Fraud in immigration courts, often the last stop before deportation for illegal immigrants, has reached 58 percent.
And in many cases lawyers playing games with the system are to blame, according to a longtime expert.
Andrew R. Arthur, a former immigration official who served eight years as an immigration judge, told a House Judiciary subcommittee that lawyers violate laws and even coach clients to lie to beat deportation and gain asylum.
“A number of immigration practitioners have been charged in high-profile cases in connection with the filing of fraudulent asylum applications,” Arthur said in a written statement that included examples.
He cited one recent court study that found rampant fraud in a random sampling of 239 cases. “While 72 (or 30 percent) of the cases did not contain any fraud indicators, 138 (or 58 percent) ‘exhibited possible indicators of fraud,'” he said, quoting the report.
In one investigation, he said, 3,709 illegal immigrants won their cases because of legal fraud. And in another more than 1,900 Indonesians “were coached to tell asylum officers or immigration judges false stories of beatings or rapes they endured in Indonesia at the hands of Muslims because they were either ethnic Chinese or Christians.”
Unfortunately, he said, judges are so overworked that detecting fraud is difficult. Consider, said Arthur, that 542,411 cases are pending before 302 immigration judges, or about 1,800 cases per judge.
The answer, he said, is obvious. “The best way to ensure that the judges hearing asylum claims are familiar with the record in each case is to hire more judges,” Arthur said.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
