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Fear prods immigrants into expensive leap of hope
Officials criticize Brockton pitch
By Yvonne Abraham and Eduardo A. De Oliveira, Globe Correspondent | December 9, 2005

BROCKTON -- Word hurtled around the Brazilian community with lightning speed.

A woman from Georgia -- ''Pastor Emma," she called herself -- promised to show immigrants how they could remain in the United States legally under a 1986 amnesty law. So several hundred undocumented Brazilians flocked to the Radisson Hotel Brockton to hear her pitch.

Each of them handed over between $60 and $100 -- cash only, no refunds -- and listened intently to what Pastor Emma Gerald had to say. With the aid of a PowerPoint presentation and two Portuguese translators, she told them that, for the low price of $675 -- cash only, no refunds -- she would guide them through the application process and send their forms to the Department of Homeland Security for them.

Several people handed over the money, said Fausto Da Rocha, executive director of the Brazilian Immigrant Center, who attended one of the sessions. He and others say that Gerald deceived the immigrants, that the scheme was illegal, and that she may have put the Brazilians at greater risk of being arrested by immigration authorities by sending their applications to Homeland Security.

''We want to stop this kind of thing," Da Rocha said. ''It's not fair to push people to make a wrong petition. And she uses God's name. She tells them, 'You are here because God wants you to be here,' to push people to believe they should do a fake thing."

A few in the crowd who understood the complexities of immigration law did not like what Gerald had to say. They stood up and tried to explain to their hopeful compatriots that the 1986 amnesty provision could not apply to them. Gerald allegedly referred to her critics as ''Satans" and ''demons," and demanded that they be cast out of the room.

Gerald did not return calls yesterday. By last night, her voice mailbox was full.

Gerald has held her workshops in the San Francisco area and in New York, Da Rocha said.

After he attended one of Gerald's meetings a few weeks ago, Da Rocha went on a radio program to dissuade listeners from giving her money. He said Gerald then called him and threatened to sue him for a million dollars. Da Rocha tried calling police and the attorney general's office, he said, but they told him there was little they could do.

''I am afraid of this scam, because that woman is going to disappear, no one is going to catch her, and all these people risk deportation in the future," Da Rocha said.

Neither the attorney general's office nor Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Department of Homeland Security, responded to requests for comment on Gerald yesterday, but a spokeswoman for Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly said that in general, immigrants ''should be very careful about taking advice from or paying money to anyone."

Immigrant advocates say that, as the issue of immigration control gains more prominence and Homeland Security moves to more strictly enforce immigration laws, undocumented immigrants will be more vulnerable to schemes that promise more than can be delivered.

''There's so much fear out there in the immigrant community that whenever they see somebody advertising cheap legal assistance or a visa scheme, they're going to leap on it," said Thomas Keown, communications director of the Irish Immigration Center.

''As people read about more raids . . . the level of fear rises, and there are enough opportunists out there who will seek to profit."

The immigrants may have put themselves at great risk by following Gerald's instructions, said immigration attorney Harvey Kaplan. Citizenship and Immigration Services will be looking at amnesty applications closely, he said, particularly if there is a flood of them.

If authorities did catch up with Gerald and moved to press charges, the people who fell for her pitch would be at even greater risk for deportation, Kaplan said, because a fraud investigation would open all of her records to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

Scammers ''are just getting more and more money, and becoming more and more active, and more and more brazen," Kaplan said.

''So if they have a box of people's names and addresses, I certainly would be nervous."