#illegalentry

The Web of Deception: Three Interconnected Cases of Asylum Fraud

My current investigative project exposes the coordinated networks behind fraudulent asylum claims in France, focusing on three interconnected stories where applicants have successfully manipulated the system—some already holding refugee cards, while others await their turn.

The Multi-Generational Chain: A sprawling case of systemic fraud involving three generations of a single family. Utilizing illegal entry points and rehearsed narratives, members have successfully settled in France one by one; currently, the remaining family members in Nepal are poised to exploit "family reunification" loopholes to join them.

The Ethnic Imposter: A girl of Gurung ethnicity who is leveraging her Mongolian facial features to claim Tibetan refugee status. To bypass linguistic scrutiny, she underwent an intensive month-long course in the Tibetan language, successfully mimicking the identity of a displaced person.

The Rehearsed Victim: A Nepalese girl who was meticulously coached by her boyfriend to manufacture a claim of "female discrimination." By following a scripted narrative of persecution, she has managed to navigate the French asylum process under false pretenses.

Story by Taylor Penley • 1h ago

Story by Daniel Stewart • 10h ago

This makes no sense. She left a job to be unemployed and yet help with expenses. How the hell does that work?

"This is the case of Norlin Bruzual, 38, who although she had a stable job in Venezuela as a teacher and industrial safety specialist, was forced to leave for the Peruvian capital, Lima, to send remittances to her family and help with household expenses."

Economic reasons are not asylum. She's already left 2 countries that gave her refugee status.

"The economic situation in Venezuela worsened in 2018 and all her loved ones had to move to Lima. Added to this was the pandemic, in 2020, which ended up aggravating the situation and they decided, once again, to pack their bags again and go to Colombia. In order to pay for the plane ticket, they sold all their belongings."

This one sold her business. If it's so bad then who bought the business?

María Alejandra Gutiérrez Heredia, however, did not arrive by plane to Colombia, but by land in 2020 together with her children and grandson, before the COVID-19 pandemic. In her case, this 34-year-old Venezuelan had to sell her fast food stand because of the economic situation in Venezuela.

Others are tired of this mess too.

A Texas 'Dreamer' found out during an immigration meeting that his dad wasn't his biological father. Now he could be trapped in Mexico for a decade.

Avalos, accompanied by his American wife, traveled to the US Consulate in Juárez, in August 2022, for the interview, a necessary step as he began the process of trying to secure US residency, and eventually, he hoped, citizenship.

Avalos, 28, was born in Mexico but spent nearly his entire life in Texas after his mother brought him to the United States when he was just a year old. The August interview marked the beginning of his effort to become a citizen of the only country he had ever called home, after a decade shielded by his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival, often referred to as DACA, status, which prevented him from being deported despite being undocumented.

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The meeting quickly deteriorated into a nightmare, though, when Avalos learned that his mother had briefly taken him back to Mexico when he was 7 years old — a trip he says he doesn't remember — before he was able to establish permanent residency in the US. The revelation that he had illegally reentered the country not only dashed his immediate dreams of becoming a resident, but saddled him with a 10-year ban on returning to the US.

Avalos was apprehensive. If, for any reason, he failed to secure a visa during the meeting, life as he knew it would be forever changed. But with assurances from his lawyers that his papers were in order, Avalos quieted the nagging voice in his head, and embarked on a cross-border journey fated to be a one-way trip. 

According to Martinez, who recounted the doomed meeting in an interview with Insider, immigration officers quickly zeroed in on Avalos' Mexican birth certificate, which included an amendment from 2002 — six years after he and his mother first entered the US. Left without answers to officers' probing questions, Avalos called his mother mid-interview, hoping she might be able to explain the discrepancy. She dropped a heart-wrenching bombshell: Avalos' mother told her son and the immigration officials that she brought her child back to Mexico when he was 7 years old so her husband — the man Avalos always believed to be his biological father — could legally adopt him. Because he and his mother briefly left the US after illegally entering, thus unlawfully crossing the border not once, but twice, Avalos' application for residency was immediately denied and he was issued a 10-year ban on reentering the US — his home country, where his wife and son remained.