Deportation fears create a new frontier for scammers targeting immigrants

With the Trump administration ramping up ICE raids and mass deportations, some immigrants are falling victim to scammers going after these vulnerable communities. Many of the targeted immigrants, including those who are in the country legally, say they’ve lost thousands of dollars and are often left with no recourse.

How are these scams perpetrated?

Legal organizations and immigrant rights groups “have warned that scams targeting immigrants and attorneys have increased to an alarming level,” said Mother Jones. Scammers may look to focus on these people because of the “desperate positions many immigrants find themselves in today as the Trump administration ramps up detention and deportation efforts.” The exact schemes vary, but scammers frequently “adopt the name of a reputable law office” and “advertise themselves on Facebook as law firms.”

These scammers then coerce their victims into handing over large sums of money in exchange for purported legal advice. At least “six immigrants in five states — Florida, Iowa, Michigan, New York and Washington — lost between $1,300 and $11,000 to criminal networks operating on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp,” said NBC News. One legal resident of the U.S., Odalys González Silvera, sent scammers $5,488, and Evelyn Molina, a Peruvian asylum seeker, was “scammed by a purported law firm on Facebook that promised her residency through a fictitious virtual hearing.”

Some of the scammers also pretend to be law enforcement. One man in San Diego recently pleaded guilty to “impersonating an immigration agent in order to con tens of thousands of dollars from Orange County immigrants” seeking green cards, said KNSD-TV San Diego. The man victimized undocumented immigrants by “telling them he could help with work permits, legal U.S. residency and U.S. citizenship,” and reportedly charged between $10,000 and $20,000.

How can people protect themselves?

Some officials are working to stem the flow of these scammers. Most notably, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg sent a letter to Meta, the parent company of Facebook, asking them to crack down on the schemes. Meta can “play an important role in protecting users from fraud and theft” and should “prioritize addressing reports of imposter accounts where criminality is alleged and temporarily suspend those accounts while the investigation is conducted,” Bragg’s letter said.

There are other ways experts say immigrants can protect themselves. One major step is to verify that the person in question is a licensed attorney. All states “have a website where you can confirm whether an attorney or accredited representative has an active practice license,” said NBC News. People should also refrain from paying via instant transfer systems like PayPal, Venmo or Zelle, as “legitimate legal organizations and private lawyers always present a formal contract and collect payment in a planned manner.”

Despite these tips, the fight to stop the scamming is ongoing, and the “impacts on victims are endless,” said Mother Jones. Beyond the money lost, the victims may also end up “missing court deadlines and hearings in their cases at a time when the system is increasingly hostile to them.” The scams “hurt the rule of law. It hurts our standing as a system of justice,” Charity Anastasio, a counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told Mother Jones. The legal system is “under enough attack now already. We really don’t need this added criminal element.”