ICE set up a fake college to catch fraudsters. Students say they were duped – By Rich Schapiro (NBC News) / March 27, 2022
After fighting the case for years, the government has agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by students who alleged they were collateral damage in the sting operation.
Yi Dong found himself in a bind in the fall of 2015.
After graduating from Syracuse University, the 27-year-old Chinese man was accepted into a master’s program in computer science at the University of Northern New Jersey, or UNNJ. The program, he was told, would allow him to stay in the U.S. on a student visa and continue working as a computer programmer. But he was waiting on a visa authorization form, and no one at the school was getting back to him.
With the clock ticking down on his current visa status, Dong, who lived in Brooklyn, New York, decided to rent a car and drive to the college in Cranford, New Jersey.
Inside a three-story building in a leafy office park, he was escorted into the office of a man who identified himself as Dr. Steve Brunetti, the school’s president. Brunetti produced the government form, signed it and handed it over to Dong. He then gave the student a UNNJ T-shirt and snapped a photograph that was soon posted to the school’s Facebook page.
