Feds charge 3 current or former Louisiana police chiefs in an alleged visa fraud scheme

BATON ROUGE La AP Federal government have charged three current or former Louisiana police chiefs with taking bribes in exchange for filing false police reports that would allow noncitizens to seek a visa that lets certain crime casualties stay in the U S The false police reports would indicate that the immigrant was a victim of a crime that would qualify them to apply for a so-called U visa U S Attorney Alexander C Van Hook mentioned Wednesday at a news conference in Lafayette He commented the police bureaucrats were paid for each name they provided falsified reports for and that there were hundreds of names There had been an exceptional concentration of armed robberies of people who were not from Louisiana Van Hook commented noting that two other people were also charged in the alleged scheme In fact the armed robberies never took place he stated Earlier this month a federal grand jury in Shreveport returned a count indictment charging the five defendants with crimes including conspiracy to commit visa fraud visa fraud bribery mail fraud and money laundering Van Hook noted Those charged are Oakdale Police Chief Chad Doyle Forest Hill Police Chief Glynn Dixon former Glenmora Police Chief Tebo Onishea Michael Freck Slaney a marshal in Oakdale and Chandrakant Lala Patel an Oakdale businessman If convicted the defendants could face years or even decades of jail time Court and jail records don t list attorneys for any of them According to investigators people seeking special visas would reach out to Patel who would contact the lawmen and offer them a payment in exchange for falsified police reports that named the displaced persons as casualties of armed robberies that never occurred The scheme went on for nearly a decade Van Hook explained Required what might happen to the people who allegedly paid bribes including whether they might be charged or their immigration status might be changed Van Hook noted he couldn t say yet but that the research is ongoing Getting a U visa can give chosen crime casualties and their families a pathway to U S citizenship About people got them in the -month period that ended Sept which was the largest part contemporary period for which the Homeland Protection Department has published facts These special visas which were created by Congress in are specifically for casualties of certain crimes who have suffered mental or physical abuse and are helpful to law enforcement or administration bureaucrats in the analysis or prosecution of criminal activity based on a description of the campaign published by the U S Citizenship and Immigration Services These visas are designed to help law enforcement and prosecutors prosecute crimes where you need the victim or the witness there Van Hook disclosed U visas serve a valuable purpose and this is a scenario where they were abused When sought about the extent of the fraud Van Hook reported there are hundreds of names - specifically for visas that were approved At least two of the police chiefs had been arrested as of the Wednesday morning news conference administration stated Lester Duh a spokesperson for the Louisiana attorney general s office revealed that office was assisting federal agents with court-authorized engagements when requested about its role in the incident The current or former police chiefs are from small central Louisiana municipalities that are near each other They re in a part of the state that is home to multiple immigration detention facilities Although Louisiana doesn t share a frontier with a foreign country there are nine ICE detention facilities in the state holding nearly people Local news outlets stated seeing ICE and FBI agents entering the homes of two of the chiefs Van Hook declared functionaries searched multiple police departments and a Subway sandwich shop that Patel operated Van Hook and others disclosed at the news conference that the arrests do not mean the indicted chiefs departments are corrupt In the USCIS warned that the U visa operation was susceptible to fraud after an audit from the Office of Inspector General uncovered that administrators hadn t addressed deficiencies in their process The audit identified that USCIS approved a handful of suspicious law enforcement signatures that were not cross-referenced with a database of authorized signatures according to the OIG overview They were also not closely tracking fraud episode outcomes the total number of U visas granted per year and were not effectively managing the backlog which led to crime casualties waiting for nearly years before receiving a U visa