California Supreme Court Closes Warrantless Vehicle Search Loophole

Privacy

from the which-leaves-cops-with-only-another-half-dozen-they-can-use dept

The California Supreme Court has overturned 17 years of questionable case law, restoring a bit of the Fourth for drivers in the state. (via Courthouse News)

For nearly two decades, state law enforcement officers were able to search a vehicle without a warrant if the driver could not provide identification. While traveling on public roads in your car lowers your expectation of privacy, vehicle searches still require reasonable suspicion of criminal activity at the very least. Officers have a few other options to bypass warrant requirements, including inventory searches if the vehicle is being impounded and the ever-popular “probable cause of four legs” K-9 units to bypass warrant requirements.

California judicial precedent gave officers another way around warrant requirements by allowing searches of vehicles if the driver didn’t have their ID on them. That’s no longer the case in California, thanks to this recent ruling [PDF].

In this case, a vehicle search following demands for identification resulted in officers discovering methamphetamine in the driver’s purse. That evidence — along with this terrible precedent — is no longer usable by law enforcement.

The trial court said the search was unconstitutional because none of the acceptable justifications for vehicle searches incident to arrest were in use here.

Gant held that a vehicle search incident to arrest is justified only if it is reasonable to believe the suspect can gain access to weapons inside the vehicle or that evidence of the offense of arrest might be found inside the vehicle. (Id. at p. 335.) Here, Lopez was handcuffed at the rear of her car when the search took place and could not reach any weapons inside the car. Nor was there any likelihood a search of the car would produce evidence of Lopez’s driving without a license in her possession.

The appeals court reversed the decision, citing the traffic-stop-identification-search-warrant exception created by the state Supreme Court in its 2002 decision (in re Arturo D.), which predated the US Supreme Court’s Gant decision cited by the trial court by seven years.

The state court says the US Supreme Court’s Gant decision is controlling here. It changed the contours of traffic stops and searches seven years after its own decision in Arturo. It defers to the top court in the land here.

It is important to remember that the question before us is a question of federal constitutional law, not one of state law. In matters of federal law, the United States Supreme Court has the final word; we operate as an intermediate court and not as a court of last resort.

Leaving the Arturo precedent untouched would force California to remain the odd state out in the Union.

To reaffirm the exception now would leave California out of step not only with United States Supreme Court precedent, but also with every other jurisdiction in the nation.

This doesn’t mean cops will never be able to engage in warrantless searches when questions of identification remain unanswered. Officers can still ask for consent to search. Officers can also ask for personal info and attempt to verify that info using their access to drivers’ databases. And, if officers have good reason to believe the person is lying, they can use the law forbidding providing false information as justification to search the car for evidence of that crime — i.e., something identifying the driver as someone other than who they say they are.

New precedent is created here — one that affirms the ruling handed down in 2009 by the US Supreme Court:

[W]e now hold the Fourth Amendment does not contain an exception to the warrant requirement for searches to locate a driver’s identification following a traffic stop. To the extent it created such an exception, In re Arturo D., supra, 27 Cal.4th 60, is overruled and should no longer be followed.

California rejoins the Fourth Amendment, already in progress. California cops will just have to use other workarounds to dodge the few Constitutional rights they’re willing to recognize from now on.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, california, california supreme court, warrantless vehicle search

Another Federal Court Says Compelled Production Of Fingerprints To Unlock A Phone Doesn't Violate The Constitution

Legal Issues

from the must-be-going-so-dark-fingerprint-readers-won't-even-work dept

Where the Fifth Amendment ends for device owners largely seems to be determined by their favored security measure. If it’s a password keeping a device encrypted, courts seem more willing to call compelled production a Fifth Amendment violation. If it’s a biometric feature — most commonly fingerprints or faces — the courts are more likely to consider body parts non-testimonial.

There’s not enough of a consensus either way to make it a clear choice, but courts seem to feel faces/fingerprints are like “keys” and passwords like “combinations” when it comes to the metaphorical lockbox that is your phone.

Adding to the case law that is “fingerprints are lockbox keys” is this decision [PDF] from a federal court in Illinois. (via FourthAmendment.com) The court says the Supreme Court says this is how it must be, even if the Supreme Court has yet to field a device encryption case.

The government wants to look in the defendant’s phone for evidence of his threats against a confidential informant. There’s a built-in limit to this, although it’s not one of the government’s making. Investigators want to apply the suspect’s fingers and thumbs to the seized iPhone to unlock it. The suspect’s mind is being taken out of the equation (as it were), which could result in the government getting what it wants in this request without actually getting what it wants from the man’s iPhone.

