A federal appeals court ruled last week that a class action lawsuit brought by students duped by a fake university set up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement can proceed against the federal government.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on June 25 reversed a lower court's decision to toss the lawsuit led by Teja Ravi over the $6 million collected by the "University of Farmington" in Michigan, which was a front for an undercover operation targeting people engaging in student visa fraud.
The sting resulted in the January 2020 convictions of eight people on charges of committing visa fraud and harboring illegal immigrants for profit.
However, it also left roughly 600 students without the money they paid in tuition to Farmington and also resulted in their "arbitrarily losing their visas," according to a release last week by an attorney representing the plaintiffs.
The appeals court ruled that the students can sue the government for breach of contract. Ravi said he paid $12,500; two other students in the lawsuit paid $10,000 and 15,000, NBC News reported. Ravi filed the lawsuit in 2020.
"The government's operation eventually came to light, but the government neither provided the paid-for education nor gave Mr. Ravi his money back," the appeals court wrote in its opinion.
The ruling kicks the matter back to the lower court that dismissed the lawsuit in 2022 for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
It's not the first time ICE created a phony college to catch crooks. In 2016 it created the University of Northern New Jersey in Cranford as part of a probe that resulted in the arrests of 22 people who conspired to help more than 1,000 foreigners fraudulently keep or obtain student or work visas over a 2 ½-year period.
Like Ravi, duped students lost thousands of dollars in tuition fees to UNNJ. Federal immigration authorities ultimately agreed to settle that lawsuit.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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