Houston Chronicle by Gabrielle Banks 7/8/2019
Fake wedding albums in lucrative scheme that allegedly paired immigrants from Vietnam with U.S. citizens
The Houston woman allegedly ran a one-stop shop for green-card marriages, complete with age-appropriate American spouses, Photoshopped wedding albums and cheat sheets to help strangers prepare for interviews with federal agents.
She advertised on Facebook in Vietnamese — and at least 150 immigrants from her homeland signed up, paying as much as $70,000 each for the promise of permanent legal status in the United States, according to court documents. In some instances, the woman paired the new arrivals with U.S. citizens linked to Houston street gangs, prosecutors said.
Then federal agents noticed a pattern. Immigration petitions from Houston were arriving in the same type of envelope with a nearly identical cover letter filled out in a similar cursive script. Every one of 30 petitions had been mailed from the same Houston post office, according to testimony.
Ultimately, a federal grand jury indicted 96 people this spring in what prosecutors said was one of the largest marriage-fraud conspiracies documented in the Houston region. More than 200 charges have been brought against dozens of briefly acquainted couples and others accused of helping to facilitate the large-scale operation. The alleged ringleader’s common-law husband is accused of ferrying the couples to court for impromptu nuptials and to immigration interviews. Her adult daughter is charged with recruiting former classmates from her Alief high school to be fake spouses in exchange for money.
The focal point of the Justice Department’s case is the alleged mastermind of the scheme, Ashley “Duyen†Yen Nguyen, a naturalized U.S. citizen who reportedly works as a home health aide. The government says her job description is also fraudulent. A judge ordered the 53-year-old grandmother to await trial in federal custody, ruling she was a flight risk with ties to gang members and a danger to dozens of witnesses prepared to testify against her.
The massive investigation sheds light on a less-controversial component of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration offenses. Marriage fraud cases appear on the rise, according to a conservative group that closely tracks immigration. And defense lawyers said big prosecutions like this one require deep resources from the federal courts.
Defendants in the Nguyen case face trial on an array of charges, including conspiracy, marriage fraud, immigration fraud, mail fraud, forgery and making false statements under oath. The federal court system does not track marriage fraud per se, but lawyers and immigration advocates said they’ve noted an uptick since Donald Trump became president.
Matthew J. O’Brien, research director for FAIR, which favors reduced immigration, said it appears that Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Trump “has been more likely to charge defendants accused of marriage fraud†as part of a more aggressive posture toward illegal immigration. But he thinks the convicts don’t reflect the scope of violations because prosecutors often resolve two-person fraud cases administratively rather than through criminal charges.
It’s a lot of hullabaloo for a minor payoff, say some defense lawyers. They say marriage fraud is a low-ranking felony. An immigrant with no criminal background may serve a brief sentence followed by deportation. A citizen with no criminal record could spend a few months in prison or be sentenced to probation.
A case this large is rare and it clogs up the docket, lawyers said.
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