In connection with the government’s motion to revoke Barrera’s bond conditions, District Judge Robert W. Gettlemen ordered that Barrera’s iPhone be turned over to Pretrial Services. The government seeks to search this iPhone, with a home button, that was taken from Barrera in order to develop evidence of his alleged threats. The iPhone has a fingerprint lock function (known as Touch ID), and the government asked this Court for a warrant to compel the defendant to place his fingers and thumbs on the iPhone home button in an attempt to unlock the phone. The government alleged in the affidavit in support of its request for a search warrant that it will select the fingers and thumbs to press on to the home button, and that the iPhone fingerprint unlock function will disable after five incorrect attempts. At that time, the iPhone function will demand a passcode to unlock the phone.

The court says any Fourth Amendment concerns are addressed by the government’s warrant, which puts it on the right side of the Riley decision. With that settled, the court addressed the Fifth Amendment issues. (Emphasis in the original.)

Applying those three requirements in reverse order here, a biometric scan is certainly compelled—the government is explicitly requesting the Court’s authority to force the scan. The act may also be incriminating, as unlocking the phone may lead to the discovery of a nearly unlimited amount of potential evidence including text messages, social media posts, call logs, emails, digital calendars, photographs and videos, and location data. […]

But if a compelled act is not testimonial, and therefore not protected by the Fifth Amendment, it cannot become protected simply because it will lead to incriminating evidence. As a result, the relevant Fifth Amendment inquiry here is whether the compelled act of scanning a subject’s fingerprint to unlock a device is a testimonial act.

The court decides it isn’t a Fifth Amendment violation because the government will be choosing the five digits it will apply to the iPhone button, rather than the suspect. To complete the metaphor, the government has ten keys to choose from, but only has five attempts to pick the right key. Since the government is doing all the choosing, the suspect isn’t doing anything testimonial since he isn’t being asked to tell the government which of his fingers will unlock the phone.

First, the Court holds that the biometric unlock procedure is more akin to a key than a passcode combination. The Supreme Court in Doe, and later in Hubbell, has illustrated the difference between testimonial and non-testimonial physical acts via this helpful comparison, which aptly applies to an iPhone that has two different unlock features – a fingerprint and a passcode. In Doe, the Court noted that the Fifth Amendment permits the government to force an individual to surrender a key to a strongbox containing incriminating documents, but not to reveal the combination to a subject’s wall safe. Thus, using the Doe framework, this Court examines whether a biometric scan of an individual’s finger or thumb is more like a key or a combination.

A combination passcode requires a verbal statement from the possessor of the code. More importantly, compelling someone to reveal a passcode also requires an individual to communicate something against her will that resides in her mind. A key, however, is a physical object just like a finger — it requires no revelation of mental thoughts. Nor does a finger require a communication of any information held by that person, unlike a passcode. In fact, the application of a finger to the home button on a iPhone “can be done while the individual sleeps or is unconscious,” and thus does not require any revelation of information stored in a person’s mind.

But even this conclusion is not that simple. The government must show it knows the phone is owned or controlled by the suspect before it can start asking the court to give it permission to apply the person’s fingers to the phone. The court doesn’t address whether the government has met this evidentiary burden but rather waves it away by citing a 1988 Supreme Court decision (Doe) dealing with the production of financial records.

[T]he Court holds that the implicit inference from the biometric unlock procedure, that the individual forced to unlock had some point accessed the phone to program his or her fingerprint, is not sufficient to convert the act to testimonial. The Supreme Court considered this similar concept in Doe, when it found that requiring a petitioner to execute a consent directive that would result in the production of bank records would not have testimonial significance.

[…]

Similarly, the implicit inference that one might draw from the biometric unlock procedure — that the cell phone was at some point accessed in order to program the biometric lock feature — is no different in significance than any of the above inferences. It is of the same scale that existed in Doe, Gilbert and the other cases discussed above. The implicit inference is also not necessarily as firm as on first impression – the Touch ID feature on an iPhone permits up to five fingerprints to be programmed, thus allowing the potential for multiple users to program the feature. As a result, the Court concludes that any implicit inference that can be drawn from a biometric unlock procedure is not of testimonial significance.

