Thread: Orange County Immigration Lawyer Guilty In Chinese Birth Tourism Scandal

Orange County Immigration Lawyer Guilty In Chinese Birth Tourism Scandal

By R. Scott Moxley Fri., Sep. 18 2015 at 6:15 PM

Liang's pre-arrest publicity photo

Late this afternoon following a four-day trial, a Southern California federal judge found a 38-year-old Irvine attorney guilty of three counts stemming from a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) investigation into a Chinese birth tourism scam.

Expressionless immigration lawyer Ken Zhiyi Liang stood, took off his suit coat, put his hands behind his back and said nothing as two jumbo-sized U.S. marshals handcuffed him for transportation to the Santa Ana Jail, where he'll be held without bail until his Dec. 14 sentencing inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse.

In the bench trial, federal prosecutors Joseph B. Widman and Jerry Yang successfully convinced U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Guilford that Liang conspired to obstruct justice by plotting to secretly aid the illegal escape of a material witness back to China.

That witness--a petite, college-age-looking woman known in court as "D.L."--entered the United States earlier this year under false pretenses of "business, tourism" after hiring a Chinese firm that arranged for her to give birth to her son in California so that he would automatically win U.S. citizenship.

Following the execution of a search warrant in March, "D.L" hired Liang and federal agents convinced her to record calls and private meetings with the attorney. Widman and Yang said evidence proved Liang took "multiple" steps to help her flee.

According to the prosecutors, his motive? A lousy $6,000.

Veteran criminal defense lawyer James D. Riddet told Guilford there was reasonable doubt on each count and that Liang may have made "troubling" statements in more than three hours of recordings, but shouldn't be convicted just for "his words."

Riddet also tried an entrapment defense given that a DHS agent told "D.L." to pressure Liang into helping her escape; he claimed the government's case was "a real stretch."

In his closing argument, Yang labeled the point empty.

"The defendant was just presented with an opportunity to commit a crime and he's the one who seized upon it," he said, also noting the 10-year, civil lawyer trained at Case Western Reserve School of Law in Ohio could have resisted.

Liang, who knew "D.L." had been ordered by U.S. Magistrate Judge Douglas McCormick not to leave the country without permission, faces the loss of the lawyer's license as well as potentially spending several years in federal prison.

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazin...visa_fraud.php

6/10/15

http://www.alipac.us/f12/irvine-atto...prison-320251/

This is exactly the kind of news item to send to Congressional Committees on Immigration, border control----and especially Homeland Security. People may dispute whether all of these cases of birth tourism technically amount to crime----i.e. they may try to say it was just "incidental." But the purpose of our border control measures is to ensure that we know who is in the country----and when people slip under the radar and then suddenly produce a US citizen we had no official idea that that was going to happen. We have a right to control all persons who enter---including fetuses. And in these cases there is invariably a fog of deception anyway.

Send news stories like this to these committee addresses:

homeland.security@mail.house.gov (for Michael McCaul)
anna.bartlett@mail.house.gov (for Trey Gowdy)
nicolas.hagen@mail.house.gov (for Bob Goodlatte)
whistleblower@judiciary-rep.senate.gov (for Chuck Grassley)
http://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/pub...ex.cfm/contact (contact form for Sen. Ron Johnson, US Senate Homeland Security)

http://www.alipac.us/f12/harsh-words...urists-323717/