Thread: Adult adoption company threatens to turn in names to I.C.E.

By David Manoucheri

Adult adoption company threatens to turn in names to feds

Nonprofit Americans Helping America under federal investigation

UPDATED 5:51 PM PST Feb 02, 2016



Agents from the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement seize computers, files, and other materials from the offices of Americans Helping America Chamber of Commerce on Dec. 22, 2015.

KCRA

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KCRA) —A Sacramento nonprofit organization claims to be helping undocumented immigrants get citizenship through an adult adoption program, but now there is word the company’s CEO may be threatening the people he claims to be helping.

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KCRA 3 Investigates first reported on Americans Helping America Chamber of Commerce in December.

“If you don't want to come, and say for example you do not believe what I am saying here, that is fine with me,” said Helaman Hansen, CEO of Americans Helping America, or AHA, on his YouTube channel. “We have 5.5 million people around us that are associated and that kind of people that are illegal and undocumented and we also associate them and try to encourage them.”

Hansen claims AHA’s adult adoption program will help get immigrants citizenship. It’s a claim that immigration experts like Ann Block said is patently wrong.

“It never, never helped anyone to immigrate,” Block said. “If it had, certainly I and anyone else who was doing immigration law would have been helping people to go through adult adoption and get permanent residency.”

AHA is now being sued on behalf of several immigrants in San Francisco for allegedly collecting tens of thousands for citizenship and never delivering. The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office opened an investigation as well.

In December the FBI served a warrant on the AHA headquarters, seizing all the company’s computers, files and phones.

So far, no charges have been filed against Hansen or his company. And in December, Hansen said he welcomed the raid.

“Man, I was not even surprised. I was happy,” Hansen said when KCRA 3 Investigates caught up with him at his office Dec. 23.

In a shift from that position, Hansen is now saying the same clients he’s purporting to help needed to come to his meeting Jan. 30, or he would turn them in to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

KCRA 3 Investigates obtained a copy of a flier AHA had printed that states: “If you do not come to this meeting then this agency will have no choice but to exercise the federal law that has been passed/authorised (sic) to us by the homeland security to hand in all the list of above's people's (sic) status to the homeland security."

Hansen stated a similar message on his YouTube channel, saying: “When you say if you don't want to come to this meeting and you don't want to stay here in America, you don't want to follow the rules, you don't want to follow anything, it gives us, the Chamber of Commerce, the right that we are going to be sending a list of people that don't want to be in America to the Homeland Security because we have been ordered by Homeland Security to release all the list of people that are around in our Chamber of Commerce.”

“Unfortunately, it sounds rather threatening,” Block said after seeing the flier. I can't see how going to a meeting with this organization is going to help anyone.”

KCRA 3 Investigates was at the AHA offices on Saturday for that meeting. Hansen was there, but ducked into a building and shut the door before we could ask him any questions.

“It's a closed meeting for the membership and other people right now,” said Peter Dunning, an AHA employee. “No news or anything inside.”

Dunning would not provide KCRA Investigates with any more details. Another employee simply told us it was none of our business and we were not welcome there.

The KCRA Investigates team stuck around and saw 16 different cars that went in and out of the AHA parking lots throughout the morning.

Neither Hansen nor Dunning told KCRA Investigates what happened or if they’d turned a list of names to immigration. If they do, immigration attorneys hope the federal government will give the people who have paid Hansen money permission to stay in the U.S.

“Hopefully, immigration, even having access to this information, will exercise their prosecutorial discretion,” Ann Blick said, “which they can do and not place anyone in removal proceedings even if they discover they are in fact undocumented.”

Block points out that both the FBI and immigration likely already have a full list of AHA’s clients since they seized all of the company’s files in December.

KCRA Investigates called ICE and asked if Hansen had sent a list of names to them. ICE said that they could not comment because it was an ongoing investigation.

http://www.kcra.com/investigates/adu...-feds/37784976

TV VIDEO @ http://www.kcra.com/news/nonprofit-l...rants/37786248