This decision further muddies the federal waters, making it more likely the Supreme Court will have to address these Fifth Amendment issues in the near future. But until it’s all settled, odds are passwords are better than fingerprints if your main concern is unwanted access by government employees.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, 5th amendment, biometrics, compelled production, fingerprints, passwords

DHS Wanted To Add US Citizens To The Long List Of People Subjected To Mandatory Face Scans At Airports… But Has Backed Down For Now

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the smile-like-you-want-to-travel,-citizen dept

We knew the DHS would get to this point eventually. Since the beginning of its biometric scanning program rollout, the DHS has planned on adding US citizens to the list of people forced to trade their faces for air travel privileges. So far, the program has been limited to suspicious foreigners (which is all of them, including those here on visas), but a recent filing — caught by Zack Whittaker at TechCrunch — says flying in the United States would soon require adding yourself to the government’s facial recognition databases.

Homeland Security wants to expand facial recognition checks for travelers arriving to and departing from the U.S. to also include citizens, which had previously been exempt from the mandatory checks.

In a filing, the department has proposed that all travelers, and not just foreign nationals or visitors, will have to complete a facial recognition check before they are allowed to enter the U.S., but also to leave the country.

The Department of Homeland Security’s excuse for subjecting US citizens to mandatory face scans is the homeland’s security. Here’s the DHS in its own words:

To facilitate the implementation of a seamless biometric entry-exit system that uses facial recognition and to help prevent persons attempting to fraudulently use U.S. travel documents and identify criminals and known or suspected terrorists, DHS is proposing to amend the regulations to provide that all travelers, including U.S. citizens, may be required to be photographed upon entry and/or departure.

“May be required” should actually read “will be required.” The DHS’s privacy assessment of its biometric scanning efforts noted that opting out of biometric scanning means never leaving the country:

[T]he only way for an individual to ensure he or she is not subject to collection of biometric information when traveling internationally is to refrain from traveling…

The government would like to get to know its legal residents better, it would appear. It hopes to be able to put faces to names with an acceptable degree of accuracy. What’s acceptable to the DHS probably won’t be acceptable to travelers, but travelers aren’t making the rules. Travelers are only subjected to them.

The only thing preventing this program from becoming China is the DHS’s inefficiency — or a massive public outcry. After this story started making news this week, DHS suddenly decided to put it on pause for the time being. Of course, it still has until next year to roll out biometric scanning to the 20 largest airports in the country. It’s been working on this for a few years now and has yet to roll this out completely to its test markets. Whatever gains are made in facial recognition accuracy will hopefully arrive in time to keep the lowest bidders from endangering the freedoms of travelers just looking to exit or enter their home country. Even if DHS is backing down on scanning Americans, it’s not clear it’s backing down on its overall commitment to facial scanning technology.

The weak promise the DHS gave months ago about keeping Americans out of this was quickly broken to better facilitate the treatment of citizens and visa holders as terrorists every time they board a flight that crosses US borders — so I wouldn’t put much faith in its latest promise not to go there any more. The DHS and its large adult son, the TSA, have done very little to make traveling more secure. But when there’s billions of budgetary dollars at stake, you can’t be too careful. The money must be spent and those who firmly believe something must be done to secure the nation will see some things being done. Whatever collateral damage this does to Americans and their trust in the federal government is apparently acceptable.

Filed Under: biometrics, cbp, dhs, facial recognition, facial scanning, tsa

NYPD Finally Releases A Body Camera Policy That Gives The Department Plenty Of Ways To Withhold Footage

Failures

from the transparency-pantomime dept

The NYPD has finally finalized its body-worn camera footage release policy. It’s not much better than its initial public offering, which sought public input and then ignored every bit of the public’s input to craft an officer-friendly deployment policy that left the act of recording to officer discretion.

Even the vague promise of eventually releasing BWC footage to the public was too much for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association to bear. The NYC PBA sued to prevent the release of body camera footage to the public. This lawsuit was pursued as PBA President Pat Lynch made claims about officers’ resistance to body-worn cameras that were contradicted by NYPD officers’ statements.

Something the former mayor thought would be a “gotcha” tool to persecute otherwise fine officers has actually had zero effect on officer accountability or NYPD transparency to this point. It’s not going to get any better either. The official policy [PDF] released by the NYPD still gives the public the shaft.

The editorial board for the New York Daily News sums it up nicely:

[V]ideo from the cameras cops wear — which, after all, the public pay for — should be presumed subject to release, with narrow exceptions clearly articulated by NYPD brass.

