Watch: Feds fee 5 in Louisiana, including 3 current or former Police Chiefs, about alleged Visa fraud scheme

Baton Rouge, La. (AP) – Three or former police chiefs in Louisiana were arrested after a federal examination of a suspected program in which false police reports were sold to immigrants who have no permanent legal status, and it was used to secure a visa on Tuesday.

Observe how the Ministry of Justice announced the case in the player above.

The fake police reports would point out that the immigrant was the victim of a crime, said US lawyer Alexander C. van Hook at a press conference in Baton Rouge. He said the police officers had paid 5,000 US dollars for any name for which they delivered fake reports and that there were hundreds of names.

There was “an unusual concentration of armed robberies of people who did not come from Louisiana,” said Van Hook.

“In fact, the armed robberies never took place,” he said.

At the press conference, van Hook and others said that the arrest of the current or former chiefs and two other people does not mean that their police departments are corrupt.

Some victims of crime and their families can be entitled to temporary visas – and in some cases a way to citizenship. About 10,000 people received the “U-Visas” in the 12-month period, which ended on September 30, 2022, the recent time for which the Department of Homeland Protection Data has published.

These special visas are particularly suitable for victims of certain crimes that have suffered “mental or physical abuse” and “for law enforcement authorities or government officials in the investigation or persecution of criminal activities” are helpful, based on a description of the program published by US citizenship and immigration services.

Two of the police chiefs were arrested for the press conference on Wednesday morning, the authorities said.

Lester Duhé, a spokesman for the Attorney General in Louisiana, said that the office of office supports the federal representatives in the question of his role in the request for his role.

The current or former police chiefs come from small communities in the Central Louisiana, which are nearby. They are in part of the state in which several immigration finding facilities are located. Although Louisiana does not share a border with a foreign country, there are nine ice finding facilities in the state – almost 7,000 people.

Local news agencies reported that ICE and FBI agents were entered by two of the chiefs.

Further details on the investigations, arrests and the alleged system were not made available.

In 2021, the US citizenship and immigration services warned that the U-Visa program after an examination of the Inspector General Inspector was susceptible to fraud that they had not addressed any defects in their process.

The exam found that the agency approved a handful of suspicious law enforcement signatures that, according to the OIG report, was not crossed with a database with authorized signatures. They also did not follow the results of the fraud, the total number of the U-Visas per year and did not effectively manage the gap, which led to victims of crime for almost 10 years before they received a U-visa.

Valerie Gonzalez, the author of the Associated Press, contributed to this report by Mcallen, Texas.