For foreign-born students desperate to stay in the United States, the University of Northern New Jersey seemed like the perfect solution: They did not have to go to class, but they could get coveted student visas and still work at their dream jobs.
They just needed to pay a broker from $3,000 to $12,000. During the past 3½ years, more than 1,000 agreed.
That was their mistake.
On April 5, as part of an elaborate sting operation, the government revealed that the university was fake. The sting resulted in the arrest of 22 brokers who arranged for students to enroll. The brokers belonged to an underground network of recruiters operating throughout the country who acted as middlemen between students and fraudulent schools known as visa mills, the government said.
Twenty-five students were listed as anonymous co-conspirators, but officials say all of them knew they were committing fraud by not going to class. Within days, 1,076 of them were ordered to appear in immigration court, facing deportation or even a lifetime ban from the United States.
"They were 100 percent fully aware," said Alvin Phillips, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. "All purported students are recorded at some point or another fully going along with the pay-to-stay scheme."
But in interviews, more than a dozen students insisted that they were collateral damage in the sting operation, duped by the brokers and the government.
In some cases, their efforts to verify the university or even transfer were rebuffed by the brokers, they say. In other instances, the students point to what they say was active deception by the government: in-person meetings with the university's supposed president, letters confirming that they could work instead of go to class, and Twitter messages about classes canceled because of bad weather.
In October, A., a young man from Shanghai living in New York City, was so frustrated when the university had not sent a needed eligibility form that he rented a car and drove to the campus. (A. and most of the students, insisted on being identified only by initials because their immigration cases were still pending or their families back home did not know their situation.)
At the university's office in a nondescript building off the Garden State Parkway in Cranford, a man presenting himself as the institution's president, Steve Brunetti, signed the form. He told A. how proud he was of all "his students" and gave him a souvenir.
It was a slick T-shirt with the letters UNNJ on the front. On the left sleeve was an American flag.
A. said he did not think the experience was odd. "I just figured that was the way it was done," he said.
Winona Sun, an art therapist in Brooklyn, learned of the sting operation while she was in China visiting her parents, when her visa to re-enter the United States was revoked. "I feel it's overpunishment," she said in an interview from China. "If the target is for the brokers, why do they want to tear people down and lie to me?"
The federal government accredits 8,687 educational institutions in the United States to enroll international students; 1.18 million are currently studying in the U.S. The students enrolled at the University of Northern New Jersey had all entered the United States legally and had earned degrees from schools including the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan and Fordham.
But after graduation, the clock was ticking for those who wanted to stay in the country. A program called Optional Practical Training lets foreign-born graduates remain for 12 or 36 months, depending on their fields. Companies can apply for temporary skilled worker visas, known as H-1Bs, for employees; about 230,000 people apply annually for the 85,000 visas given out.
A number of the students couldn't get H-1Bs and seemed out of options -- with jobs at Facebook, Google and Morgan Stanley on the line. Others were seeking to transfer from colleges they had heard were under investigation to stay one step ahead of immigration officials.
That is when the University of Northern New Jersey beckoned.
According to some students, brokers assured them that they could immediately earn credit hours for their work experience in a program called Curricular Practical Training, without taking classes.
"It is very much like a honey trap because you have a very, very great temptation being waved in front of these young men and women," said David Grunblatt, co-head of the immigration and nationality group in the labor and employment law department at Proskauer Rose in New Jersey. He represents companies concerned about hiring foreign graduates for practical training.
Most of the students were from China and India, where working with brokers is a familiar way of doing business. But in retrospect, they seem to have ignored what should have been red flags, whether because they were overly trusting, willfully ignorant or willing participants in visa fraud.
Corey Lee, an immigration lawyer in Manhattan, said, "If you didn't go to a class for a year, you should expect something is going on."
Sun, 29, earned a master's degree in art therapy at a college in Massachusetts and moved to New York to work for a nonprofit social services agency. (She declined to name the college or the organization because she did not want to endanger her application for a waiver to return to the United States.)
