A New York-based lawyer has pled guilty to charges of partaking in an immigration fraud scheme by trying to illegally quicken asylum statuses.
Kofi Amankwaa, a 70-year-old lawyer from the Bronx, had been charging asylum seekers in the city up to $6,000 in order to cheat the system through a loophole by having them claim they were victims of domestic abuse. Federal prosecutors said he faces over a decade in prison and $16 million in restitution.
Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement that Amankwaa oversaw a massive fraud scheme that undermined America’s immigration system.
“For years, Kofi Amankwaa oversaw a massive immigration fraud scheme, filing thousands of immigration documents falsely alleging that his clients were victims of abuse by their children or other family members,” Williams said.
“Amankwaa’s actions undermined our U.S. immigration system, exploited VAWA — a law that allows noncitizen victims of domestic abuse a path to lawful permanent residence status — and victimized vulnerable clients in the process,” Williams continued. “[Tuesday’s] guilty plea highlights this office’s dedication to holding accountable those who abuse the trust placed in them as attorneys.”
Prosecutors claim that Amankwaa had “charged migrants between $3,000 and $6,000 to file phony petitions claiming they were abused by their children, triggering a regulation that fast-tracked their ability to travel overseas despite lacking legal status — and ultimately making it easier to establish residency,” per the New York Post.
“Under the scam, migrants who claimed they were abused could qualify to legally travel overseas despite not having legal US residency, the feds said,” added the NY Post. “Upon returning, he would claim their ‘advanced parole travel’ status qualified them for legal residency more quickly.”
America’s ongoing crisis with immigration has brought with it conditions enabling fraud. As Fox News reported this week, the Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) just recently “restarted a messy immigration program it had paused a month earlier due to fraud concerns.”
“An internal DHS report found in mid-July that the CHNV (Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans) parole program was overrun with fraud,” reported the outlet.
“The program allows up to 30,000 nationals from those four countries to enter the United States each month if sponsored by a person or entity inside the country. But DHS discovered that thousands of the sponsors for these migrants had listed fake Social Security numbers, home addresses or phone numbers,” it added.