To the contrary, [Police Commissioner Jimmy] O’Neill’s memo says “the Department will decide when to publicly release BWC (body-worn camera) footage of a critical incident within 30 calendar days.” Just a decision within a month?

That’s all the NYPD is promising: a “decision” within 30 days. It’s not promising release within 30 days. It’s just promising to think about it in a somewhat timely manner. That’s the best New York residents are going to get from their Finest.

The NYPD also has plenty of options allowing it to decide — within 30 days — that it won’t be releasing anything at all. Exceptions abound.

Any public release of BWC footage may be delayed, redacted, or in some cases, the Department may forego public release, in order to:

a. Comply with federal, state, or local law governing disclosure of records or existing Department procedures,
b. Protect confidential sources and witnesses,
c. Protect a person’s right to a fair trial,
d. Protect the identity of victims of sex crimes, domestic violence and juveniles,
e. Protect the privacy, life or safety of any person, and/or
f. Avoid undue trauma due to explicit or graphic content.

This all may sound reasonable and thoughtful, but in the context of this policy, it gives the NYPD multiple ways to withhold footage that doesn’t show its officers in the best light. This policy covers release of recordings containing the use of deadly or excessive force and other incidents the Police Commissioner feels may “address vast public attention.”

Footage that is exonerative will be cleared for release. Footage that isn’t will be withheld. The excuses are built in.

Consider the death of Eric Garner. Officer Daniel Pantaleo deployed an against-policy chokehold and killed Garner. If body cam footage had been captured, this policy would have exempted it from release. Officer Pantaleo was criminally charged. “Protecting the right to a fair trial” would be invoked. Possibly the “undue trauma” exception as well.

If an officer rapes someone, beats a domestic partner on camera (there is precedent!), or violates the right of a juvenile, this footage could be withheld under the “protect the victims” exception, even though it’s a cop committing the crime. If this seems like an impossibility, let’s not forget officers invoking victims’ rights laws to keep the press from publishing their names while discussing their lawsuits and/or prosecutions. Sure, the public will call bullshit, but the NYPD still has control of the recordings.

The exemption for federal law is another dodge. There are no federal agencies utilizing body cameras. In fact, until recently, partnering with a federal agency meant turning off body cameras or leaving them back at the station. Anything involving federal officers will likely be deemed unreleasable, no matter how high the level of public interest.

This isn’t even up to the level of “will this do?” This is the NYPD giving residents what the NYPD wants while pretending it cares about transparency or accountability.

Filed Under: body cameras, nypd, transparency, withholding footage

Colorado Appeals Court: Three Months Of Surveillance Via Pole-Mounted Camera Is Unconstitutional

Privacy

from the try-to-break-it-up-into-more-constitutional-chunks-I-guess dept

How much warrantless surveillance is too much surveillance? It depends on which court you ask.

Public areas, which include people’s front doors and unfenced yards, have very little in the way of privacy expectations. Consequently, there’s a lot of warrantless surveillance aimed at these areas, usually in the form of pole-mounted cameras. While warrants could be obtained, they usually aren’t. And, in some cases, the surveillance occurs during the early stages of an investigation where enough probable cause hasn’t been established to secure a warrant even if investigators thought they might need one.

In 2014, a Washington federal court judge said six weeks of pole-mounted surveillance was unconstitutional without a warrant. This surveillance wasn’t just passive. The camera could be controlled by officers while it was recording in addition to providing investigators with dozens of hours of recordings. This was too much for the federal court, which suppressed the video evidence obtained with the utility pole-mounted camera.

A couple of years later, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said indefinite surveillance from a pole-mounted camera doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment. It reasoned that if an ATF agent could spend an 8-hour shift surreptitiously monitoring a suspect’s rural Tennessee home without violating the Constitution, the proxy surveillance that went uninterrupted for ten weeks didn’t violate the Constitution either. What’s Constitutional for eight hours doesn’t suddenly become unconstitutional when it’s 1,680 hours.

Six weeks is bad, ten weeks is OK… and in a case from earlier this year, eight months of continuous surveillance falls on the wrong side of the Constitution. The federal court read the Supreme Court’s Carpenter decision to expand Fourth Amendment protections (specifically, expectations of privacy), even if that case only dealt with cell site location info. Also at play here were the camera’s features, which allowed investigators to remotely access and control the camera, rather than just replay recordings.

