Sorry, I'm a little confused here on the 8 recruiters.
>The federal indictments name eight people in eight states who allegedly worked as recruiters for the school. All have been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit visa fraud and harboring aliens for profit. They face a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
So ICE employed recruiters, and is now prosecuting them for doing what they were told? A law enforcement agency hired people, required them to break the law (presumably under threat of dismissal), and then intends to jail them for it?
The article looks to have made it sound like ICE employed them, but I don't believe that is the case. It seems more likely they (the recruiters) were acting independently getting international students to transfer to the fake school knowing it wasn't a legit school (hence the "pay to stay" statement) and helping them with that process while unaware it was actually setup by ICE.
This makes perfect sense if the recruiters knew they were running a fake university.
If a drug dealer hires henchmen to sell their drugs, and under threat of dismissal tells them to move a certain amount of product, the henchmen are still guilty of a crime.
If the kingpin is actually the FBI, everyone working for them is still going to jail.
Except selling drugs is illegal, recruiting students isn't.
Keep in mind their employer was in "The Department of Homeland Security’s list of certified schools".
Their work was only illegal because their employer turned out to be "corrupt". And presumably the cover was strong enough that doing your due diligence on your new employer wouldn't raise any red flags.
As an employee is it my responsibility to ensure that my day-to-day work hasn't been made illegal due to my employer's actions!?
They were not recruiting students. They were recruiting student visa holders to a fake university with the intent to conspire with the visa holder to defraud DHS (or whoever) and that is illegal.
Per TFA the recruiters were themselves fake “students” who spread the word about the fake university and prepared fake transcripts for their recruits to fraudulently keep their student visas while not actually taking any coursework.
The narrative you are seeing is not what actually happened. IMO it’s WaPo’s fault as the article is very badly written to portray the student visa holders as victims in this.
The federal indictments name eight people in eight states who allegedly were students at the school and recruited additional students to enroll. All have been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit visa fraud and harboring aliens for profit. They face a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
The eight recruiters allegedly helped create fraudulent records, including transcripts, that students could give to immigration authorities.
>The federal indictments name eight people in eight states who allegedly worked as recruiters for the school. All have been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit visa fraud and harboring aliens for profit. They face a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
>The federal indictments name eight people in eight states who allegedly worked as recruiters for the school. All have been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit visa fraud and harboring aliens for profit. They face a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
So ICE employed recruiters, and is now prosecuting them for doing what they were told? A law enforcement agency hired people, required them to break the law (presumably under threat of dismissal), and then intends to jail them for it?