In recent months, families with relatives in detention have been extorted by scammers demanding cash to stop their loved ones being deported

Their daughters were held at the border – then the blackmail from fake Ice agents began

Their daughters were held at the border – then the blackmail from fake Ice agents began

Leonel almost missed the first call.

On 17 October last year, the Long Island construction laborer was at work when he felt his cellphone buzz in the pocket of his jeans. Ordinarily, he doesn’t answer on the job, but he hoped the call might have something to do with his 21-year-old daughter, Cynthia, whom he hadn’t seen in over four years.

He hurried outside on to a deck to get away from the noise.

Six days earlier, federal agents with US Customs and Border Protection had detained Cynthia and her three year-old son as they crossed the Rio Grande into the United States – the culmination of a 1,500 mile journey that began in rural Honduras.

Leonel knew that Cynthia and her son had been transferred to the South Texas Residential Family Center – one of three facilities in the country that detain undocumented women and children – but did not yet know when, or if, they would be released.

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He was desperate for news. Back in Honduras, gang members had shot his father in an attempt to steal money from the local water board, which he helped to manage. Cynthia witnessed the crime, and with the gang now threatening to kill her, too, she was forced to join the stream of hundreds of thousands of people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador – the so-called Northern Triangle – who each year flee what the United Nations has deemed an “extraordinary epidemic of violence”.

Leonel looked down at his phone. The screen displayed a number he did not recognize, but because the area code began with the same digits – 83 – from which his daughter had recently called, inside the detention center, he was hopeful that he was going to receive an update about the status of her case.

“Alo?” Leonel said.

A man introduced himself as Larry and, in Spanish, asked whether he was speaking with Cynthia’s father. Leonel’s heart began to flutter. Larry said that he worked with a group of lawyers in immigration services, and that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had recently conducted a lottery that made six people eligible for release from detention.

Larry had good news: Cynthia and her son were among the six who had been chosen. They would be able to leave the detention center within hours, board an airplane for New York, and be home with Leonel, and his wife, Doris, on Long Island, that very night.

Leonel had simply to send $1,000 via wire transfer, to pay for airfare and some miscellaneous fees. Larry said he would call back, in around 30 minutes, with details about the transfer.

As Leonel left work and drove toward his apartment, Larry called with perplexing instructions. He told Leonel to go straight to Western Union and send the money to a woman named Roxana, at an address in Hermosillo, Mexico.

This struck Leonel as odd, and he said so. But Larry assured him that his was a Mexican American firm that dealt with immigration cases on both sides of the border. Later, Leonel admitted that he was “thinking so intently about Cynthia coming home” that he neglected to inquire further.

He sent the money, expecting to see Cynthia, and his grandson, whom he had never met, later that night.

The South Texas Residential Family Center sits atop a former camp for oilfield workers in the remote, sloping scrubland of the Rio Grande Valley. It is managed by CoreCivic, a private prison company, and has the capacity to hold 2,400 immigrant detainees.

Over the past five months, at least 11 families with relatives – all asylum-seeking mothers and children – detained at the facility have been extorted by impersonators who have demanded payment to stop their loved ones being deported.

In total, the victims have paid more than $13,500, none of which has been recovered.

Katy Murdza, an advocacy coordinator with the Cara Family Detention Project, which provides free legal services to the two family detention centers in Texas, has documented and reported these scams to Ice, but received no updates or any information about the status of its investigation. Ice reports such allegations to its Office of Professional Responsibility.

The scammers have cited inexplicably specific details about their targets, making it very difficult not to trust what they say. In response to a question about how families should differentiate genuine calls from scams, Ice said that its officers “are required to verify the resident via their alien registration number”.

In sworn affidavits, relatives of detainees described receiving calls from fake Ice agents and attorneys who knew not only detainees’ names and alien registration numbers, but also their birthdates, date of entry into the United States, and the location of their detainment.

“Someone is leaking this information,” Murdza said. “The evidence we have points toward it being an employee at CBP, Ice or CoreCivic. It would be different if this were a one-off thing. But it’s clearly been systematic.”

In other words, the perpetrators are likely in contact with, or themselves employees at, the federal agencies or private companies that oversee immigrant detainees.

