The federal government has busted a marriage fraud ring that had been working to skirt U.S. immigration laws to get “lawful permanent resident” status (green cards) for Chinese migrants by marrying American citizens in sham marriages.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida announced the indictment of eleven Chinese migrants on Wednesday.
Prosecutors said that the suspects allegedly engaged in a “conspiracy to recruit United States citizens, preferably members of the armed forces, to enter into sham marriages to Chinese nationals for the purpose of evading immigration laws and illicitly obtaining lawful permanent resident status for the Chinese nationals.”
Prosecutors said the sham marriages took place across the country in states including Florida, New York, Connecticut, and Nevada, among others.
“To create the illusion of a real marriage, the conspirators took photographs of the couples to create evidence that could be presented to immigration authorities to suggest that the marriages were legitimate, and the couples were in loving, committed relationships,” the announcement said. “In reality, the conspirators had agreed to a payment plan whereby the United States citizen spouse would receive a cash payment up front for marrying the Chinese national, a second payment when legal immigration status was obtained, and a final payment after the divorce.”
The Trump administration recently took another move to end migrant marriage fraud by making it more difficult for migrants who marry American citizens to acquire green cards.
The policy shift comes after President Donald Trump’s officials began cracking down on rising rates of marriage-related visa fraud by migrants who pay Americans for temporary marriages.
While marrying a U.S. citizen has never been a locked-in guarantee that a migrant would be issued a green card, such marriages have previously offered a huge boost to a migrant’s request for legal status and have often been considered a rubber stamp for a green card, which can easily lead to citizenship within several years if the foreigner applies for naturalization. But that is changing as immigration attorneys are finding that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) are giving such marriages much closer scrutiny than ever before.
The marriage fraud industry has been booming for decades as migrants have exploited the marriage loopholes to get quick legal resident status through fake marriages.
To mention just a few recent cases, in 2024 a Connecticut bureaucrat was busted for running an immigrant marriage scam to push more than 100 of Joe Biden’s migrants into legal status before President-elect Donald Trump took office.
A similar scam was uncovered several years ago in California when federal authorities ended a scheme that had allowed more than 400 illegal aliens to acquire green cards by fraudulently marrying Americans.
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