Indian American attorney Anu Peshawaria said that Department of Homeland Security knowingly allowed the fake farmington university to be set up and misled students.
As per figures provided by US authorities as many as 130 of the 600 students from the fraudulent university i.e University of Farmington were arrested last week.
Out of these 129 were Indians.
Calofornia based immigration attorney said that the undercover operation has devastating consequences for hundred of Indian Students.
Anu Peshawari said “ we are not saying that our students are not at fault. They should have done their due diligence before signing up. If they are perpetrating crime knowingly, they should be punished but if they are trapped or encouraged to commit the crime then we need to help them.”
Since then many of them are released or put under restricted movement and some of them have left the country.
Peshawaria said that “some students are worried that they will have arrest on their record for ever and have lost years of education to no avail.”
She said, “They could be possible blackmail for the rest of their lives. What is surprising is that the university was registered with the education board that authorizes the issuance of I-20s to students, which in turn is approved by the Department of Homeland Security.”
“Department of Homeland Security knowingly allowed the ‘fake university’ to be set up and misled students sitting hundreds of miles away in another country, she said noting that her office has been receiving numerous calls from panic-stricken friends and families of a large number of Indian students which could result in mass deportation. Worse, these students, based on their approved i-20s even got driver licenses from the US Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). This only added another stamp of authenticity to the credentials of the university,”she asserted.
“Given that authorities knew this was a set-up, they should have stopped the students there and then. If they wanted to catch the perpetrators what right do, they have to defraud innocent lives,” Peshawaria said.
She further added “In fact, during this time the government also enjoyed taxes that these consultants paid. Now, they cannot suddenly wake up and decide to put all these people behind bars.”
She said many of the students are devastated because they have huge loans to pay. She said after interacting to some of the students.
“It is all easy to say that students knew what they were doing, did we all know all the laws when we moved to United States that they should get such harsh punishment,” she asked.
She said that, “We are all fighting to release the students immediately. The students are calling me that US govt is forcing them to self deport but they want back their degrees and lost time and compensation for pain and anguish.”
-Sai Kumar
