NEW YORK, NEW YORK, July 17, 2007: (HPI note: Religious organizations are one type of group being verified by this fraud detection unit.) It was the kind of Brooklyn neighborhood where an unmarked car with government plates drew hostile stares, and a badge emblazoned with the words “immigration officer” could cause a panic. “Just keep smiling,” Tamika Gray, an immigration officer, said aloud to herself as she steered the car under the elevated tracks in Bushwick, meeting the suspicious gaze of a young man hanging out between Dominican Hair and Myrtle Live Poultry. “I’m not here to drag you anywhere.” Ms. Gray, the rookie in the tiny Fraud Detection and National Security unit at federal immigration headquarters in Lower Manhattan, was pursuing the unit’s distinctive kind of law enforcement. No guns. No raids. Just a little New York street smarts and shoe leather to uncover all types of deception, case by case, in the endless stream of visa applications. Deceivers come in many guises. The “multinational corporation” sponsoring a foreign manager to handle nonexistent millions. The “lawyer” specializing in fleecing desperate immigrants. Bogus newlyweds, would-be citizens hiding criminal records, churches that are really developers’ construction sites, or “condos for Christ,” in the officers’ wry shorthand. The fledgling fraud detection unit is one of the first in a nationwide operation started three years ago by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the visa-issuing arm of the immigration authority recreated in 2003 under the Department of Homeland Security.
At any given time, the unit has more than 500 open cases, some involving multiple files flagged during processing, some chosen through random sampling.
So far, the mother lode of fraud has turned up in visa petitions for religious workers, made by organizations of every size and denomination. In reviewing a representative sampling, the agency found that one in three approved petitions were phony in New York and nationwide. In contrast, the rate of fraud found in petitions to replace a lost green card was less than 1 percent.
While computer databases are often used in fraud detection, spot inspections are just as important. The territory of the six investigators in Mr. Knipper’s office ranges from the city’s roughest neighborhoods to upstate villages like Walden, where Ms. Gray recently paid an unannounced visit to a Buddhist temple. She was glad to find it bona fide after a chat over chai tea and cookies, she said.
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