Her employer applied for an H-1B visa for her, but she faced a gap of several months before it would come through.
Sun said her broker told her she could work instead of taking classes but referred her to the university. In February 2015, after she enrolled, Sun said she called there approximately 20 times; no one responded.
"If one person called me back and told me it was fake, I would not have gone to the University of Northern New Jersey," Sun said. "What else can I do? I don't know the American system."
Louis Farrell, the director of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said academic nonimmigrant student visas require the holders "to enroll in a full course of study and attend and pass all their classes" and that "they should be wary of any recruiter who promises they can work without restrictions while attending school."
But there seem to be inconsistencies in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' definition of a "full course of study." In one entry on its website, it says that the designated school officer can determine a full course of study. Further down, it says that a student must complete at least 18 hours of classroom study.
Ultimately, the students said that because the Department of Homeland Security's website certified the University of Northern New Jersey, they believed the institution was legitimate. In addition, the website of the New Jersey Education Department listed it as approved; so did the website of the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges, a national body. Its director, Michale McComis, later said he had certified the university in order to cooperate with the government's investigation.
Z., who is 27 and also from China, did not win the H-1B lottery. He found the University of Northern New Jersey online without a broker. "How risky will it be for obtaining full-time CPT without attending any classes?" he wrote to the university in an email he showed to The New York Times, referring to Curricular Practical Training.
The response, from the email address info@unnj.edu: "If you are not comfortable with what we have offered, I ask you to try another university in the New Jersey area."
Without a direct answer, Z. said he fell back on the university's government accreditation. A year passed.
When he asked how he would provide evidence for another H-1B application, the university suggested making up classes from a template and to send that in with $620.
That was the final flag. Unlike students who were listed as co-conspirators, Z. did not fabricate school transcripts. Instead, he transferred.
But on April 5, his student status was terminated because he had been enrolled at the fake university for more than 45 days.
K., a 30-year-old from China who earned an MBA in New England, began to suspect something was wrong with the university after he had worked for a year and did not hear about the start of classes. "I was wondering if there was a lecture or something I could attend," he said. His broker told him online classes were coming soon.
K. said he, too, relied on the university's accreditations. "If the government is not trustworthy, who should we trust?" he said.
His girlfriend, S., 26, whom he met at business school, was accepted to the university the next year, in January 2016. But she said the broker told her that her authorization form and the school schedule would be delayed while the university expanded to two more campuses.
The couple went to the campus in Cranford in March, only to find the doors locked, supposedly because it was spring break.
Then at 8:20 a.m. April 5, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents knocked on the door of their rural New England home.
K. and S. were detained in separate cells for several hours. The next day, K. resigned from his job at a local company. They are both waiting for hearing dates.
Like the other students, they were notified that they needed to leave the country or apply for reinstatement of their student visas. But students have said that few colleges, if any, have been willing to sponsor them after they were tainted by the University of Northern New Jersey. Reinstatement ultimately depends on the government's approval.
The students say they have been put in an untenable position financially. They paid thousands of dollars either to brokers or directly to the university. Eight students said they spent a combined $46,000. Some paid the university via PayPal or cash, with the money going to a holding company listed on some students' invoices: Waterfall Properties.
As they wait for a hearing in immigration court that could take a year or longer, they cannot legally work.
"Typically in any fraud investigation, it is our policy that we do not refund any money," said Phillips, the Homeland Security spokesman.
"Absolutely there was a message," Phillips added. "We welcome international students in America, but they must do so according to the standards, the right way."
But Barmak Nassirian, the director of federal relations and policy analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, wondered why government officials bothered to create a fake university when such places already existed. Several fraudulent universities have been shut down in previous years.
The brokers may have recognized the University of Northern New Jersey as a visa mill, Nassirian said, but he could see how some students could be deceived by its certifications. "Can you really blame a student," he said, "even if they are a little greedy, a little gullible, or a little too hopeful?"
SundayMonday on 05/08/2016