Court documents cited by Reuters on August 12 reveal that the U.S. Department of Justice filed charges on Wednesday against 11 individuals for their involvement in a decade-long marriage fraud scheme—arranging roughly 1,000 fake marriages to help foreign nationals obtain legal immigration status in the United States.
According to the indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court, foreign nationals paid a group of six middlemen up to $100,000 each to be matched with American citizens for marriage, thereby securing legal residency. The indictment also shows that U.S. citizens who agreed to take part in these marriages could receive up to $30,000 in compensation.
The participants then helped the “newlyweds” submit paperwork to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, paving the way for the foreign “spouses” to become lawful permanent residents.
Attorney General Todd Blanche described the case as “one of the largest marriage fraud prosecutions in American history,” adding that it clearly shows how far some people will go to deceive the immigration system.
This comes on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that broadly affirmed birthright citizenship for babies born on American soil. Just last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at curbing “birth tourism.”
On the same day, the State Department announced it had begun reviewing the activities of visa holders, with a focus on cracking down on women who travel to the U.S. solely to give birth so their children can obtain American citizenship.
According to The New York Times, Trump has long criticized birthright citizenship and has used it as a political tool in his repeated efforts to restrict legal immigration. He has been talking about eliminating it since his first term and even attended oral arguments at the Supreme Court on the issue—an unprecedented move for a president.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s top domestic policy adviser and the architect of many of his immigration policies, along with White House aide Will Scharf, described these orders as important corrections to the existing system.