CoreCivic’s director of public affairs, Jonathan Burns, would not respond to a detailed list of questions. In an email, he said, “in deference to our government partner, we encourage you to contact Ice directly regarding your inquiry”.

In a written statement, Ice shifted the onus to the detainees. “It is vital that residents understand the importance of safeguarding personally identifiable information. Residents are educated about PII and its importance during town hall meetings and orientations at the family residential centers. Residents should safeguard this information and only share with highly trusted individuals to protect themselves from potential exploitation.”

After a non-citizen is detained along the border or taken into custody at an official port of entry, CBP agents make fingerprints, conduct brief biographical interviews, and collect the addresses and phone numbers of relatives already living in the United States. All of the information cited by the scammers would be contained in this file, which is then passed on to Ice.

“The information that we have on detained individuals is kept in law-enforcement-sensitive databases and a limited number of people are able to access it,” said CBP southwest branch chief Carlos Diaz. “This is the first we’ve heard about these specific allegations.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A US Border Patrol agent parks on a hill top near the border fence in Nogales, Arizona. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

In one case, a woman paid $2,250 for non-existent bond and court fees, then drove 16 hours from Tennessee to Texas to avoid the additional expense of a plane ticket, only to be informed that her relative hadn’t even appeared before a judge, let alone been cleared for release.

In another, someone claiming to be an Ice agent contacted a man whose daughter and two-year-old grandson fled El Salvador when members of MS-13 threatened to kill them. After lamenting that the man’s grandson was sick with a cold, implying that he needed to act quickly to bring him to safety, the purported agent ordered the man to wire $1,545 to pay for bond and airfare. Several days later he demanded an additional $70 to replace the daughter’s soiled clothes. (Detainees at the South Texas Family Residential Center wear government-issued clothing.) Murdza believes the scammers have thrown in such details to enhance their credibility.

But even without corroborating details, family members may have a hard time distinguishing between phony and legitimate calls. “People might ask, how could you fall for this?” Murdza said. But put yourself in the shoes of a recent immigrant. “You receive a call from someone who says they’re an immigration officer and that you have to do these things. You’re worried about your daughter, or your sister, or your grandchildren, and you have no resources for advice, you don’t speak English, you’re probably new to this country yourself.”

Criminals seeking to exploit what the sociologist Elizabeth Fussell has termed the “deportation threat dynamic,” in which victims opt not to report a crime due to fears about the potential immigration consequences, have long targeted undocumented immigrants. It can take years for these crimes to reach law enforcement’s radar.

“This type of fraud is so underreported,” Murdza told me. “We have no idea how often it’s happening.” For asylum-seeking mothers and children at the very beginning of the process to determine their fates, that fear is multiplied. “They just don’t want to jeopardize their case.”

Last summer, two California men were arrested for impersonating DHS agents and bilking at least 150 victims out of more than $6m.

Experts say such arrests are the tip of the iceberg. In the past year, attorneys general in New York, Washington DC, Illinois, and Massachusetts have all issued alerts about fraud scams that prey on immigrants.

Leonel went to bed early, hoping to catch some sleep before his late-night drive to the airport, when, at around 8.30pm, his phone rang again.

Another unknown number, but from the same area code as the call he had received that afternoon. He answered, and the man on the other end of the line introduced himself as Luis Castro, said that he worked for Ice, and that Leonel needed to pay a penalty for Cynthia’s illegal entry. If she were to come home that night, as planned, he had to wire $700 as soon as possible.

Leonel summoned Doris into the bedroom. Would Ice really call this late?

Something felt off, but given how little they knew about the circumstances – Cynthia and her son were locked up far across the country, with no way to convey information aside from a few short phone calls – their options seemed limited. Still, Leonel felt a seedling of doubt in his stomach. Why had the first transfer been to Mexico? What was the name of the firm? He couldn’t remember.

In the midst of this discussion, his phone rang again. “Half an hour has gone by and you haven’t sent the money,” Luis said, sounding agitated. “Are you working on it? We need the money tonight, or Cynthia will have to stay here longer. She might be deported.”

Most of the women and children at the South Texas Residential Family Center are detained for several weeks, though some have remained there for much longer.



