There had been “an unusual concentration of armed robberies of people who were not from Louisiana," Van Hook said, noting that two other people were also charged in the alleged scheme.
“In fact, the armed robberies never took place,” he said.
Earlier this month, a federal grand jury in Shreveport returned a 62 count indictment charging the five defendants with crimes including conspiracy to commit visa fraud, visa fraud, bribery, mail fraud and money laundering, Van Hook said.
Those charged are Oakdale Police Chief Chad Doyle, Forest Hill Police Chief Glynn Dixon, former Glenmora Police Chief Tebo Onishea, Michael “Freck” Slaney, a marshal in Oakdale, and Chandrakant “Lala” Patel, an Oakdale businessman.
If convicted, the defendants could face years or even decades of jail time. Court and jail records don't list attorneys for any of them.
According to investigators, people seeking special visas would reach out to Patel, who would contact the lawmen and offer them a payment in exchange for falsified police reports that named the migrants as victims of armed robberies that never occurred.
The scheme went on for nearly a decade, Van Hook said.
Asked what might happen to the people who allegedly paid bribes, including whether they might be charged or their immigration status might be changed, Van Hook said he couldn't say yet but that the investigation is ongoing.
Getting a U visa can give some crime victims and their families a pathway to U.S. citizenship. About 10,000 people got them in the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, 2022, which was the most recent period for which the Homeland Security Department has published data.
These special visas, which were created by Congress in 2000, are specifically for victims of certain crimes “who have suffered mental or physical abuse” and are “helpful to law enforcement or government officials in the investigation or prosecution of criminal activity,” based on a description of the program published by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
“These visas are designed to help law enforcement and prosecutors prosecute crimes where you need the victim or the witness there, ” Van Hook said. “U visas serve a valuable purpose, and this is a case where they were abused.”
When asked about the extent of the fraud, Van Hook said there are “hundreds of names" —- specifically for visas that were approved.
At least two of the police chiefs had been arrested as of the Wednesday morning news conference, authorities said.
Lester Duhé, a spokesperson for the Louisiana attorney general’s office, said that office was assisting federal agents with “court-authorized activities" when asked about its role in the case.
The current or former police chiefs are from small central Louisiana municipalities that are near each other. They're in a part of the state that is home to multiple immigration detention facilities. Although Louisiana doesn't share a border with a foreign country, there are nine ICE detention facilities in the state — holding nearly 7,000 people.
Local news outlets reported seeing ICE and FBI agents entering the homes of two of the chiefs. Van Hook said authorities searched multiple police departments and a Subway sandwich shop that Patel operated.
Van Hook and others said at the news conference that the arrests do not mean the indicted chiefs' departments are corrupt.
In 2021, the USCIS warned that the U visa program was susceptible to fraud after an audit from the Office of Inspector General found that administrators hadn't addressed deficiencies in their process.
The audit found that USCIS approved a handful of suspicious law enforcement signatures that were not cross-referenced with a database of authorized signatures, according to the OIG report. They were also not closely tracking fraud case outcomes, the total number of U visas granted per year, and were not effectively managing the backlog, which led to crime victims waiting for nearly 10 years before receiving a U visa.
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This story was updated to correct that the news conference took place in Lafayette, not Baton Rouge.
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Mustian reported from New York. Associated Press writer Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas, contributed.
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