A top federal Department of Homeland Security investigator stands trial today on felony charges that he helped his illegal immigrant girlfriend live in the United States unlawfully.
The case against Lloyd Miner, an internal affairs chief for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, stems from the high-profile investigation into former Homeland Security supervisor Robert Schofield, the immigration official who pleaded guilty to accepting hundreds of thousands in cash bribes in exchange for creating phony visas, green cards and citizenship documents. Authorities said Miner knew that his girlfriend, Tsomorlig Batjargal, a native of Mongolia, was an illegal immigration and helped to obtain fake identifications to hide her immigration status. Miner, 49, faces a maximum of 25 years in prison. He has been on unpaid leave since December 2006.
His attorney, John E. Gullette, said Miner was targeted because of his high-profile position and because his superiors believed Miner was passing embarrassing information about the agency to anti-immigration advocates.
Miner didn’t know that his fiancé was living here illegally, and it would be illegal for him to use his position to check on her status, Gullette said.
“This is ‘boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, and boy asks her to move in with him,’ ” Gullette said. “There’s no crime in falling in love.”
Prosecutors alleged incourt documents that Miner paid for a plane ticket to fly Batjargal to Washington state to obtain a fraudulent driver’s license from the Northwestern state.
Miner became a subject of the Schofield investigation after authorities obtained photos that showed him and Schofield together at a party in the Philippines, a government source told The Examiner. Schofield, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered to repay the $3.1 million earned through the illegal enterprise, is expected to testify on behalf of the government during the trial. Schofield’s 2006 arrest was a black eye to the immigration service. He had been disciplined for his relations with Asian women — including an affair with a prostitute that derailed a federal investigation of a Chinese gangster.
When confronted about that relationship, Schofield fled to East Asia, where he made $36,000 worth of unauthorized purchases on his government-issued credit card, according to court documents.
