Without Guns or Raids, a Tiny Squad of Officers Homes in on Visa Fraud

It was the kind of Brooklyn neighborhood where an unmarked car with government plates drew hostile stares, and a badge emblazoned with the words “immigration officer” could cause a panic.

Skip to next paragraph Ruby Washington/The New York Times

Tamika Gray displays her badge. By going after fraud, the squad’s leader says, “you’re helping the good people.”

“Just keep smiling,” Tamika Gray, an immigration officer, said aloud to herself as she steered the car under the elevated tracks in Bushwick, meeting the suspicious gaze of a young man hanging out between Dominican Hair and Myrtle Live Poultry. “I’m not here to drag you anywhere.”

Ms. Gray, the rookie in the tiny Fraud Detection and National Security unit at federal immigration headquarters in Lower Manhattan, was pursuing the unit’s distinctive kind of law enforcement. No guns. No raids. Just a little New York street smarts and shoe leather to uncover all types of deception, case by case, in the endless stream of visa applications.

Deceivers come in many guises. The “multinational corporation” sponsoring a foreign manager to handle nonexistent millions. The “lawyer” specializing in fleecing desperate immigrants. Bogus newlyweds, would-be citizens hiding criminal records, churches that are really developers’ construction sites, or “condos for Christ,” in the officers’ wry shorthand.

The fledgling fraud detection unit is one of the first in a nationwide operation started three years ago by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the visa-issuing arm of the immigration authority recreated in 2003 under the Department of Homeland Security.

The work of the unit’s investigators — who are not part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the branch identified with raids, detention and deportation of illegal immigrants — is a new approach to detecting trends in fraud among the six million applications made nationally each year. But the investigators are so few, and so far down the bureaucratic chain, that the payoff from their efforts can be hard to see.

On a recent visit behind the unmarked steel doors of the fraud unit’s office at 26 Federal Plaza, one wall was stacked high with suspect files — part of the flow of some 150,000 applications annually in New York alone. The unit supervisor, Joseph T. Knipper, cast a quizzical look from the stacked files to his investigators — all six of them.

“We used to have a saying: ‘The fraud never sleeps,’ ” he said, exaggerating his gravelly voice and hangdog expression for comic effect. “And after a while we said, ‘We don’t either.’ ”

Still, Mr. Knipper, 60, a Brooklyn-born Navy veteran, ex-cop and longtime refugee asylum officer, said he saw his work as a boon to legitimate applicants. “By going after fraud,” he said, “you’re helping the good people.”

At any given time, the unit has more than 500 open cases, some involving multiple files flagged during processing, some chosen through random sampling.

Since October, the unit has referred 187 cases to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for possible criminal investigation. Very few ever move on to prosecution by the United States attorney’s office, however. More typically, after a 60-day review, the cases bounce back to the fraud unit. Suspect applications can be denied and the holder of a fraudulent visa can face deportation.

The operation is a work in progress, cautioned Andrea J. Quarantillo, director of the New York district office of Citizenship and Immigration Services, who keeps her Sicilian grandfather’s Ellis Island certificate on her office wall. Nationwide, the fraud detection division has a staff of only 375, scattered in more than 70 offices around the country.

“The work they do is work we wanted to do for years,” she said, especially systematic sample audits that measure fraud in various visa categories, allowing administrators to spot patterns and close loopholes. “We’re not there yet.”

So far, the mother lode of fraud has turned up in visa petitions for religious workers, made by organizations of every size and denomination. In reviewing a representative sampling, the agency found that one in three approved petitions were phony in New York and nationwide. In contrast, the rate of fraud found in petitions to replace a lost green card was less than 1 percent.

This year, rules were changed to require visits by an agent in all petitions for religious workers. One result is a ballooning workload that outpaces the shoestring budget.

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