Thread: Bogus Cuban Birth Certificate Ring Prompts Closer Scrutiny Of Green Card Applications

Published August 26, 2013
Fox News Latino



A Cuban counterfeit birth certificate ring has prompted immigration officials to tighten oversight over applications for permanent U.S. residency that claim birth in Cuba.

Immigration officials busted a ring last year in which a Florida man told Latin Americans that they could obtain U.S. residency by presenting a Cuban birth certificate, according to the Miami Herald.

According to authorities, the man, Fidel Morejón, portrayed himself as an immigration official and sold fake Cuban birth certificates to undocumented immigrants, netting some $500,000.

Morejón, who was born in Cuba, allegedly coached the immigrants what to say to elude suspicion, The Herald said. Among his tips was not to speak too much, lest agents noticed their non-Cuban accents.

“A Cuban birth certificate is a valuable document,” the newspaper explained, “ because undocumented Cuban nationals can be paroled into the United States and apply for a green card after more than a year in the country under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966.”

The fraud case brought to a halt the ease with which Cuban applicants have received their green cards, the newspaper noted.

Where until then many applicants claiming Cuban birth had been able to conduct the process for getting their legal immigration documents through the mail, now those whose applications raise questions are being summoned to in-person interviews with immigration officials. Authorities are also paying closer attention to reviewing documents and training agents about how to verify the authenticity of paperwork.

“Every application is getting more scrutiny,” said Miami U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services District Director Linda Swacina, according to The Herald. “We’ve been around for 10 years now as Department of Homeland Security and we’re continuing to learn and we’re continuing to develop stronger fraud detection methods to be able to identify the patterns better. We want to get the word out that we’re looking very closely and we’re a lot better at finding [fraud] than we used to be.”

Morejón’s modus operandi evidently consisted of taking the immigrants to the Florida Keys, where, pretending to be rafters from Cuba, they would encounter immigration authorities and ask for refuge. There, they would repeat the details they had been coached by those involved in the scam to provide.

“So, if I tell you: ‘Where were you born?’ At this moment you have your [birth certificate]. Where were you born?” asked Morejón, according to a transcript of one secretly recorded tape, said The Herald.

“I was born in Havana … no, in Guinness, Guinness, Cuba,” The Herald reported a migrant as responding.

On Jan. 28, U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga sentenced Morejón to 33 months in prison and three years of supervised release, the newspaper said.

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/pol...an-green-card/

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'Fake Cubans' Visa Fraud Trend Growing, Says US Immigration And Customs

By David Iaconangelo, Aug 07, 2013 11:32 AM EDT

Pretending to be Cuban can put some immigrants on the fast track to green cards and citizenship. They've just got to have the documents to prove it. CNN reported late last week that an official with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations told them a growing trend in visa fraud begins with the purchase of a fake Cuban birth certificate. For $10,000-$20,000, "fake Cubans" hailing from countries all over the hemisphere can find themselves on the fast track to permanent residency and citizenship. All they've got to do is "act Cuban" when interviewed by immigration officials.

In 1966, U.S. Congress passed the Cuban Adjustment Act, a piece of legislation allowing Cuban immigrants to seek permanent residency after being in the United States only a year. They're put on that path as soon as they set foot on U.S. soil, at which point they're automatically granted refugee status. The incentives for committing fraud are enticing -- huge demand and a relatively tiny, capped number of visas handed out by the US has created a backlog by which many immigrants languish for decades before seeing their permanent residency requests awarded.

Cuba still uses paper birth certificates in its record-keeping, not computerized ones. Some cases of fraud have been carried out by taking bundles of actual, blank Cuban birth certificate forms, then simply filling them out by hand for clients in the US - just as it's done by official Cuban registries.

Alysa Erichs, a special agent in charge of the USCIS office in Miami, told the network that those directing the scam often coach their clients on how to field questions from suspicious immigrations officials. In one case, she says, the person selling the fake documents instructed the buyer to "get really sunburned" before they would then drop him off in the sea. The plan was to have someone rescue them, at which point the fake Cuban would say they'd launched from Cuba on a raft which had sunk along the way.

Fidel Morejon Vega, a longtime leader of a "fake Cuban" visa fraud ring who is currently serving 33 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit immigration fraud, was taped by an undercover officer giving instructions on what to tell immigration officials who asked why he had a Mexican accent. "Because I work with a lot of Mexicans," Morejon Vega advised the undercover agent to say, "and I caught it."

Operation Havana Gateway, an initiative launched by the USCIS in conjunction with several other agencies in August 2012, has netted 40 arrests. Agents are reviewing cases from as far back as five years. Whereas in the past, they were processed rapidly, Erichs told CNN, "now they are all scrutinized."

http://www.latintimes.com/articles/7...mmigration.htm