Hyderabad: In a major crackdown against violation of immigration norms, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials arrested eight student recruiters, all of them from the two Telugu states.
They have been placed under arrest for participating in a conspiracy to help at least 600 foreign citizens stay on in the US.
The Federal agents created a fake university in Farmington Hills to lure foreign students who were trying to stay on in the United States illegally. The eight arrested people had aided hundreds of foreign nationals stay on in the United States illegally, by helping to portray them as students and get them enrolled into the fake university.
Those arrested were identified as Barath Kakireddy, Suresh Kandala, Phanideep Karnati, Prem Rampeesa, Santosh Sama, Avinash Thakkallapally, Aswanth Nune and Naveen Prathipati, all from Hyderabad, Vijayawada and other cities of Telangana state and Andhra Pradesh.
Special agents of the Homeland Security Investigations carried out an undercover operation, Operation ‘Novel’, between February 2017 and January 2019, to break a network of recruiters.
Though inception of the fraud dates back to 2015, the investigation was intensified a month into President Donald Trump’s tenure as part of a broader crackdown on illegal immigration.