This wasn’t always the case. For many years, families fleeing violence were almost never detained, and instead permitted to await the adjudication of their immigration hearings while living in the community, a policy widely known as “catch-and-release.” This made sense given that refugees and asylum-seekers have the right under US law to apply for protection. The Refugee Act of 1980, which passed Congress with bipartisan support, guarantees that people fleeing persecution or violence will not be treated as criminals when they arrive, even through unauthorized means.

In 2014, the Obama administration vastly expanded family detention, which it hoped would deter the surge of migrants then crossing the border. A federal judge later enjoined DHS from explicitly using family detention as a deterrent. But the centers stayed open.

They knew it all. How are you not going to fall for it if they have every piece of information? Doris, Long Island

During the detainment period, families generally can expect to receive two calls from the government – one toward the beginning of the process, to confirm their willingness to host the detainee once she is released, and another, toward the end, after the release has been cleared, to request bus or plane tickets for that specific date.

“We always tell our clients that real Ice officers will never ask you to send money, only to send bus or plane tickets that you’ve already purchased. But without someone explaining that to you beforehand, how would you know?” Murdza said.

Although immigration officials have the authority after completing an initial security screening to use alternatives to confinement – supervision, electronic tracking, case management – agents frequently choose instead to place asylum seekers into expedited removal proceedings, which lands them in detention.

At that point, scammers with access even to small pieces of information can wield immense power over desperate family members. “The government makes the decision to put these people here,” Murdza said. “It’s a waste of resources.” The Ice budget proposal for 2018 estimates that family detention will cost $320 per person, per day.

Alternatives to detention have high success rates. In 2015, the Department of Homeland Security found that over a three-year period, fewer than 4% of participants in one supervision program failed to show up for their court hearing. The programs are often cheaper, too. One study conducted by the National Immigration Forum suggested that phasing out detention in favor of monitoring methods – much like parole in the criminal justice system – could save taxpayers more than $1.4 billion each year.

In 2016, DHS formed an advisory committee to review its use of family detention. It concluded that “detention is generally neither appropriate nor necessary for families,” pointing out that the vast majority of these women and children have been subjected to violence, sexual assault, and rape, both in their home country and on their journey to the United States.

Instead, the practice of family detention continues to expand. There are now nearly 3,500 beds at three family detention centers across the country.

One recent evening, I took the train to Long Island to meet Leonel and Doris in their apartment. Leonel answered the door. He has a wide, soft face with a thin mustache. He wore a blue polo shirt, paint-stained cargo pants and work boots.



Together we sat on a couch in the cramped, windowless living room. In bursts of staccato Spanish, he recalled how, despite his unease, the threat of deportation brought the debate with Doris to a close.

They got into his car and drove to the nearby PLS Financial Services Center to send, this time via MoneyGram, $700 to Luis Castro. When they got home, Doris stated to cry.

“All you want is to get your loved ones out of detention,” she told me, sitting down on the couch beside us. “I would do anything for my daughter.”

Luis called back to say that, unfortunately, it was now too late for Cynthia and her son to leave. They would have to wait until tomorrow. Early the following morning, Larry called to say that that Ice required a social worker to accompany Cynthia and her son on the flight, and that Leonel would need to make one last payment of $400 to cover the cost of the ticket. Leonel sent the money, hopeful that the ordeal had finally come to a close.

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Later that afternoon, he got another call from Ice. The news was not good. None of the earlier calls were from attorneys or government officials. The agent – this time, a real one, who had been alerted by Murdza – told Leonel that he had been scammed.

Doris kept the printouts from the three wire transfers, totaling $2,100, which she had carefully folded in a white envelope. When I asked whether they considered using this evidence to report the scam to the police, they both laughed. “No, no,” Doris said. “We were worried they would start asking a lot of questions, that legal status would come up at some point. This is the life that immigrants lead.”

After the scam, Cynthia spent another 10 days in detention before she was cleared for release. Ice asked Leonel to provide plane tickets for the flight to New York, which cost an additional $800. She is now awaiting her next court date.

Doris and Leonel consider themselves lucky. Although Cynthia’s detainment cost them almost $3,000 – no small amount for two low-wage workers – they’re just happy that she and their grandson are safe.

With an almost bemused resignation, they go over the details of the various calls, trying to parse who could be responsible. Cynthia said that she didn’t divulge to anyone aside from government officials the details conveyed to her father by Luis and Larry.

“They knew it all,” Doris told me. “How are you not going to fall for it if they have every piece of information?”