A recent decision [PDF] from the Colorado state appeals court sort of splits the difference. More than three months of continuous surveillance by a utility pole-mounted camera is too much for the Constitution to bear. (via FourthAmendment.com)

Like two of the other cases above, the camera’s movement could be controlled remotely by investigators as it recorded. This camera also did something the average passerby couldn’t do (I mean, in addition to staring at someone’s house for 13 weeks straight): it could see above the suspect’s six-foot privacy fence to the end of the driveway near the house’s garage and entrance.

Nonetheless, the government claimed these areas that were hidden behind the privacy fence could be viewed from certain angles by the proverbial “man on the street” the investigators claimed their camera emulated. Photos introduced during the hearing showed the end of the driveway could be viewed through “thin gaps” between the boards of the privacy fence, as well as from exterior stairways of nearby apartments. The court doesn’t think much of these hypotheticals.

We are unpersuaded by the People’s arguments that the area of Tafoya’s driveway behind his privacy fence hypothetically could be seen by a next-door neighbor peering through a small gap in the privacy fence or by the adjacent apartment dweller on a second-story private outdoor stairway (or, for that matter, by someone in a helicopter, or by someone looking through the camera on a drone).

This argument ignores the improbability that a neighbor would peer through a gap in a privacy fence or stand on his or her outdoor stairway for three months at a time. And helicopters and publicly available drones do not remain in flight for three months at a time. Crediting the People’s argument would mean there is no temporal cap on how many months or years the police could have continued the video surveillance of Tafoya’s property.

And for all the concerns about how much long-term surveillance via cell site location data tells the government about their surveillance targets, the court reminds everyone pointing an unblinking eye at someone’s home for weeks at a time is just as invasive. It quotes from a South Dakota Supreme Court opinion:

[t]he information gathered through the use of targeted, long-term video surveillance will necessarily include a mosaic of intimate details of the person’s private life and associations. At a minimum, it could reveal who enters and exits the home, the time of their arrival and departure, the license plates of their cars, the activities of the occupant’s children and friends entering the home, information gleaned from items brought into the home revealing where the occupant shops, how garbage is removed, what service providers are contracted, etc.

[…]

[L]ong-term video surveillance of the home will generate “a wealth of detail about [the home occupant’s] familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.” The recordings could be stored indefinitely and used at will by the State to prosecute a criminal case or investigate an occupant or a visitor.

The evidence — which apparently includes a large amount of drugs — is suppressed and the conviction overturned. The government gets another chance to prosecute but its case appears to rest largely on the surveillance recordings the court says it can no longer use.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, colorado, pole-mounted camera, privacy, surveillance, warrants

Cops Are Running Ring Camera Footage Through Their Own Facial Recognition Software Because Who's Going To Stop Them

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the ALL-DOORS-ARE-RECORDED dept

Ring may be holding off on adding facial recognition tech to its already-problematic security cameras, but that’s not stopping any of its not-exactly-end-users from doing it for themselves.

Ring is swallowing up the doorbell camera market with aggressive marketing that includes the free use of taxpayer-funded services. It calls over 600 law enforcement agencies “partners.” In exchange for agency autonomy and free cameras, police departments all over the nation are pushing cameras on citizens and asking them to upload anything interesting to Ring’s “I saw someone brown in my neighborhood” app, Neighbors.

The company that has someone in charge of its facial recognition division Ring claims it’s not using to implement facial recognition tech is handing out cameras like laced candy. Law enforcement agencies are snatching the cameras up. And they’re snatching the footage up, using subpoenas to work around recalcitrant homeowners. Once they have the footage, they can keep it forever and share it with whoever they want.

They can also run the footage through whatever hardware or software they have laying around, as Caroline Haskins reports for BuzzFeed.

Amazon does not offer the ability to recognize faces in footage on its Ring doorbell cameras. But just one month after police in Chandler, Arizona, received 25 surveillance cameras for free from the company, the department’s then–assistant chief discussed using its own facial recognition technology on Ring footage at a meeting of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, according to his slideshow obtained in a public records request.

In an April presentation titled “Leveraging Consumer Surveillance Systems,” Jason Zdilla discussed various consumer surveillance devices and platforms. Examples cited in the presentation included Ring cameras and the Neighbors app.

It’s the perfect storm of unaccountability. Footage can be obtained from Ring with a subpoena. Ring hands it over with zero strings attached. Cop shop runs it through the Zoom Enhancer and any databases it has or has access to. Bingo: facial recognition in cameras supplied by a company that says it’s not all that into facial recognition at the moment.

