Posted on 12/23/2008 7:11:35 PM PST by HollyButler
SAN JUAN -- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested in Puerto Rico 13 people accused of taking part in a scheme to obtain Green Cards through bogus marriages.
The ICE spokesman in San Juan, Ivan Ortiz, told Efe that "this is not a new kind" of fraud to get residency.
He said that there is "a very serious commitment of the U.S. Attorney's Office" to stop this, because the number of cases is increasing.
Among those arrested were U.S. citizens Lydia Josefina Garcia Rios, 43; Jose Miguel Delgado Ortega, 47; Jorge Higgs Gaetan, 41, and Maria Rosa Fernandez, 27, who presumably married foreigners seeking to get their Green Cards in exchange for money.
Among the foreigners arrested were the Peruvian Marcos Antonio Melendez-Garcia, 43, and the Argentines Estela Stakun, 47, and Ricardo Javier Fresneda, 30, who had paid U.S. citizens to marry them and in that way get their residency in the United States.
The identity of the others taken into custody was not revealed because the charges against them are administrative, not criminal, Ortiz said.
"Marriage fraud constitutes a serious threat to national security and public safety" and opens the door for "terrorists, criminals and illegal aliens to enter and remain in the United States," the head of ICE in Puerto Rico, Manuel Oyola Torres, said in communique.
U.S. citizens who take part in this kind of fraud risk being sentenced to five years in jail.
Marrying for money is as American as apple pie. My mother did it and so did hers.
I probably couldn’t marry a lonely, depressed heiress and not have to work for a long time.
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