrest of 10 people from India and 11 from China for alleged visa fraud involving college admissions, with the likely deportation of hundreds of Indian students.

The accused used a phony university in New Jersey to grant certification needed for legitimate student and work visas but were not aware it was run by federal agents investigating them.

Authorities said defendants helped over 1,000 foreign students stay in the US with papers provided to them from the phony institution, University of Northern New Jersey (UNNJ).

The accused are charged with visa fraud and making false statements - each carrying a sentence of five years - and H-1B visa fraud and harbouring aliens, each carrying 10 years.

Authorities are cancelling non-immigrant student visas of foreign nationals who benefitted from the racket, and, if applicable, arrest them and start deportation proceedings against them.

The Indian Embassy in Washington is in touch with the US government about Indians among these students - around 370 to 380, according to official sources - seeking fair treatment for them.

The embassy has requested the US government to not arrest or deport them, and give them a chance instead to keep their student visa by transferring to another university.

''This has been done before in the case of Tri-Valley (a fake California university busted by authorities in 2011 for running a pay-to-stay student visa racket),'' said an official in Delhi.

The embassy is also awaiting consular access to those among the arrested who hold Indian passports - going by their names, 10 of them seemed to be Indian or of Indian descent.

Students from India have been found enrolled in vast numbers in almost every fake university busted in recent years - Tri-Valley in 2011 and University of Northern Virginia in 2013.

In late 2015, US authorities deported hundreds of Indian students headed for two California universities from the airport itself, San Francisco, and in some cases from their stopovers.

Most of these universities operate as fronts from pay-to-stay operations, selling I-20s -''Certificate of Eligibility for Nonimmigrant (F-1) Student Status - for Academic and Language Students, needed to get a student F-1 visa.

This time agents of Homeland Security Investigations (a wing of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration) started one as part of a sting operation.

Set up in 2013, UNNJ had no instructors or educators, no curriculum, and conducted no classes or education activities, said a statement from the office of US attorney for New Jersey.

The university, which ''operated solely as a storefront location with small offices staffed by federal agents posing as school administrators'', could issue I-20s, however.

That brought them the defendants, recruiting companies, brokers and business entities located from all over the country - New Jersey, California, Illinois, New York, and Virginia.

Everyone involved - recruiting agents and their clients, mostly from India and China - knew UNNJ was a phony university. Only, this one was being run by undercover federal agents.

Defendants are charged with producing false documents to facilitate their clients' enrolment at UNNJ and also arrange for H-1B visas meant for highly skilled foreign workers.

Beneficiaries were mostly those already in the US on valid visas. Enrolment and work permit through UNNJ allowed them to continue staying through illegal means.