Now, you may be wondering why this is a big deal. Why does any of this matter when other surveillance systems with cloud storage are likely similarly responsive to subpoenas and place no restrictions on footage they hand over to law enforcement?

Well, two things: first, Ring claims all footage belongs to camera owners, but treats camera owners as if they’re not a stakeholder when it comes to sharing their recordings with the government.

Second — and far more importantly — Ring aggressively courts police departments as “partners,” turning consumer products into unofficial extensions of existing government camera networks. Ring hands out free cameras to cops and hands out even more freebies if cops convince homeowners to download the Neighbors app and share as much footage as possible. Ring also takes control of all PR efforts and official statements involving Ring doorbells that cops have given to citizens. And Ring coaches cops how to obtain footage without having to trouble the courts with a warrant.

This is unlike any other company in the home security business. Ring’s assimilation of hundreds of law enforcement agencies blurs the line between public and private in the name of commerce. Taxpayers are contributing to their own co-opting into a surveillance mesh network propelled by one of the largest companies in the world. This isn’t acceptable. But the longer Ring’s expansion remains unchecked, the sooner its behavior will become normalized. And once it’s normalized, it’s over.

Filed Under: cameras, doorbells, facial recognition, police, ring
Companies: amazon, ring

ICE Says Students Duped By Its Fake College Sting Should Have Known It Was A Sting

Scams

from the so-are-you-going-to-start-issuing-tuition-refunds-or-what dept

Those assholes at ICE are still at it. For most of the past year, ICE’s fake college sting has resulted in a long string of arrests, but not very many prosecutions.

The sting involved a fictitious university set up by ICE to ensnare foreigners seeking to extend their US stays by complying with the law. That’s the underlying truth that was dismantled by ICE’s fiction. Visitors on student visas are allowed to stay in the country as long as they continue their studies.

ICE’s fake college looked like a legitimate option, seeing as the agency had talked an accreditation agency into giving it the official thumbs-up as a certified education entity. The fake college had an online presence and a physical building. It also had staffing that accepted tuition money before turning applicants in to ICE agents.

ICE netted 250 arrests from this sting, with most duped students opting for voluntary departure. The agency is being sued for its fakery — something it has consistently spun as foreigners bypassing the law to stay in the country. But this is what the law allows them to do and ICE is punishing them for doing it.

Very few of the arrests deal with fraudulent actions by students. Instead, criminal charges have targeted a few middlemen who took cash from visitors on student visas with promises to help them avoid being deported. Out of ICE’s 250 arrests, only eight resulted in criminal charges. The bulk of the sting operation netted nothing more than administrative charges, ending some students’ stay in the country.

ICE insists the US government is the real victim here. The victims of ICE’s scam university aren’t actually victims, according to ICE. They’re actually crafty operators gaming the country’s visa system.

Attorneys for ICE and the Department of Justice maintain that the students should have known it was not a legitimate university because it did not have classes in a physical location.

It’s as if online classes have never existed. This doesn’t actually show intent. It just shows how well the fake university was constructed by ICE — something that looked legitimate until the arrests started. Attorneys we’re paying for are helping ICE play the victim after duping students out of thousands of dollars in tuition and fees before setting them up with deportation.

“Their true intent could not be clearer,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Helms wrote in a sentencing memo this month for Rampeesa, one of the eight recruiters, of the hundreds of students enrolled. “While ‘enrolled’ at the University, one hundred percent of the foreign citizen students never spent a single second in a classroom. If it were truly about obtaining an education, the University would not have been able to attract anyone, because it had no teachers, classes, or educational services.”

Most of this simply isn’t true. And what is true isn’t indicative of trustworthy government employees or agencies. As mentioned above, the fake university obtained accreditation from a nationwide service and the DHS’s own website listed the fake university as an option for students in the US on visas.

In addition, students who did wonder about the lack of classes were unable to get any straight answers from the ICE agents posing as college staff. Those that did think this wasn’t legit tried to transfer out. This fact was ignored by ICE, who arrested students transferring out along with those it claims were gaming the visa system by staying enrolled at its fake college.

This ugly incident should be a permanent stain on the agency. Instead, an effort that began during the Obama administration will be portrayed as a victory over thieving foreigners by the DOJ, ICE, and a president who thinks the world will be a better place if everyone else in it stays the hell out of the United States.

Filed Under: accreditation, deportation, dhs, fake college, ice, immigration, sting operation, student visas